The spontaneous combustion of Krook, the counterpart of the Lord Chancellor,
indicates that this society must be fundamentally altered or it will explode of
its own internal corruption. Jo, the crossing sweep, has neither the energy nor
the tools to sweep away the mud and slime into which the slum of Tom-all-Alone's
is crumbling. And Tom-all-Alone's is infecting all of London, just as surely as
Jo's smallpox infects the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson.
If this society is to be redeemed, Dickens insists, it will be through the
values represented by Esther Summerson. Jo's broom cannot sweep away the mud of
Tom-all-Alone's, but the clarity and warmth of Esther's sympathetic love may be
capable, if it becomes contagious, of illuminating this world and dissipating
the fog.
Esther and Allan Woodcourt, the physician who attends Jo at his death, marry,
and we believe that their family can contain, in miniature, the order and love
that must be transmitted to the larger society if it is to be saved. But Dickens
is not sure, at this point, if what Esther and Allan represent can withstand the
evils of London: they set up household in a country cottage, provided by the
benevolent John Jarndyce, Esther's guardian.
