A Sketch of Mr Guppy from 'Bleak House'

                        Transparent and Grotesque ? Or a Good Sort?

                           

            

 Illustration  'Guppy puzzling over the portrait of Lady Dedlock' Copyright Gerry Mooney 2023 and reproduced with the kind permission of the artist  / https://gerrymooneyillustratingdickens.com"; 

        

For those who haven't read Dickens's masterpiece 'Bleak House', it is hard to sum up Mr Guppy's role. A minor legal clerk who desperately aspires to be more than he is. A small fish desperately mimicking the big fish and coming unstuck.Dickens may have been thinking of an actual Mr Guppy from the case 'Stevens v Guppy' which reached the Chancery Court in 1824, when choosing the name SHATTO.   Yet in his own way, Mr Guppy plays a significant role. 

The legendary critic of Dickens's work A.E. Dyson, describes 'Guppy, who on balance, with whatever admixture of weakness or absurdity,strikes us more good than evil at heart' DYSON

Actor, Burn Gorman , who played Mr Guppy in the BBC adaptation of 'Bleak House' in 2005, advised 

          

I think Mr Guppy is a good soul but he's a rough diamond. If I could describe him as an animal he'd be a bit like a ferret. He's in everything. He's constantly watching and collecting information but, actually, in his heart, he's a good sort.

When Mr Guppy comes courting, Esther observes 

I scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. He had an entirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilac-kid gloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house flower in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little finger. Besides which, he quite scented the dining-room with bear's-grease, and other perfumery. Chapter nine

The reference to bear's grease is intriguing. The fat of bears (grease) was in fact used in Victorian times as a form of hair restorer and hair dye, though first emerged during the 1600's for this purposes. COWIE  The ironic references Esther makes to 'scented' and 'perfumes' suggests that this substance might have been very pungent. It's also worth remembering that the adulteration of products was quite an issue in the 19th century and Mr Guppy might well have been using dog fat. It's not a great surprise that Esther declines to be Mrs Guppy. 

Mr Guppy soon become quite creepy. Esther notices how he keeps appearing in the same theatre audience as she does, and observes

 I was certain to encounter his languishing eyes when I least expected it, and, from that time, to be quite sure that they were fixed upon me all the evening Chapter thirteen

One night Esther observes how Mr Guppy had followed her back to her lodgings and could be seen from the window under a street light. He doesn't become quite as pathological as Bradley Headstone in 'Our Mutual Friend' but Mr Guppy is trying his hand at stalking. 

'Bleak House' appeared via installments during the time of the early 1850's, when the Victorian ideal of Progress was being enhanced, the era of the Great Exhibition. The novel is a remarkable contrast, oddly haunting and retrospective looking. A major feature is how many characters are playing detective, trying to ferret out the secrets of others. To quote the critic J.Hillis Miller 

Their motive is the search for power. To find out the hidden place of another in the system is to be able to manipulate him, to dominate him, and of course to make money out of him. J.Hillis Miller

The destruction of Lady Dedlock, who becomes the target of such malpractice  is one of Dickens's most hard hitting indictments of Victorian morality.

 'Bleak House' is  a major attack on the Chancery Court system and lawyers in general. Mr Tulkinghorn-the most accomplished lawyer-  is sophisticated,cunning,and successful in following and using an acquired knowledge of an individual's past for his own selfish ends, though this results in his own death. There is of course Inspector Bucket who is a legitimate detective, who at least saves an innocent man from being wrongfully convicted for murder. Mr Guppy ends up as a poor imitator of Mr Tulkinghorn, whom he holds in high esteem, trying the same techniques and subterfuge but fails miserably. This is possibly Mr Guppy's perverse appeal - the reader can just sense that Mr Guppy is going nowhere and we will watch him squirm. 

Mr Guppy loses interests in Esther. The fact that her face is marked after she endures a particular vicious fever seems to have a lot to with it.  At the end of the novel Mr Guppy learns that Esther is a potential beneficiary of the latest will that has emerged in the never ending Jarndyce case that the Chancery court has been dealing with for so many years. Mr Guppy then offer his famous and quite hopeless proposal of marriage -that he conveys to Esther whilst addressing her guardian 

Now, sir, said Mr Guppy, I have got into that state of mind myself, that I wish for a reciprocity of magnanimous behaviour. I wish to prove to Miss Summerson that I can rise to a heighth, of which perhaps she hardly thought me capable. I find that the image which I did suppose had been eradicated from my art, is not eradicated. Its influence over me is still tremenjous; and yielding to it ...Chapter Sixty four

One factor is often overlooked about 'Bleak House' is that for all it's pessimism and its nine deaths -including a case of spontaneous combustion- there are characters who are endearing. It's not a completely savage satire by any means. And Esther ends her narrative happily married,but not to a lawyer. 

      

Books

'Dickens: Bleak House , -A Selection of Critical Essays' -edited by A.E. Dyson, Macmillan Education, 1969 - reference essay 'Bleak House; Esther Be Not Born' .

'The Companion to Bleak House' , Susan Shatto, Routledge, 1988

Weblinks 

Burnt Gormon on Mr Guppy

Dickens Info List   of 'Bleak House' characters 

Bear's Grease A Potted History  Helen Louise Cowie 

Other Bleak House posts from this Blog 

A Sketch of Mr Guppy A Scoundrel or a 'Good Sort' ? 

Can Chesney Wold be located?

Lady Dedlock v Tess Comparing Dickens's and Hardy's treatment of women who had children before marriage 

Other blogs by Michael Bully

A Burnt Ship   17th century War & Literature 

World War 2 Poetry  No longer active 

13th Century History No longer active 

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