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The Brickmaker
A wealthy woman, Mrs. Jellyby is the wife of Mr. Jellyby, and the mother of Caddy, Peepy, and the other Jellyby children. Mrs. Jellyby is a philanthropist and is obsessed with a project she has developed to build links to the coffee trade with a remote region in Africa. Mrs. Jellyby is so distracted by this project that she neglects her family and bankrupts her husband gathering money for this cause. Mrs. Jellyby’s house is in chaos and her children are dirty and uneducated. Mrs. Jellyby represents both the frantic efforts of middle-class Victorians to contribute to social causes (even at the expense of their own homes and regardless of whether these causes really help the poor) and Britain’s colonial efforts abroad, which Dickens felt were a waste of money and which squandered resources abroad that could be used to support the poor in Britain. Mrs. Jellyby’s fanatic philanthropy is almost a type of madness and prevents her from seeing the damage that she does to her family. She is totally disinterested in her daughter’s wedding and does not listen to anybody else when they talk. Her philanthropic efforts abroad ultimately fail, and Dickens uses Mrs. Jellyby to suggest the idea that charity should begin at home.
Mrs. Jellyby Quotes in Bleak House
The Bleak House quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Jellyby or refer to Mrs. Jellyby. 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 4
Quotes
She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman, of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if—I am quoting Richard again—they could see nothing nearer than Africa!
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Chapter 30
Quotes
One other singularity was, that nobody with a mission—except Mr Quale, whose mission, as I think I have formerly said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody’s mission—cared at all for anybody’s mission. Mrs Pardiggle being as clear that the only one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor, and applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss Wisk was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation of Woman from the thraldom of her Tyrant, Man. Mrs Jellyby, all the while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but Borrioboola-Gha.
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Mrs. Jellyby Quotes in Bleak House
The Bleak House quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Jellyby or refer to Mrs. Jellyby. 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 4
Quotes
She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman, of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if—I am quoting Richard again—they could see nothing nearer than Africa!
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30
Quotes
One other singularity was, that nobody with a mission—except Mr Quale, whose mission, as I think I have formerly said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody’s mission—cared at all for anybody’s mission. Mrs Pardiggle being as clear that the only one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor, and applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss Wisk was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation of Woman from the thraldom of her Tyrant, Man. Mrs Jellyby, all the while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but Borrioboola-Gha.
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