But even the “keen eye” (p. 667) of Inspector Bucket can be rather dim where so much appears to be “ ’wrapped round with secrecy and mystery’ ” (p. 606). For all of the mystification to which Dickens points in Bleak House, however, his writing in this novel can be conspicuously lucid. Like Esther, we find ourselves “reading the same words repeatedly,” but we “read the words... without knowing what they meant” (p. 42) only if we fail to see the “connexions” between verbal “ ‘odds and ends’ ” that Dickens has scrupulously crafted. “Work up from this” (no. 1), “Lay that ground” (no. 13), “Prepare the way” (nos. 19 & 20) are among the memoranda Dickens wrote for himself in the monthly number plans for Bleak House. In the novel, he carried out these intentions both by prefiguring significant turning points in the plot and by retracing his steps as he moved forward, and the resulting doubling and redoubling of character and incident have a tendency to produce a feeling of déjà vu as we read.6 Not only that: we are reminded that we should be having this experience in Bleak House, where other characters are “ ’dashed’ ” (p. 99), and “disconcerted” (p. 333) by this uncanny feeling of recognition in scenes that illuminate some of the mysteries of the plot.

“Let all concerned in secrecy, Beware!” wrote Dickens in his “mems” for Bleak House, issuing a warning, as it were, for characters in the novel and, perhaps, a reminder for himself. Secrecy is, of course, a writer’s prerogative: the impact of revelation depends on the degree of mystification the writer can contrive and sustain until the moment he or she chooses to lift the veil. Secrecy in Bleak House, however, tends to be destructive. The sinister solicitor Tulkinghorn, for one, whose “‘calling is the acquisition of secrets, and the holding possession of such power as they give him’ ” (p. 485) over those he seemingly serves, drives Lady Dedlock to death with this power. Dickens, in marked contrast, gives up some of the novelist’s capability for captivation in Bleak House. This is not to say that he shows his hand overtly or explicitly or at once. Although he did not exploit the potential for arousing anxious anticipation that is built into the serial mode of publication—the concluding chapters of the monthly numbers are not cliff-hangers—he did carefully calibrate how much to reveal and withhold: “Carry on suspense” (no. 18) is also among his “mems.”

Nonetheless, in a novel that everywhere emphasizes the “groping and floundering condition” (p. 18) of England, the drive toward clarification is pronounced, and, toward this end, Dickens adopted a “curious manner” of writing that is at once “ ‘very plain’ ” and “backward” (p. 70). Consistent with Chancery, which is so plainly backward in withholding the judgments it is supposed to dispense, such a mode of indirect signification is allegorical in the strict sense of “speaking otherwise.” That is what occurs when the third-person narrator translates Jo’s assertion that he “ ’don’t know nothink’ ” into the suggestion that “perhaps Jo does think, at odd times” (p. 222). Speaking otherwise, the narrator negates a negation, which may be the only way to produce an affirmation where the “ ‘mere truth’ ” (p. 659) is consistently twisted into a false “ ’Terewth’ (p. 348). While the third-person narrator can do the work of emendation for us, Bleak House equally requires it of us. Thus, when Esther visits the court and reports that it ”was so curious and self-contradictory, ... that it was at first incredible, and I could not comprehend it“ (p.