Analysis of an extract of the Dickens' novel "In Chancery" 

In the present text I'm going to make a textual analysis of the text “In Chancery” by Charles Dickens. In order to carry out the task I will focus my attention on the structure, the title, the ideal reader, the overall effect, the characterization, the content and the narrative technique adopted.

To start with, the title is connected to an awkward situation so that the reader could think about the context in which the author writes. The extract belongs to the novel “bleak house”, written by Dickens during the Victorian Age, the reader also knows that Dickens writes to expose his social ideas and to make the world now the life conditions of his time. In fact, the Victorian Age is a period of contrasts, during which poverty spreads and children and women suffered for social injustices. So, the reader could think that saying “in chancery” the writer refers to that situations of injustices and social problems that characterized his time and his country. Actually, the text is entirely focused on London, which is also the first word of the extract, written in a key position and followed by a full stop. Adopting this strategy, the author manages to stick the word, and the concept, London in the reader's mind. Going on the analysis, the writer makes a detailed characterization of the city, which is signed by the industrialization and the weather. Observing the structure, the text is divided in five large sequences that underline one or more details that make London what London is. Firstly, the mud and the smoke of the chimneys. The mud I the result of natural processes: the November weather causes long rains that can't be absorbed by the earth, full of water. The mud makes London dirty. The reader could interpret this imagine like a metaphor: the mud covers the streets and stains the passengers foot. It could represent the social problems and the problems caused by industrialization present in London: London results covered by its negative aspects. An other interesting image is that of the passengers, who seems to represent the capitalists and workers who pass the streets of the city during the nineteenth century without caring about the mud, the contradictions. They are, willingly and not, hypnotized by the sound of the clocks and, as time passes, they do, without asking why. So, they are simply passengers of life. Following the structural analysis, the second sequence has at its center the fog. Fog, mixed with the smoke, covers the entire city and makes the city difficult to seeing in its details, so that it is seen globally but nobody can stop and watch what there is in the hidden parts of the space. The third detail is the gas of the looms that lights the city. It seems to have taken the place of the sun. On other time, the natural elements couldn't afford new human needs and artificial devices are considered by the industrialized city the only guide. Going on the text, the author makes a consideration about an “afternoon” that is raw. That specific moment is symbol of the entire day and life of the people who are living the context of Victorian age. Reality seems to be covered by mud, by fog and by smoke and people have no time to interest in it. But mud exists, fog exists, and smoke too. Finally, London becomes an icon of diseases by which it is governed. To conclude, the ideal reader of the text could be someone interested in environmental and social changes that, in the text, are specific of a city but that, according to what generally happens, are typical of all the country and globally of all the world.