Jarndyce and Jarndyce

Jarndyce and Jarndyce (or Jarndyce v Jarndyce) is a court case from Bleak House by Charles Dickens, progressing in the English Court of Chancery. The case is a central plot device in the novel, and has become a byword for seemingly interminable legal proceedings.

Dickens refers to the case as "Jarndyce and Jarndyce", the way it would be spoken of. The v in the case title is an abbreviation of the Latin , but is normally pronounced "and" for civil cases in England and Wales.

Jarndyce v Jarndyce concerns the fate of a large inheritance. The case has dragged on for many generations before the action of the novel, so that, when it is resolved late in the narrative, legal costs have devoured the whole estate. Dickens used it to attack the chancery court system as being near totally worthless, as any "honourable man among its [Chancery's] practitioners" says, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!"

All of the main characters are connected in some way through the case, though the legal proceedings appear only as background plot. Aside from the lawyers who sue and defend the case, every character who directly associates with it suffers some tragic fate. Miss Flite has long since lost her mind when the narrative begins. Richard Carstone dies trying to win the inheritance for himself after spending much of his life so distracted by the notion of it that he cannot commit to any other pursuit. John Jarndyce, by contrast, finds the whole process tiresome and tries to have as little to do with it as he possibly can, one of many examples of the character's wise and self-effacing demeanour.

Dickens introduces the case in the in terms which make the futility of the matter clear:

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, over the course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out.

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