Bleak House

The term "Bleak House" refers to two different houses -- the one owned originally by John Jarndyce, to which Ada, Esther, and Richard come to live with him, and to the second Bleak House, built for Esther and her husband at the end of the book. That said, the Bleak Houses in Bleak House are not bleak at all. They are happy houses. The title of the book is more indicative of the social ills and hypocrisy that Dickens addresses in it.

Sir Leicester Dedlock is introduced as the height of British Aristocracy. He has a home in rural Lincolnshire called Chesney Wold. His beautiful wife lives with him, and is the apex of the fashionable world. She hides a terrible secret -- before she met Sir Leicester she bore an illegitimate child with her lover Captain Hawdon. She thinks that child has died.

This child, Esther Summerson, has been raised by her godmother, who she finds out is really her aunt. After this aunt dies Esther is given into the care of a guardian, Mr. John Jarndyce, a kindly man who educates her and brings her to his house to be the companion of his other ward, Ada Clare.