How Bleak House drew on The Pilgrim's Progress
A documented line of influence: Charles Dickens demonstrably engaged John Bunyan’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan · 1678
EnlightenmentThe influenced
Bleak House
Charles Dickens · 1853
The Age of the NovelRelevance
5/10
On Bleak House’s page
- The title of Esther's opening chapter, "A Progress," is Dickens tipping his hand toward Bunyan
- Dickens carried Bunyan all his life — he'd already saluted him in Oliver Twist's subtitle — and Esther's arc runs as a pilgrim's passage through successive symbolic bleak houses
- Reading Bunyan first reveals the older bones under the novel: a soul making moral progress through a fallen world
On The Pilgrim's Progress’s page
- Bunyan was a lifelong presence for Dickens — Oliver Twist's subtitle "The Parish Boy's Progress" is a direct nod, and surveys put Dickens among the writers most shaped by him
- That debt resurfaces in Bleak House: Esther's first chapter is simply titled "A Progress"
- Her arc is a quiet moral pilgrimage, a passage through one symbolic bleak house after another — Christian's journey relocated to Victorian England