KYLE writes:

Bleak House, Charles Dickens’ epic serialized tale was published in book form in 1853 and the story featured a large cast of characters. In the fourth chapter, “Telescopic Philanthropy”, readers meet one of its most interesting figures, Mrs. Jellyby who in her London home is organizing a project in Africa she refers to as the “Boorioboola-Gha venture.” She envisions a missionary effort to resettle impoverished Britons among African natives. The Britons will support themselves by teaching Africans how to grow coffee beans. In her imagination this would solve the inequality between the races and elevate the living standards of everyone involved.

In the opening paragraphs, Mr. Kenge, a Chancery lawyer, provides the reader a character profile of Mrs. Jellyby:

“[Mrs. Jellyby] is  a  lady  of  very remarkable  strength  of  character  who  devotes  herself  entirely to the public. She has devoted herself to an extensive variety  of  public  subjects  at  various  times  and  is  at  present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the subject of Africa, with a view to the general cultivation of the coffee berry—AND the natives—and the happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population.” 

Dickens, C. (2018). Bleak House. [ebook] Planet eBook, p.56.

The narrator of the story, Esther, is riding in a horse carriage passing by the Jellyby home when she notices a child with his head caught between two iron railing bars on an upper-level balcony. After stopping the carriage to assist the child, she realizes that he is filthy, hot and scared — and his parents are nowhere to be found. After helping the child, she realizes that the mother, Mrs. Jellyby, is in the house, but entirely absent in her duties of caring for the children. Another scene describes one of her children falling down a flight of stairs, bumping his head on each step on the way down.

“Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which  we  could  not  help  showing  in  our  own  faces  as  the dear child’s head recorded its passage with a bump on every stair—Richard  afterwards  said  he  counted  seven,  besides one  for  the  landing—received  us  with  perfect  equanimity. She  was  a  pretty,  very  diminutive,  plump  woman  of  from forty  to  fifty,  with  handsome  eyes,  though  they  had  a  curious  habit  of  seeming  to  look  a  long  way  off.  As  if—I  am quoting Richard again—they could see nothing nearer than Africa!“

Dickens, C. (2018). Bleak House. [ebook] Planet eBook, p.60.

Mrs. Jellyby is the archetypal do-gooder, or in contemporary parlance, a “virtue signaler.” She’s forever on the lookout for the plight of those furthest from her, oblivious to the work that must be done inside her own household. Mrs. Jellyby’s family includes her tormented husband and her five children, most of whom are ignored except the eldest daughter, Caddy, whom Jellyby interacts with only because she conscripts her as a personal secretary to reply to all hand-written inquiries about the project.

With ink covered hands, Caddy replies to each letter in-lieu of her mother with a growing hatred for each mention of the word “Africa,” as it becomes a word synonymous with the “cause” her social justice warrior mother has chosen over her and her siblings. Caddy visits Esther’s room before going to bed and breaks down in tears of anger over the state of her family.

“It’s disgraceful,’ she said. ‘You know it is. The whole house is disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I’M disgraceful. Pa’s miserable, and  no wonder!  Priscilla  drinks—she’s  al-ways drinking. It’s a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn’t smell her today. It was as bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner; you know it was!”

Dickens, C. (2018). Bleak House. [ebook] Planet eBook, p.71.

The father, Mr. Jellyby, sits in the corner in dead silence as his insubordinate wife runs roughshod over him and the children with delusions of grandeur. The patriarchal figure is thoroughly emasculated and this state amplifies division between the eldest daughter and the mother, as well as imperiling the hygiene and health of the other children. How many fathers and elder men today sit indifferently while their feminist offspring become obsessed with political causes?

The events of this story run parallel to current events in Europe and the U.S., where middle-class Americans and Europeans are bullied into accepting and subsidizing an indefinite stream of refugees  from Africa and elsewhere who will vote in racial solidarity once set up in their new homes — regardless of what globalist axe-men like Jeb and Karl Rove say. People like Jellyby would find allies in the Mark Zuckerbergs and George Clooneys who themselves live in gated communities, far away from the consequences of their chaotic social programs and utopian rantings in the media.

Social justice causes aren’t limited to the ultra-rich, even though, as written in Charles Murray’s 2013 book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010”, most leaders of such causes live in “super zips” and interact far less with the middle and lower classes than they did five decades ago. Thanks to social media, the middle class can pledge loyalty to a multitude of escapist social justice causes as well. Many live in domestic chaos similar to that of the Jellyby family.

As Theodore Dalrymple wrote:

Dickens turns out to have been not so much a caricaturist, as he is often accused of having been, as a prophet. Mrs. Jellyby was but a single individual, but she was a forerunner of our own time, when mass concern for social justice and even the fate of the planet itself is combined, at least in British youth, with complete indifference to immediate surroundings.

In Bleak House, Dickens took a strong nationalist stance against the missionary excesses of the Victorian era. As the globalists who wish to erase borders and blend all colors continue their march for a worldly utopia, we should learn from the mistakes of do-gooders of the past such Mrs. Jellyby of Mr. Dickens’ masterpiece.

As for the ill-fated “Boorioboola-Gha venture” to which Mrs. Jellyby dedicated so much of her time and energy? The project meets its end in a brutal, but predictable manner when a local African chief and his tribe attacks the project base and sells all the volunteers into slavery, using the money to purchase rum. Mrs. Jellyby’s reaction to this awful news? She moves on to another cause–women’s suffrage.

“The aged women, in like manner, in holy attire, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teaching well: That they may teach the young women to be wise, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, sober, having a care of the house, gentle, obedient to their husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” – Titus 2: 3-5

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