Bleak House

Bleak House

by

Charles Dickens

Miss Flite is a poor, mad old lady who rents a room above Krook’s shop and who spends her day awaiting a judgement on her Chancery suit in the courthouse. Miss Flite immediately takes an interest in Richard Carstone and Ada Clare because they are wards in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. She also becomes friends with Esther Summerson, their companion, as well as Mr. Jarndyce, their guardian. She is very close to a poor man called Gridley, who also has a case in Chancery and who, like Miss Flite, spends his days in the court. Miss Flite has gone mad while she waits for her verdict and believes that she is a very important person in the court. She is a kindly and affectionate woman, and her friends tolerate her delusions and humor her when she tells them that she expects a judgement very soon—as with all Chancery cases, it is unlikely that hers will ever be satisfactorily resolved. Miss Flite explains to her friends that her father, brother, and sister all went mad and died while they oversaw the lawsuit. She inherited the case from them, and though she resolved to stay out of it, she felt helplessly drawn to the court and eventually started going there almost every day. She believes that Chancery exercises a sinister magic force over its victims. Miss Flite’s story also foreshadows Richard’s descent into madness as he waits for a verdict in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. However, Miss Flite is often quite lucid in her madness and recognizes that Chancery suits send people mad because they force them to put their lives on hold. She keeps a number of caged birds in her room, which represent the hopes, dreams, youth, and beauty of Chancery’s victims, which waste away while they wait for their cases to end. She plans to release the birds on “judgement day,” which refers both to the end of the case and to the biblical apocalypse.

Miss Flite Quotes in Bleak House

The Bleak House quotes below are all either spoken by Miss Flite or refer to Miss Flite. 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:
Social Mobility, Class, and Lineage Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

This is the Court of Chancery; which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire; which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse, and its dead in every churchyard; which has its ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress, borrowing and begging through the round of every man’s acquaintance; […] there is not an honorable man among its practitioners who would not give—who does not often give—the warning, ‘Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here!’

Related Characters: Richard Carstone, Miss Flite
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

‘We are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to our place of meeting yesterday, and—by the Great Seal, here’s the old lady again!’

Related Characters: Richard Carstone (speaker), Esther Summerson, Ada Clare, Miss Flite, Caddy Jellyby
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

A little way within the shop-door, lay heaps of old crackled parchment scrolls, and discolored and dog’s-eared law- papers […] One had only to fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.

Related Characters: Esther Summerson (speaker), Ada Clare, Richard Carstone, Krook, Miss Flite, Caddy Jellyby
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

She partly drew aside the curtain of the long low garret-window, and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there: some containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches—I should think at least twenty. ‘I began to keep the little creatures,’ she said, ‘with an object that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es! They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings, that, one by one, the whole collection has died over and over again.’

Related Characters: Esther Summerson (speaker), Miss Flite (speaker), Ada Clare, Richard Carstone, Caddy Jellyby
Related Symbols: Miss Flite’s Birds
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:
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Miss Flite Quotes in Bleak House

The Bleak House quotes below are all either spoken by Miss Flite or refer to Miss Flite. 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:
Social Mobility, Class, and Lineage Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

This is the Court of Chancery; which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire; which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse, and its dead in every churchyard; which has its ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress, borrowing and begging through the round of every man’s acquaintance; […] there is not an honorable man among its practitioners who would not give—who does not often give—the warning, ‘Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here!’

Related Characters: Richard Carstone, Miss Flite
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

‘We are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to our place of meeting yesterday, and—by the Great Seal, here’s the old lady again!’

Related Characters: Richard Carstone (speaker), Esther Summerson, Ada Clare, Miss Flite, Caddy Jellyby
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

A little way within the shop-door, lay heaps of old crackled parchment scrolls, and discolored and dog’s-eared law- papers […] One had only to fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.

Related Characters: Esther Summerson (speaker), Ada Clare, Richard Carstone, Krook, Miss Flite, Caddy Jellyby
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

She partly drew aside the curtain of the long low garret-window, and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there: some containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and goldfinches—I should think at least twenty. ‘I began to keep the little creatures,’ she said, ‘with an object that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es! They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings, that, one by one, the whole collection has died over and over again.’

Related Characters: Esther Summerson (speaker), Miss Flite (speaker), Ada Clare, Richard Carstone, Caddy Jellyby
Related Symbols: Miss Flite’s Birds
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis: