Little Dorrit is a novel of family loyalty. We follow the paths of three families, and rub shoulders with a few others as well. Our three primary households are the Dorrits, the Clennams, and the Meagles.Little Amy Dorrit is the child of the Marshalsea debtors prison. She was born there and lived there with her father and two siblings, Fanny and Edward, for her entire early life. Once grown, Fanny and Edward leave the prison, but Little Dorrit stays on to support her father. Amy is the perfect daughter and the perfect Dickensian woman. She is small but strong of body and spirit. She is extremely loyal to her father, seeking to please and provide for him in all matters, and unwilling to hear a word against him, even when that word is the truth. Her father is self-absorbed and proud. Although thirty years locked in, he still prizes his status as a gentleman and is greatly concerned with upholding the family honor. Fanny and Amy both work, but (ostensibly) hide this fact from their father, who would feel ashamed to have his lady-daughters hiring themselves out as common workers. Arthur Clennam has just returned from twenty years of company work in China. There, he served the family business alongside his father, who has just passed away. Arthur comes home to his mother, a physically crippled but hard-minded woman, who raised Arthur in a stern and loveless manner. Despite the cold childhood she gave him, Arthur tries to respond to her with a son's love, though she finds his love hard to stomach. Arthur gives her notice that he is leaving the family business. She doesn't take it kindly.Minny “Pet” Meagles is the only living daughter of the most loving of parents. Her twin sister died in childhood, and Pet has grown up, as her name indicates, petted in every way. While perhaps a little too innocent and privileged, she has turned out very sweet and kind and loving. She adores her parents, but takes her love-filled environment for granted. Having fallen in love with a man her parents dislike, she goes ahead with an undesirable marriage, assuming that married life will be a lovely as her family life has been. Living with the Meagles family is Harriet, called Tattycoram. She is a beautiful and fiery orphan girl, who holds the Meagles's kindness to her against them. She hates feeling condescended to, and hates even more the difference she perceives between the way Pet has been lovingly raised, and the way she feels she has been raised as a charity child. She, too, takes the Meagles's love for her for granted, and even holds it in contempt. In true Dickens fashion, the lives of these families intersect, secrets are revealed, and reversals of fortune turn the positions of Amy, Arthur, and Pet on their heads. Still, the three continue to deal with issues of family loyalty as circumstances change.Mister Dorrit, it is discovered, is actually heir to a huge fortune and property. In great pomp, he and his family exit the Marshalsea and embark on a grand European tour preparatory to returning to England and entering Society. Fanny and Edward slide smoothly into their new positions as wealthy socialites, but Amy struggles. Her father wishes to forget the Marshalsea and everything connected with it. He wants to remake Amy. But her whole life has been the Marshalsea and the people she's met in connection with it. Although the other Dorrits might be able to shut the door on their past, she, as the only family member whose whole life took place around the prison, finds this distressing and painful. Still, to please her father, she loyally tries her best to give up the people and remembrances she loves. Arthur's mother has gotten into some trouble with a businessman who isn't all he seems. This evil man has discovered a Clennam family secret and wants to blackmail her. Of course, proud and stern, she won't share her situation with Arthur—especially as the secret she's protecting has to do with him. He, dutifully filial, continues to visit and reach out to her, although she persistently rejects his loving gestures. During his visits, he encounters the villainous “man of business”, senses something amiss, and wants to protect his mother and help her out of her trouble. She denies him, saying he left the family business and the family home, and now has no right to participate in any decisions or workings-out connected to either. Meanwhile, Pet is married and away in Italy with her artist husband. Married life is not all she hoped it would be. But, in her good nature, she puts her happiest face on and loves her husband despite his flaws (he runs through all their money—which comes from Pet's family—disregards Pet's discomfort with a certain strange gentleman, and takes her for granted, loving her beauty and sweetness, but not caring for her as a husband should for his wife). She starts to miss home. Not just the place, but the people. When Pet becomes pregnant, her parents travel to visit her. Unfortunately, though she longs for her parents' love, her husband doesn't feel the same way. In fact, he dislikes keeping up a connection with the Meagless. Tattycoram, on the other hand, has made a very unfortunate connection in the spiteful Miss Wade. She has run away to live with Miss Wade in a fit of rage toward her protectors. But life with Miss Wade is dark and full of hate, and remembrances of life with the Meagles family appear in a new light. Both Miss Wade and Tattycoram are orphans, both struggle with receiving the kindness of others, but will both end up giving in to their hate? Or will Tattycoram decide that an adopted family is better than no family at all, and that loyalty to those who love you is better than loyalty to your idea of how life among others should be?In the end, some of our friends are freed from their loyalties, by death or distance; while others make a decision to strengthen their loyalties or form new ones. Either way, Dickens shows us that family loyalty is a strong and admirable virtue, but one that can cause great pain as well, especially when not equally shared by all members of the family.P.S. LOVED this novel. Probably my second favorite Dickens, after David Copperfield. Brilliant characters in here. I particularly loved the flighty ex-flame of Arthur, Flora. This excitable romantic, grown into a stout and ridiculous (but kind and loveable) middle-aged widow, speaks with only commas for punctuation and totally won me over with her devotion to Arthur and her deep-down selflessness. She was the perfect comic relief in a book that burrows through some of life's darker passages.
I really enjoyed reading 'Little Dorrit'! - in fact I have come away with a whole new appreciation for the writing and talent of Charles Dickens, with his talents for storytelling, plots, characters, satire and drama. While this story suffers in the way of plot in comparison to some of his other works, Dickens weaves his plots nonetheless like a master weaver, pulling threads here and there, colours from east and west, from London, Venice and Paris, the depressing cloisters of the Marshelsea, Bleeding Heart Yard and the ancient house of Clenham to the ridiculous airs, society and "how not to do it" religion of the Title Barnacles in the Circumluction Office and Mr. Merdle's great powerful circles. . . best of all about "Little Dorrit" I should say, must be the characters; they are so richly tapestrayed, with conflicts and emotions, hopes, dreams and ambitions - there is not one soul within the pages of the book who did not fascinate me and keep me captivated in their tales of woe, sufferings, joys and triumphs. Take the Father of the Marshalsea for instance - that is one character for whom Dickens got an amazing grasp of, and was able through him to write the physiological effects of imprisonment, reduced means in a gentlemen, poverty and riches and a man's selfish pride and caprice. . . how I loathed Mr. Dorrit one moment and pitied him the next! Fanny was an odd ball of spite, comedy, heart, and passionate obsession with society - her Mr. Sparkler made me laugh with his antics and pet phrase "she's a a deuced fine girl with no beggod nonsense about her!".Mr. Flintwhich who looks like his head has been half-hung in the noose, Mrs. Clenham who is such a formidable and three-dimensional character, . . . Flora Finching - that silly but kind-hearted thing! Mr. Panks who snorts something terrible but who endeared himself to me quickly, and of course the dear Meagles family. . .all the characters, including the dreadful antagonists Mr. Rigeud Blondis (ugh!!!) and the terrible and haunting Miss Wade were so thoroughly sketched into the reading of the story, I wanted to know the full stories of each. Then of course, there is Amy Dorrit, the child of the debtor's prison and heroine of the tale, was my favorite element to this rather depressing book - her, sweet gentleness, her love and servant-heart touched me deeply. how faithfully she loves those around her, while seeing their infirmaties. . . she is reminded of the compassion of The Healer of the sick, the Comforter of the suffering who understands our infirmaties as an example of love and joy, and that was beautiful. . . I also liked Arthur Clenham very much - his kindness to others, his generosity but also his sensitivity to others, and his faithful diligence to do what is right and aid his friends. . . I spent most of the book (and the film too!) feeling sorry for the two of them. I also greatly enjoyed the BBC TV adaption "miniseries" of 'Little Dorrit' directed by Andrew Davies, and loved how very accurate they were to theof style and events as well as characters in the book. . . my only main objection would be with the ending of that adaption vs. the book - it was too rushed, and drew all the threads tying them together in such a rushed, snappy fashion as to leave me in a "mess of confusion" as Affrey Flintwich would say - yes, there were a few elements that I appreciated in the changes, such as Arthur knowing the truth of Mrs. Clenham's secret, but on the whole the progressive development of plot in the book made more sense and I think I enjoyed it more. One other thing that I much preferred in the books over the TV adaption was Amy Dorrit's attitude towards Mr. Clenham at the last - she did not grieve him with her anger over helping her, nor was she as forward in showing her inclinations toward Arthur, leaving HIM the room to express them, and show that he did love her. otherwise, it is a great adaption with amazing casting and accuracy to the original book by Dickens! randomly, I remember that I forgot to mention the turnkeys of the Marshelsea. . . I liked Mr. Chivery a good deal, and Young John made me cry more than once- he such a dear, good young fellow!
What do You think about Little Dorrit (2004)?
I was reading a book of conversations with the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and in it he actually said that Dickens was a hack writer, and I think back in the 20's or 30's when these conversations took place that might've been the consensus opinion. But what malarkey! What balderdash! What unmitigated posh and drivel! Yes, his characters are more often than not cartoonish. Yes, he can ooze sentimentality from even his schnozz pores. Yes, saccharine notions of love and loyalty were the air he breathed. Yes, he romanticized gamins and waifs. But the writing itself is surcharged and so chock-a-block with detail and incident as to be visionary. As big as most of his late books are I still find virtually every word important and potent, and his natural vitality, nearly insane energy, often seems to be straining to break through his words, as when he adopts a strategy of repetition (see page 1 of Bleak House) and in a prosey way almost outdoes Poe's insanity of repetition in the poem The Bells.The book of dialogues with Whitehead is good though, I just got annoyed when he said that about Dickens.
—Eddie
Having not fallen fully under the sway of Dickens’s longest, Bleak House, we’re back to the savagely impressive corkers with this satirical and tender effort from the Immortal Blighty Scribe (IBS—unfortunate acronym). On a less grandiose scale than the preceding tome, Little Dorrit is much quieter, funnier, more powerfully affecting novel throughout than BH. In two parts, Poverty & Riches, the novel charts the progress of Amy Dorrit, (the token spirit of purity and goodness), and her family from Marshelsea debtors’ prison into a shaky life of infinite riches and never-ending Italian holidays. Central to the novel is her father William, who replaces his memories of destitution with violent hauteur, and whose mental collapse is rendered with masterful swings of wrenching drama. Clenham is the more complex, reticent hero, almost frustratingly dim in spots, but no less than impeccable on the moral scruples front. Apart from a sudden gallop into action-packed melodrama in the last 100pp or so, and a byzantine final-reveal sequence to out-Lost Lost, Little Dorrit goes straight atop the essential-Dickens pile, along with all the others. [And a final warning to Oxford World’s Classics: if you make your fonts any smaller, I will send in the midget assassins].Recent Andrew Davies BBC version on YT
—MJ Nicholls
Good god, was this a snoozer. I love Charles Dickens like nobody's business, but this book was about 600 pages longer than it needed to be. If he was getting paid by the page, I'm not hatin', but it seemed to drag on and on and on without really going anywhere. Little Dorrit herself is a really boring character because she is a meek little Mary Sue whose entire personality consists of being weak, submissive, and a pushover to everybody else. The plot is kind of vague and poorly defined and goes off into weird tangents at times. I finished the book with a few things left unanswered, and the ending felt kind of anticlimactic and rushed (sort of ironic given how the pace dragged the rest of the way).Where this book shines is in Dickens' wonderfully written secondary characters and his brilliant descriptions of an intentionally inept and horribly ineffective bureaucracy. His writing is witty and engaging, and he's quite good at writing memorable characters. I just feel like that wasn't enough to make this book memorable as a whole, though, especially when Dickens has so many fantastic novels. I'd recommend this book to fans of Dickens, but for everybody else, pass on this one!
—Mark
