Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

Dickens' titular character wanders deserted alleyways and the prison grounds she calls home, to lead us into a tale of love and loss, fraud and mystery, and pride and devotion. 

Amy Dorrit, daughter of the self-absorbed 'Father' of the Marshalsea debtors' jail has spent her entire life caring for her father, William, and keeping him in blissful ignorance of the harsh reality his long imprisonment has inevitably thrust his family into. Her siblings Fanny and Tip are distant, and helpless in their selfishness. William on his high pedestal, is oblivious that her love is the only thing keeping him there. 

But despite this grim picture that Dickens paints, his protagonist is ever the optimist. Amy Dorrit is meek and quiet, but resilient. She sees her family go from scraping to make ends meet, to becoming masters of a massive fortune that they can barely believe. Through the eyes of the omniscient observer, Dickens makes the reader privy to the innermost impulses of her heart, which seems to have found an irreplaceable comfort in the misery of the Marshalsea. Her fortune takes her to great cities around the world, and yet she longs simply for a hard day's work in service of her loved ones. Learning to be a lady of the high society, she realises she is strangely out of place; burying unclaimed love for Arthur Clennam, and holding on to the vestiges of her past life that bound her to him.

As the story unfolds, however, it is evident that she is not the only one out of place. William Dorrit's vanity follows him out the gates of the Marshalsea, and into the castles he builds in the air 

    "Building on, building on, busily, busily, from morning to night. Falling asleep, and leaving great blocks of building material dangling in the air; waking again, to resume work and get them into their places."

and finally into the arms of Irony. The story is replete with secrets, blackmail, and the threads of its many persons tangling into a web as they ride through life's crests and troughs. 

But as compelling as the storyline is, there is a greater delight to be found in Dickens' play with words and his grip on the composition of beautiful writing, one of the beautiful aspects of which is his ability to name his characters and his settings in their image. It is easy to expect Mrs. General to be  severe and uncompromising, "a dignified and imposing appearance, taking the colour out of everything", as it is easy to expect Mr. Sparkler to be simple-minded and child-like. Not to mention the cruel patriarch at Bleeding Heart Yard lording over his tenants, threatening breakdowns and revolutions springing from the despair of the bourgeois. 

Dickens keeps the reader engrossed, if not on the edge of their seat. There are parallels, both stark and subtle, to be drawn between Little Dorrit and the brilliant Great Expectations, from life changing inheritances to doomed alliances to mysterious old women in secluded corners of a crumbling house. And like Great Expectations, in Little Dorrit, too, the threads slowly untangle. The pieces fall into place to give us a wonderful story, and the remembrance of life's simple pleasures. 

 

#dickens #classic