Honoria, Lady Dedlock

Honoria Lady Dedlock, née Barbary, is a fictional character in Charles Dickens' novel "Bleak House".

Lady Dedlock is the pivotal character of one the main story lines of the novel ("Bleak House" contains several major and minor plots woven together with great virtuosity).

Character

Lady Dedlock is introduced as a stereotypically haughty, aloof woman, but her character develops significantly as the story progresses. The gradual uncovering of her background is the thread from which much of the narrative hangs, and as we learn about her past she is shown once to have had a very different temperament. The unfolding tragedy of her life reveals a more sympathetic core within the frosty shell.

Nevertheless, she so over-values honour and discretion (at least, by present standards) that we may consider that in some part she brings about her own demise. Although she fulfills many of the requirements of a tragic heroine in a mid-Victorian melodrama, at the end it is hard to either unreservedly pity, or wholly condemn, her.

ynopsis

In her youth Honoria was engaged to an army Captain, James Hawdon, and had an illegitimate child by him. Honoria believed the child was stillborn, and in her grief she abandoned Hawdon and eventually married Sir Leicester Dedlock. Years later she recognises Hawdon's handwriting in a law document and asks their lawyer Tulkinghorn to find whoever copied it. Tulkinghorn traces the copying to a destitute clerk living near the Inns of Court who goes by the name of Nemo, but by the time Tulkinghorn reaches Nemo's lodgings he is dead, by an overdose of opium.

Lady Dedlock goes incognito to London to find out more about the dead copyist from Jo the crossing sweeper, but is recognised as she follows Jo about the back streets of London. This prompts the law-clerk Guppy to look into Nemo's background, and he learns that the man's real name is Hawdon, and that he had kept some letters. When Guppy sees the letters he guesses the secret of Lady Dedlock's involvement with Hawdon. Guppy attempts to blackmail her with the letters, but when Krook the lodging keeper dies before he can give Guppy the letters, he has to retract.

Two new wards of court in the Jarndyce case have come to live at Bleak House, one of whom has a companion by the name of Esther Summerson. Tulkinghorn notes Lady Dedlock's interest in Esther, and traces her true identity; Esther is Honoria's illegitimate daughter, saved and brought up by Honoria's sister. Tulkinghorn reveals that her daughter is still alive, but requires her to take no action in order to preserve the honour of his client Sir Leicester.

Honoria hears that Esther has contracted smallpox and is on the verge of death, only to later find that she survived. They meet at Chesney Wold, the Dedlock country home, where she tells Esther the truth, that she is her mother, and Nemo, Captain Hawdon, was her father. Then Honoria forbids Esther to see her again, knowing that if Sir Leicester finds out it will destroy him.

Tulkinghorn had told Lady Dedlock that if she leaves Chesney Wold, or dismisses her maid (who was complicit in her secret investigations), then he will take action to protect the honour of the Dedlock family name. She does anyway, and he warns her that he will tell Sir Leicester the truth, but he is murdered before he can do so.

The money-lender Smallweed recovers the love letters that Guppy could not find. When Lady Dedlock learns this she believes she is disgraced and her life is over. She leaves Sir Leicester, and travels about the countryside to evade the pursuit of Inspector Bucket. Finally she returns to the pauper's graveyard where Hawdon is buried, where she is found by Esther, dying at the gates.

Dramatisations

In the 1985 BBC adaptation of "Bleak House" Lady Dedlock was played by Diana Rigg, and in the 2005 adaptation by Gillian Anderson.