The relationship between Bleak House and the Industrial Revolution is best summed up through one of the novel's settings, Tom-All-Alone's. Through his creation of this slum, Dickens demonstrates his great concern for the plight of the industrial working classes who lived in squalor and misery as a result of the social and economic changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. We, perhaps, see this most clearly in his description of this slum:
It is a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people...Now, these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear.
This quote evokes a strong image of decay in the reader's mind and satirises the contemporary view that the Industrial Revolution improved the lives of England's population. This idea is further reinforced when we contrast Tom-All-Alone's with some of the novel's other settings. The luxury and splendour of Chesney Wold, for example, and Bleak House, the warm and inviting home of John Jarndyce.
Dickens is, therefore, making a strong social statement about the Industrial Revolution through his descriptions of Tom-All-Alone's; namely, that people cannot ignore the plight of the industrial poor while the rest of society concerns itself with the creation and preservation of wealth and status.
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