Bleak House

Bleak House

by

Charles Dickens

Sir Leicester Dedlock Character Analysis

Sir Leicester Dedlock, Lady Dedlock’s husband, is an aristocrat and the descendant of the noble Dedlock line, who have been extremely powerful and important in England for many generations. Although Sir Leicester is very conservative, and dislikes social change and the increased social mobility of the 19th century, he married a woman who is not of noble birth. Sir Leicester is heavily involved in politics and does not believe that the British establishment and political system are in need of reform—a perspective which would be considered old-fashioned and outdated by Dickens’ middle-class audience. Sir Leicester believes that social reform will lead to social degeneration, and he generally dislikes mixing among the classes and disapproves of social mobility. He is a symbol of the old upper classes, as opposed to the industrialists of the period, who grew wealthy through trade and manufacturing rather than family connections, and is a relic of a time which, Dickens suggests, is nearly over in Britain. Sir Leicester Dedlock is extremely proud of his social position and his family history. His weakness is his love for Lady Dedlock, which he pursues even though she is from a poor background. Despite his social intolerance, Sir Leicester is an honest and well-meaning man. He is extremely gallant and attentive towards his wife and, on a personal level, takes people on an individual basis rather than judging them based on class. Even when Sir Leicester discovers Lady Dedlock’s secret, he forgives her immediately and intends to take her back, despite the revelation that she has an illegitimate child (Esther). He is physically and mentally destroyed by the loss of his wife and the trappings of his wealth and lineage become relatively meaningless in comparison with her memory. Like many aristocrats of this period, Sir Leicester prefers to patronize individuals rather than participate in philanthropy or give money to people who he has no personal connection with.

Sir Leicester Dedlock Quotes in Bleak House

The Bleak House quotes below are all either spoken by Sir Leicester Dedlock or refer to Sir Leicester Dedlock. 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 2 Quotes

Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get on without hills, but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on the whole admit Nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when not enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its execution on your great county families.

Related Characters: Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

A whisper still goes about, that she had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that perhaps he had enough, and could dispense with any more. But she had beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to these, soon floated her upward; and for years, now, my Lady Dedlock has been at the center of the fashionable intelligence.

Related Characters: Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

‘Submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. You are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born, like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart.’

Related Characters: Miss Barbary / Esther’s Godmother (speaker), Esther Summerson, Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Captain Hawdon / Nemo
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

What connection can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabouts of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard step? What connection can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together! Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any link there be. He sums up his mental condition, when asked a question, by replying that he ‘don’t know nothink.’

Related Characters: Jo (speaker), Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

Service, however (with a few limited reservations; genteel but not profitable), they may not do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So they visit their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live but shabbily when they can’t, and find—the women no husbands, and the men no wives—and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts that are never of their own making, and so go through high life. The rich family sum has been divided by so many figures, and they are the something over that nobody knows what to do with.

Related Characters: Sir Leicester Dedlock, Volumnia Dedlock, Bob Stables
Page Number: 335
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36 Quotes

Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off again.
‘I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonoring creature that I am!’

Related Characters: Esther Summerson (speaker), Lady Dedlock (speaker), Sir Leicester Dedlock, Captain Hawdon / Nemo
Page Number: 436
Explanation and Analysis:

‘I dread one person very much.’
‘An enemy?’
‘Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir Leicester Dedlock’s lawyer; mechanically faithful without attachment, and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being master of the mysteries of great houses.’

Related Characters: Esther Summerson (speaker), Lady Dedlock (speaker), Sir Leicester Dedlock, Mr. Tulkinghorn, Captain Hawdon / Nemo
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 437
Explanation and Analysis:

‘I am resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie it, if I can. It has closed around me, almost as awfully as if these woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house; but my course through it is the same. I have but one: I can have but one.’

Related Characters: Lady Dedlock (speaker), Esther Summerson, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Captain Hawdon / Nemo
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 437-438
Explanation and Analysis:

The way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps from being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags. Stopping to look at nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I was passing quickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the lighted window, when my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind that there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the Ghost’s Walk; that it was I, who was to bring calamity upon the stately house; and that my warning feet were haunting it even then.

Related Characters: Esther Summerson (speaker), Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 440
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 54 Quotes

Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold, the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces sneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with something like distinctness even yet, and to which alone he addresses his tearing of his white hair, and his extended arms.

Related Characters: Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Mr. Tulkinghorn, Mr. Bucket, Mademoiselle Hortense
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 629-630
Explanation and Analysis:
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Sir Leicester Dedlock Quotes in Bleak House

The Bleak House quotes below are all either spoken by Sir Leicester Dedlock or refer to Sir Leicester Dedlock. 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 2 Quotes

Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get on without hills, but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on the whole admit Nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when not enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its execution on your great county families.

Related Characters: Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

A whisper still goes about, that she had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that perhaps he had enough, and could dispense with any more. But she had beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to these, soon floated her upward; and for years, now, my Lady Dedlock has been at the center of the fashionable intelligence.

Related Characters: Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

‘Submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. You are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born, like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart.’

Related Characters: Miss Barbary / Esther’s Godmother (speaker), Esther Summerson, Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Captain Hawdon / Nemo
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

What connection can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabouts of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard step? What connection can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together! Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any link there be. He sums up his mental condition, when asked a question, by replying that he ‘don’t know nothink.’

Related Characters: Jo (speaker), Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

Service, however (with a few limited reservations; genteel but not profitable), they may not do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So they visit their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live but shabbily when they can’t, and find—the women no husbands, and the men no wives—and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts that are never of their own making, and so go through high life. The rich family sum has been divided by so many figures, and they are the something over that nobody knows what to do with.

Related Characters: Sir Leicester Dedlock, Volumnia Dedlock, Bob Stables
Page Number: 335
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36 Quotes

Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off again.
‘I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonoring creature that I am!’

Related Characters: Esther Summerson (speaker), Lady Dedlock (speaker), Sir Leicester Dedlock, Captain Hawdon / Nemo
Page Number: 436
Explanation and Analysis:

‘I dread one person very much.’
‘An enemy?’
‘Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir Leicester Dedlock’s lawyer; mechanically faithful without attachment, and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being master of the mysteries of great houses.’

Related Characters: Esther Summerson (speaker), Lady Dedlock (speaker), Sir Leicester Dedlock, Mr. Tulkinghorn, Captain Hawdon / Nemo
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 437
Explanation and Analysis:

‘I am resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie it, if I can. It has closed around me, almost as awfully as if these woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house; but my course through it is the same. I have but one: I can have but one.’

Related Characters: Lady Dedlock (speaker), Esther Summerson, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Captain Hawdon / Nemo
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 437-438
Explanation and Analysis:

The way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps from being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags. Stopping to look at nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I was passing quickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the lighted window, when my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind that there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the Ghost’s Walk; that it was I, who was to bring calamity upon the stately house; and that my warning feet were haunting it even then.

Related Characters: Esther Summerson (speaker), Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 440
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 54 Quotes

Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold, the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces sneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with something like distinctness even yet, and to which alone he addresses his tearing of his white hair, and his extended arms.

Related Characters: Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Mr. Tulkinghorn, Mr. Bucket, Mademoiselle Hortense
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 629-630
Explanation and Analysis: