| Little Dorrit | |
| Author: | Charles Dickens |
| Illustrator: | Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz) |
| Cover Artist: | Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz) |
| Country: | England |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Publisher: | Bradbury and Evans |
| Published: | Serial 1 December 1855 – 1 June 1857; Book 30 May 1857 |
| Media Type: | |
| Preceded By: | Hard Times |
| Followed By: | A Tale of Two Cities |
Little Dorrit is a novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. The story features Amy Dorrit, youngest child of her family, born and raised in the Marshalsea prison for debtors in London. Arthur Clennam encounters her after returning home from a 20-year absence, ready to begin his life anew.
The novel satirises some shortcomings of both government and society, including the institution of debtors' prisons, where debtors were imprisoned, unable to work and yet incarcerated until they had repaid their debts. The prison in this case is the Marshalsea, where Dickens's own father had been imprisoned. Dickens is also critical of the impotent bureaucracy of the British government, in this novel in the form of the fictional "Circumlocution Office". Dickens also satirises the stratification of society that results from the British class system.
In 1826 Marseille, murderer Rigaud narrates to his prison cellmate John Baptist Cavalletto how he had killed his wife, just prior to being taken to trial. Businessman Arthur Clennam is detained with other travelers in quarantine in Marseilles and becomes friends with the merchants Mr. and Mrs. Meagles, their daughter "Pet", and their maid, an orphan named Harriet Beadle whom the family has nicknamed Tattycoram. Arthur spent the last twenty years in China with his father, handling that part of the family business; his father died recently there. Arthur is now returning to London to see his mother, Mrs Clennam.
When Arthur's father was on his deathbed, he gave Arthur a watch to give to his mother with a message inside, murmuring "Your mother," which Arthur delivers to Mrs. Clennam. Inside the watch casing is an old silk paper with the initials DNF (do not forget) worked in beads. Arthur asks about the message, but Mrs. Clennam, who now uses a wheelchair, refuses to reveal what it means. Arthur says that he will not continue in the family business and will seek new opportunity on his own. Jeremiah Flintwinch then presses Mrs. Clennam on her failure to tell Arthur of the past.
In London, William Dorrit, imprisoned as a debtor, has been a resident of Marshalsea debtors' prison for over twenty years. He has three children: Edward (known as Tip), Fanny and Amy. The youngest daughter, Amy, was born in the prison and is affectionately known as Little Dorrit. Their mother died when Amy was eight years old. Tip has recently been imprisoned for his own gambling debts, and Fanny lives outside the prison with William's older brother Frederick. She works as a dancing girl in the music hall (where Frederick plays the clarinet) and has attracted the attention of the wealthy Edmund Sparkler. Little Dorrit, devoted to her father, supports them both through her sewing and is free to pass in and out of the prison. To maintain the honour of her father, who is embarrassed to acknowledge his financial position, Little Dorrit avoids mentioning her work outside the prison or his inability to leave. Mr Dorrit assumes the role of Father of the Marshalsea and is held in respect by its inhabitants, as if he had chosen to live there.
After Arthur tells his mother that he will not continue in the family business, Mrs. Clennam chooses her clerk Jeremiah Flintwinch as her partner. When Arthur learns that Mrs. Clennam employs Little Dorrit as a seamstress and shows her unusual kindness, he wonders whether the young girl might be connected with the watch's mystery. Arthur follows the girl to the Marshalsea. He tries in vain to enquire about William Dorrit's debt in the Circumlocution Office – assuming the role of benefactor towards Little Dorrit, her father, and her brother. Meanwhile, Rigaud, who has been released for lack of evidence, approaches Mrs. Clennam under the name Blandois and blackmails her and Flintwinch into giving him a place in her business.
While at the Circumlocution Office, Arthur meets successful inventor Daniel Doyce. Doyce wants a partner and man of business at his factory, and Arthur agrees to fill that role. Arthur encounters Cavalletto, who is injured by a carriage in London, and aids him in getting medical care. Cavalletto lives in hopes of never again seeing Blandois. Little Dorrit falls in love with Arthur, who fails to recognise her feelings. He is infatuated with Pet Meagles but is disappointed when she marries the cruel artist Henry Gowan. After Pet's wedding, the Meagles family suffers a blow when Tattycoram runs away to live with traveler Miss Wade.
Arthur becomes reacquainted with his former fiancée Flora Finching, the reason he was sent away to China. She is now a widow and takes care of the aunt of her late husband. Her father Mr Casby owns many rental properties, and his rent collector, Mr Pancks, takes the brunt of the dirty work of collecting Casby's inflated rents. Pancks discovers that William Dorrit is the lost heir to a fortune, enabling him to pay his way out of prison and altering the status of the entire family. Restored to wealth, Dorrit shuns all reminders of his past and forbids a heartbroken Little Dorrit from seeing Arthur again.
The now wealthy Dorrits decide that they should tour Europe as a newly respectable rich family. They travel over the Alps and take up residence for a time in Venice, and finally in Rome, displaying pride over their new-found wealth and position, hiding their past from new friends. Little Dorrit finds it difficult to adjust to their wealth and new social position, but only her uncle Frederick shares her feelings. Fanny and Tip adjust rapidly to the ways of society, as does Mr. Dorrit. But he fears that someone will discover the truth of his past spent in the Marshalsea. At a party In Rome, Mr Dorrit falls ill and later dies. His distraught brother Frederick dies that same night. Little Dorrit, left alone, returns to London to stay with newly married Fanny and her husband, Edmund Sparkler. Meanwhile, Blandois disappears, and Mrs Clennam is suspected of his murder.
The financial house of Merdle, Edmund Sparkler's stepfather, ends with Merdle's suicide. The collapse of his bank and investment businesses takes with it the savings of the Dorrits, the firm of Doyce and Clennam, Arthur Clennam, Pancks and thousands of others. Pancks feels guilt for persuading Clennam to invest with Merdle, who everyone considered the financial "man of the hour." Ashamed and unable to pay the business debts, Clennam is imprisoned in the Marshalsea, where he becomes ill. When Little Dorrit arrives in London, she nurses him back to health.
At Arthur's request, Cavalletto tracks down Blandois and brings him to Arthur at the Marshalsea. The truth of Mrs. Clennam's past is revealed by Blandois and confirmed by Jeremiah at the Clennam home one week after the meeting in the Marshalsea. Her marriage was arranged by her parents and Clennam's uncle, though uncle Gilbert knew his nephew had already married. Mrs. Clennam insisted on bringing up little Arthur and denying his biological mother, his father's first wife, the right to see him. Mrs. Clennam feels this is her right to punish others, under the guise of her religion. She was hurt and used her power to hurt others.
Arthur's biological mother died about the same time as Arthur went off to China. In her younger life, she joined a boarding house of artistic people in London. Later Mr. Clennam's wealthy uncle Gilbert, stung by remorse, left a bequest to Arthur's biological mother and to the youngest daughter of her patron. If the patron had no daughter, the youngest child of his brother would inherit. The patron was Frederick Dorrit, the musician who had taught and befriended Arthur's biological mother, and the beneficiary is his niece, Amy Dorrit.
After prodding Mrs. Clennam to tell the truth, which she refuses to do, Jeremiah gave the papers with this codicil to the uncle's will to his twin brother on the night that Arthur arrived home. He told Mrs. Clennam that he had burned the papers on the next day. Blandois took the papers after killing Jeremiah's brother and left a copy at the Marshalsea for Little Dorrit.
Although Mrs Clennam failed to tell Little Dorrit of her inheritance or give it to her, she hired her for seamstress work. She failed to tell Arthur about his biological mother, although Arthur had sensed that his father had some past burden on his mind as he died. Unwilling to yield to blackmail by Blandois and with some remorse, the rigid woman rises from her chair and totters out of her house to reveal the secrets to Little Dorrit at the Marshalsea. Mrs. Clennam begs her forgiveness, which the girl grants.
Returning home, Mrs. Clennam falls in the street, never to recover the use of her speech or limbs, as the house of Clennam collapses before her eyes, killing Blandois. Affery was outdoors seeking her mistress, and Jeremiah had escaped London with as much money as he could find. Rather than hurt Arthur, Little Dorrit chooses not to reveal the will that was meant to benefit her but will tell him about his parents after his mother dies.
Mr. Meagles seeks the original papers, stopping in France to ask Miss Wade. She has them but denies it. Tattycoram, who has suffered under Miss Wade's sadistic temperament, follows Meagles back to London and presents the papers to him. He gives them to Little Dorrit. When Arthur is well and they are about to marry, Little Dorrit asks him to burn the papers. Mr. Meagles then seeks out Arthur's business partner Daniel Doyce from abroad. Doyce returns a wealthy and successful man, who arranges to clear all debts for Arthur's release. Arthur is released from the prison with his fortunes revived, his position secure with Doyce, and his health restored. Arthur and Little Dorrit marry.
Little Dorrit contains numerous sub-plots. One concerns Arthur Clennam's friends, the kind-hearted Meagles family, who are upset when their daughter Pet marries the artist Henry Gowan, and when their servant and foster daughter Tattycoram is lured away from them by the sinister Miss Wade, an acquaintance of the criminal Rigaud. A jilted sweetheart of Gowan, Miss Wade is ruled by her anger.
Another subplot concerns the Italian man John Baptist Cavalletto, who was the cellmate of Rigaud in Marseilles when jailed for a minor crime. He makes his way to London, meets up by chance with Clennam – who stands security for him as he builds up his business in wood carving – and gains acceptance among the residents of Bleeding Heart Yard. Cavalletto repays this aid by searching for Blandois/Rigaud when Arthur wants him found. This action leads to the revelation of Mrs Clennam's secrets.
The other major subplot is the satire of British bureaucracy, characterized by the Circumlocution Office, where the expertise is how not to do it.
The character Little Dorrit (Amy) was inspired by Mary Ann Cooper (née Mitton), whom Dickens sometimes visited along with her family, and called by that name.[1] They lived in The Cedars, a house on Hatton Road west of London; its site is now under the east end of London Heathrow Airport.[2] This model for Little Dorrit, and the development of the plot, is contested by others.
Like much of Dickens's later fiction, this novel has seen many reversals of critical fortune. It has been shown to be a critique of HM Treasury and the blunders that led to the loss of life of 360 British soldiers at the Battle of Balaclava.[3] Imprisonment – both literal and figurative – is a major theme of the novel, with Clennam and the Meagles quarantined in Marseilles, Rigaud jailed for murder, Mrs Clennam confined to her house, the Dorrits imprisoned in the Marshalsea, and most of the characters trapped within the rigidly defined English social class structure of the time.
Tchaikovsky, a voracious reader and theatre-goer when he was not composing, was entranced by the book.[4]
Franz Kafka, a great admirer of Dickens, sent a copy to Felice Bauer. " Yesterday I sent you Little Dorrit. You know it well. How could we forget Dickens. It's probably not a good read in its entirety with the children, but parts of it will certainly give you and them great pleasure."[5]
The American critic Anne Stevenson speaks of Little Dorrit as "a wonderful read – a tragical-comical-satirical-poetical mystery story that turns out to be an allegory of love." She praises the characterization of the "major characters" (Arthur Clennam, Mr Dorrit, Little Dorrit), but sees others as "a cast of puppets that the master showman can't help but tag with formulaic phrases … Each character's name is a guide to the entertainment to be expected: the energetic Mr Pancks invariably rakes his hair upright and steams about like a tugboat; Mr Sparkler rants about "damn fine women with no nonsense about them"; Mr Flintwinch, with his wry neck and crooked necktie, perpetually screws himself into sinister corners."[6]
Little Dorrit was published in 19 monthly instalments, each consisting of 32 pages with two illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne whose pen name was Phiz. Each instalment cost a shilling except for the last, a double issue which cost two shillings.
The novel was then issued as a book by Bradbury and Evans in 1857.
Little Dorrit has been adapted for the screen five times, the first three in 1913, 1920, and 1934. The 1934 German adaptation, Kleine Dorrit, starred Anny Ondra as Little Dorrit and Mathias Wieman as Arthur Clennam. It was directed by Karel Lamač.[7] The fourth adaptation, in 1987, was a UK feature film of the same title as the novel, directed by Christine Edzard and starring Alec Guinness as William Dorrit and Derek Jacobi as Arthur Clennam, supported by a cast of over 300 British actors.
The fifth adaptation was a TV series co-produced by the BBC and WGBH Boston, written by Andrew Davies and featuring Claire Foy (as Little Dorrit), Andy Serkis (as Rigaud/Blandois), Matthew Macfadyen (as Arthur Clennam), Tom Courtenay (as William Dorrit), Judy Parfitt (as Mrs Clennam), and Alun Armstrong (as Jeremiah/Ephraim Flintwinch). The series aired between October and December 2008 in the UK, in the USA on PBS's Masterpiece in April 2009, and in Australia, on ABC1 TV, in June and July 2010.
In 2001 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio adaptation of five hour-long episodes, starring Sir Ian McKellen as the narrator.[8]
Little Dorrit forms the backdrop to Peter Ackroyd's debut novel, The Great Fire of London (1982).
Dickens's story provided inspiration for the web comic The Adventures of Dorrit Little by artist Monica McKelvey Johnson.[9]
Online editions