ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century writers sought to expose the dark, disturbing secrets of their psycho-social worlds for readers who, it was felt, were too apt to avert their eyes. This desire was particularly strong among writers about England, the first nation to experience the Industrial Revolution on a major scale. Bucket's cold-hearted attitude toward the boyan attitude that arises from the careful sequestration of his better feelings from his professional deportmentis hard for most readers today to stomach. The source of Bucket's great strength as a detective is also the cause of his doubtful moral and emotional fitness. His staunch unwillingness to integrate the two halves of his life makes him a figure of suspicion among those, like the Bagnets, who witness his sudden shifts between the private and public with a sense of betrayal. Bucket's lapses, Bleak House stands as a limit-text on the capacity of the Victorian novel to tell its deepest criminal, social, and narrational secrets.
