Bleak House is a long novel. This does not mean that Dickens style is wordy or that the book could be abridged without losing the effects that Dickens wanted to achieve. None of Dickens' contemporaries thought that the book was too long. In fact, short novels were unusual in the Victorian era (1837-1901). The tempo of life was slower then. Most men, whether in cities or on the farms, lived close to their work: There was no daily massive rush of commuters. Most women were in the home all day and, as a rule, had more than enough time to do what needed to be done; this fact in itself kept the pace of domestic life slower than anything familiar to us today. People seldom traveled and, if they did, rarely did they go very far.
By today's standards, life was quiet in Dickens' era. Railways existed, but cars, trucks, planes, radio, movies, and television didn't exist. Most shops and places of public entertainment closed early. No crackling neon signs put any "buzz" in the night. At night, one could read or play cards — provided one could afford to burn the oil or candles; it was cheaper and easier to be inactive from sundown to sunup. On Sundays, everything was closed but the church doors and the park gates. Far fewer people were tyrannized by the deadlines that today's technology has made the rule of the workplace.
As a result of this slower pace of life, Victorian people generally had what contemporary psychologists call a "low threshold" — meaning that in order to feel pleasantly stimulated, they didn't require loud, gaudy, psychedelic, fast-moving, or ever-changing stimuli. Young people had, as always, their problems, but one of them was not a tendency to "burn out" early. In Victorian England, patience and easygoing ways were far more common than nerves and distractedness.
What this meant for literature is that proportionately more people had more time for reading, and, at the same time, they were psychologically well prepared for the art of reading. Reading is a quiet, completely unsensational activity, and it demands a certain patience. Time and patience are what the past, including the Victorian days, is all about.
