This article seeks to uncover the basic structure of Charles Dickens's novel 'Bleak House' in the essential pattern of the English sentence - subject, copula, predicate - and in one specific type of sentence, the metaphor. All the central figures in the novel are attempting to complete certain life-patterns (predication) and are involved in moving or being moved about from one context to another, on the basis of some observed similarity. These moves are geographical, social, psychological, economic, and moral. When these transfers are incomplete or frustrated, Dickens appears to be expressing his own pessimism about life, but the positive message of the novel - the possibility of human transformation - can be linked to the successful moves that the central character is able to make in the course of her life. (James Roy King)