SOURCE: “Dickens, Defoe, the Devil and the Dedlocks: The ‘Faust Motif’ in Bleak House,” in Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 10, 1982, pp. 23-44.

In the following essay, Georgas claims that Mr. Tulkinghorn in Charles Dickens's novel Bleak House is a devil figure and the symbolic embodiment of absolute evil.

While Dickens' Bleak House is greatly admired, the character of Mr. Tulkinghorn has posed a serious problem for most readers. Studies of Bleak House have focused rather exclusively on Chancery and the law as the novel's symbolic center, and on the story of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as its significant plot. Such studies may regard Mr. Tulkinghorn as one of the more notably characterized lawyers in the novel, but since he is not related to Jarndyce and Jarndyce, he and his pursuit of Lady Dedlock are regarded as irrelevant to the main business of the novel. Moreover, his persecution of Lady Dedlock...