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Mademoiselle Hortense
Jenny is a very poor woman, the wife of a brickmaker, and a friend of Liz’s. Esther Summerson and Ada Clare meet Jenny when they visit the brickmaker’s house with Mrs. Pardiggle and find her grief stricken over the death of her baby. Jenny is touched by Esther’s kindness during this time and repays her by helping Lady Dedlock, who she knows is Esther’s mother, when Lady Dedlock’s secret is revealed and she flees her home and the scandal that pursues her. Jenny’s husband mistreats her terribly, as he often drinks too much and beats her. Dickens uses Jenny and the poverty she lives in to illustrate the squalid living conditions among the poor in London.
Jenny Quotes in Bleak House
The Bleak House quotes below are all either spoken by Jenny or refer to Jenny. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 8
Quotes
‘I’ll save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? Yes, she is a-washin. Look at the water. Smell it! That’s wot we drinks. How do you like it, and what do you think of gin, instead! An’t my place dirty? Yes, it is dirty—it’s nat’rally dirty, and it’s nat’rally onwholesome; and we’ve had five dirty and onwholesome children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for them, and for us besides. Have I read the little book wot you left? No, I an’t read the little book wot you left. There an’t nobody here as knows how to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn’t be suitable to me. It’s a book fit for a babby, and I’m not a babby.’
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Mrs. Pardiggle, who had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible composure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his antagonism, pulled out a good book, as if it were a constable’s staff, and took the whole family into custody. I mean into religious custody, of course; but she really did it, as if she were an inexorable moral Policeman carrying them all off to a station-house.
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Get the entire Bleak House LitChart as a printable PDF.
Jenny Quotes in Bleak House
The Bleak House quotes below are all either spoken by Jenny or refer to Jenny. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 8
Quotes
‘I’ll save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? Yes, she is a-washin. Look at the water. Smell it! That’s wot we drinks. How do you like it, and what do you think of gin, instead! An’t my place dirty? Yes, it is dirty—it’s nat’rally dirty, and it’s nat’rally onwholesome; and we’ve had five dirty and onwholesome children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for them, and for us besides. Have I read the little book wot you left? No, I an’t read the little book wot you left. There an’t nobody here as knows how to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn’t be suitable to me. It’s a book fit for a babby, and I’m not a babby.’
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Mrs. Pardiggle, who had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible composure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his antagonism, pulled out a good book, as if it were a constable’s staff, and took the whole family into custody. I mean into religious custody, of course; but she really did it, as if she were an inexorable moral Policeman carrying them all off to a station-house.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
