I have never read this rather forbidding novel…but I have a question about it:
I understand that in the novel, refernce is made to a long-standing lawsuit (Jarndyce vs Jarndyce). What was this lawsuit all about? Supposedly, it went on long after the original parties had died, and past the time when anybody remembered what it was about.
So what was the case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce all about?
Something to do with the settlement of a will. Supposedly, the ironic point was that the endless suit used all the monies in the will, anyway, and in the end there was nothing left to be distributed so the suit was abandoned. Dickens was kinda vague, as I recall, on the specific legal issues being argued, which makes a lot of sense artistically.