Only when she has recovered does she learn the truth about Lady Dedlock.

Meanwhile, Esther contracts a disease from Jo.

Lady Dedlock discovers that Esther is her daughter, conceived with Captain Hawdon (the real name of Nemo) before she met Sir Leicester. Esther meets Lady Dedlock at church and then at Chesney Wold. Tulkinghorn, who suspects that she has a secret. Jo takes her to Nemo’s burial site, where she is observed by Mr. Lady Dedlock adopts a disguise to investigate Nemo. Richard does not settle on medicine as a career and continues to search, even as Jarndyce warns him not to wait for money from the outcome of the will dispute. During a brief interest in medicine, he meets a doctor named Woodcourt and introduces him to Esther. When Richard and Ada fall in love, Jarndyce insists that Richard find a profession before they marry. When she is roughly 20, Jarndyce summons her to his home, Bleak House, where he has also taken custody of Richard Carstone and Ada Clare, beneficiaries in the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. When Miss Barbary died, Esther was taken under the guardianship of a man named John Jarndyce, although she did not live with him instead, he sent her to school, and she became a teacher. She was raised by the austere Miss Barbary, who frequently insulted Esther’s dead mother. The only person who seems to know anything about him is a young street sweeper named Jo.Įsther Summerson retells the story of her childhood. Tulkinghorn, tracks down the signee as a recently deceased legal writer named Nemo.

Lady Dedlock is a beneficiary of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and during a meeting with a lawyer, she identifies the handwriting on one of the wills. Sir Leicester Dedlock and his wife, Honoria Dedlock, live at Chesney Wold. Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been dragging on for so long that few people can even remember the exact cause or details of the case, though a fortune is at stake.

The case concerns an inheritance about which there are competing wills and many possible beneficiaries. In London in the early 19th century, the court has been occupied by Jarndyce and Jarndyce for some time. The Court of Chancery is a special part of the British legal system that handles unique cases. Content Warning: The source material contains references to alcoholism, drug use, racist stereotypes, domestic abuse and violence, and suicide.

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