How the ending of Little Dorrit surprised me

Okay, so Dickens really threw me a head-fake, as I completely guessed wrong about the ending to Little Dorrit; I thought for sure we were heading toward one of those happy but tinged w/ sadness conclusions, with Arthur Clennam dying in debtors' prison and the possibility of a new and more age-appropriate romance between Little (Amy) Dorrit and the man who has for years loved her, John (the prison turnkey). But no - Arthur recovers, LD remains by his side, at last they recognize that they are in love. As expected, Arthur's business partner, Doyce, returns w/ enough profits from his travels (I thought it was to America, but it seems he was traveling in Europe) to get Arthur out of prison and to keep their business in the black - and w/ that knowledge, Arthur and LD head off to the church to get married. Happy ending - though not for poor John - and a bit what's to make of the big, big secret that drove the Italian criminal - Rigaud? - to try to extort money from Arthur's mother? It was so incidental that I thought I missed something; went back and re-read, and even looked up some info about the characters on Wikipedia, and the whole thing is a revelation that Arthur a son from his father's first marriage. I don't see how that is so shameful or astonishing; he never loved the woman who raised him, so what does it matter who was his birth-mother? I still don't get it - but I guess this subplot is what Hitchcock would call the "McGuffin," a plot element w/ no real significance other than to keep the narrative moving. I can see, having finished reading LD, why Bleak House is the more popular of his late, long novels (and Great Expectations more popular than either); LD has some terrific comic pieces and character sketches and a searing takedown of the inefficiencies and cronyism in English government and of the corruption of the financial system - but it's a much more difficult novel to read, with a vast # of characters and some pretty obscure writing at times, and at the heart of it, the title character is so passive, so "good," so willing to sacrifice everything in her life, first for the feckless father and then for what looks to be a hopeless love that we don't really engage with her or care for her - she's too good to be true, or interesting. I also feel it's a shame that, toward the end, CD continued to take shots at the mentally ill Miss Wade and that he has Tattycorum crawling back to the "nice" Meagles family that treated her like dirt. Couldn't one woman at least stand up for herself in a righteous manner?

Totally confused by the twists of plot as we near the end of Little Dorrit

Well, Dickens does not make it easy to follow the narrative through to the conclusion of Little Dorrit. At least for me, it is extremely difficult to figure out what the characters are saying to one another in the big confrontation scene that moves, over three or four chapters I think, from the prison to the Clennam house, back to the prison, then back to the house, just in time to watch it crumble (of its own weight and decay?) into a pile of bricks, taking with it Mrs. Clennam and her business manager, Flintwatch. Dickens is not going for clarity here; if he were, the minor characters would be, by this point in the novel, more distinct and more distinguishable from one another (it doesn't help that he switches from using names to using various monikers, such as The Patriarch, which I assume is Mr. Dorrit?). OK, so what does happen? As best as I can discern, the evil Rigaud (he, too, has several names and aliases) tries to extort money from Mrs. Clennam; he has possession of a box w/ various documents that will reveal the secret of Arthur C's parentage. She refuses to pay, goes to the prison and tells all to Little Dorrit, who is standing watch over the dying Arthur Clennam; she doesn't care - nothing can faze her or diminish her love for Arthur. So what is the secret? I get that Arthur is not the son of the woman who raised him - but of what consequence is this? Is he actually Little Dorrit's brother or half-brother? If so, it's a good thing that they did not consummate their love, right? But I'm confused and befuddled by these chapters - w/ a few still to go, which maybe will help clarify things, at least in my foggy mind. Figuring all this out requires a more attentive and patient reading than I can give.Something wrong w/ me? With Dickens? Or maybe these details just don't matter - we get the gist of the story by following the life course of the 2 main characters, Clennam and Amy (Little) Dorrit. Just as these revelations and attempted extortion don't mean a damn to the intrepid LD, maybe they don't mean a damn to us, either.

Is she really Little Doormat?

It's appearing that I was right in yesterday's speculation: Much as the expected/traditional "happy ending" to Little Dorrit would have Arthur Clennom, who at last recognizes his love for Little Dorrit and who learns that she has been in love w/ him all these years, would have two of them joined in marriage - but Dickens, late in his career, does not go that route. We have near the end a powerful chapter in which LD shows up at the prison at night to visit Arthur, and she declares her love for him - and he responds, in effect, that he has always loved her and always will but now he's too old and broken to marry her. She offers to pay off his debts, which he refuses - I still suspect his business partner, Doyce, will come back from America w/ a load of $ so that Arthur can die in peace and in freedom, but it's more apparent that Dickens recognizes that the "old man" must be cleared out of the way - despite his noble and generous spirit (same kind of ending in Bleak House). The only issue, is: Who's good enough for LD? The only obvious candidate is John, the prison turnkey, but does it seem as if he can stand up against her poise and intelligence? And she has already told him, years back, that she could never love him. To us, he seems like about half her age, and marrying him would wed her to a life in the prison, albeit as a free person and employee. But she'll probably accept his love - Little Doormat, we might call her - and make at least John happy, if not the readers.

Trying to forecast the conclusion of Little Dorrit

Closer to the end of Little Dorrit (Dickens), I realize that I have no conscious memory of how this novel concludes - I first read it decades ago, and I saw the BBC adaptation on TV many years ago as well - so I will speculate here on how CD will bring this novel about. At this point there are two pathways: the protagonist, Arthur Clennam, now in the debtors' prison as he's lost all of his (and his business partner's) money in the financial debacle that the forger and thief Merdle caused, has begun to realize that all this time he has been in love w/ "Little" Dorrit (a Pygmalian, My Fair Lady romance?), and just as he realizes this the young man who has been madly in love w/ LD from the outset, John Chivery, the son of the prison turnkey (and now in that role himself) declares his hatred of Arthur, which A can neither understand nor fathom. John tells him that LD has always loved him, that is Arthur - hey, maybe it's a Gigi-type romance? So to all appearances at this point the two - Arthur and LD - are in love w/ each other, so the probable course for the narrative is to bring the two together, happy ending. But this is late Dickens and a really complicated novel, so I suspect he will follow the course of Bleak House, in which the old man - Arthur, in this case - reluctantly cedes his love to the younger generation, that he steps aside and that John Chivery marries Little Dorrit, in a happy ending with a Shakespearean touch of melancholy. But can Chivery really stand up to LD? Is he really the right guy to ensure her happiness? And what about the other unhappy marriage - Pet's marriage to the odious Gowan (sp?); and what about Tatty/Harriet - hasn't she earned a role in the conclusion as well? Should she marry Chivery, or is that a marriage "below" her? And what about the great wrong that Arthur's late father committed, presumably to the detriment of the Dorrit family, which Arthur has tried to rectify? One thing for certain: Arthur's business partner, Doyce, will return from American w/ a fortune, enough to lift Arthur from debt and to keep their business partnership in the black.

Thoughts nearing the end of Little Dorrit

Dickens surprised us in some ways near the end of Little Dorrit. It was obvious from the start this would be a "wheel of fortune " novel, in which the mighty fall and the downtrodden rise. And yes of course the wealthy though enigmatic banked/investor turns out to be a forger and crook - far more culpable than thousands held in the debtors' prison - tho he never gets there, unfortunately, as he offs himself before the collapse of his enterprise. Similarly, mr. Dorrit rises to great wealth and becomes as much of a snob and a sybarite as the other plutocrats of his era - but we don't see him return to prison; rather, he suffers a mental breakdown and a quick death as he believes he's still in the Marshalsea prison. We do expect, however, that his estate will be worthless, leaving his children w nothing. I was surprised to see Clennam imprisoned, however, one of the first victims of Merdles's criminal chicanery. An outstanding question is what to make of Miss Wade and her sponsorship of the former Tattycaron (Harriet). It may be that this whole mostly undeveloped subplot was to show a parallel injustice regarding daughters: both T and the eponymous Little are victims of a father who imagines himself to be doting and loving but who in fact is biased, selfish, and psychologically abusive. These also make an unusual parallel w the fatherless son, Clennam, and his cold and recriminative mother. I do suspect that Dockens started out w bigger plans for Miss Wade and then, though the novel got away from him in some manner, felt he had to return to her story (even to tell it is such a stilted and unrealistic form last a written confession)!as he'd introduced her in the first section - the price an author paid in a serialized novel - no chance to significantly revise.

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The death of Mr Dorrit

A little bit of a spoiler here but I was surprised that Dickens did away w Mr Dorrit before the final chapters of Little Dorrit. Dorris's demise begins on his return trip to London to straighten out his estate - it looks as if he was investing it all w that Madoff-like phony, Merdle - when he is paid a visit in his posh hotel by that sad innocent who works now as a "turnkey" at the Marshalsea prison. Dorrit is shocked and humiliated to be reminded of his past life and takes his wrath out on the young man. Returning to Europe to join Little Dorrit and that other phony, mrs Governor, he buys expensive engagement jewels to offer to mrs G. She rejects him - I'm not sure why or how final her off-putting was meant to be - but he goes into a deep swoon, highlighted or low lighted by an outburst at a dinner party in which he believes he is a prisoner once more. He declines to his death over the next few days, with daughter Amy/Little still by his side. We really get sick of her doormat personality by this point and wish and still hope that she might tell someone, anyone, off at some point. She is now a wealthy attractive single woman- though we still suspect that her wealth will disappear and we'll see who's still interested in her at that point - Clemson, or the prison turnkey perhaps? Good to see at this point in the move that we are also learning more about the much-abuses Tattycorum, now known as Harriet, and her protector - an early feminist it seems - Miss Wade. Unclear still how this episode fits into the overall scheme of this novel except as another example of the blindness of class prejudice and injustice within even "upright" families.

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Dickens & Madoff

Anyone who's lived through the era of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and especially the demise of Bernie Madoff will recognize the prescience of Dickens in his portraying the great Mr Merdle, in Little Dorrit - I man recognized as unfashionably wealthy not because of his intelligence, personality, or inheritance but just because everyone believes he's a genius of finance and that "you can't go wrong w Merdle." So by keeping up an active social schedule - managed by his wife, hilariously known as "The Bosom" - and maintaining a sphinx-like silence he attracts money and investors. Dickens does a great job showing the rise of this mania, a tidal wave in which investors across England are putting their money with Merdle, whatever that means I practical terms, so as to share in his wealth and benefit from his acumen - kind of like buying shares in Berkshire Hathaway except that M is no guru of investment. We can see where this is headed - tables turning and ruin for many - w the only questions being: will the Dorrit family return to debtors' prison! And will Merdle somehow walk away from the catastrophe he created?

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Dickens

A long chapter halfway through book 2 of Dickens's Little Dorrit describes an elaborate dinner at which Mr Merdle is host; M is entirely indifferent to all of the social niceties; he is widely celebrated and revered as among the wealthiest people in England , but of course nobody knows the source of his wealth and he doesn't seem to have much of an occupation other than being wealthy. As it turns out the sole purpose of this vast entertainment is to acquire M's blessing for a marriage that will unite his wealth to the political ruling family in England - the Barnacles. This chapter doesn't have the humor or panache of some of D's satirical riffs in book one - such as the description of the Circumlocution Department - but in its way it is far darker and more cynical- the rich get richer, the hard-working entrepreneurs get little, and the poor continue to live their lives in dire and hopeless poverty. Readers will notice how the narrative has entirely left behind the debtors' prison that was central to book one; now we're more focused on the drawing rooms of the wealthy and the stops on the European grand tour. Clearly D's sentiments are on the side of the oppressed poor , but unlike his two previous novels, bleak house and hard times, this novel does not have a specific antagonist. Dickens may have caught some grief for the polemics of HT and set out in LD to create more of a melodrama and a tale of love gone wrong with a background of political and social criticism - the antithesis of HT and the mirror image of BH.

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Family traits and other problems in Book 2 of Little Dorrit

Still trying to get my mind around the complexities of Dickens's Little Dorrit, as the cast of characters continues to grow well into the 2nd Book (1,000+ ibook pp.); he never tires of introducing new characters and playing with their quirks of language and personality, for ex., only this deep into the novel do we learn anything about the character of Mrs. Gowan, whose son has married Pet Meagles. She visits the Meagles family and manages to insult them all with her presuppositions that her son has married down. This visit -and her utter pretensions to wealth (she rides a hired coach, much like taking a cab or an uber today, but pretends that it's her own vehicle - equivalent to a chauffeured limo today). This episode leads up to presume that horrible people like the pretentious artist Gowan come from horrible parents - yet that isn't so, or not always, as we have throughout the counterexample of the protagonist, Arthur Clennam, himself - whose mother is a nasty matriarch. And what about Mr. and Mrs. Meagles, treated in a lightly comical manner, with their emphasis on being "practical" people, with Mr. M's obvious deference Mrs. M, and with the abundant love for favorite daughter, Pet? Well, how could they have accepted and encouraged her marriage to Gowan? And, more important, how could they be so rude and oblivious regarding their adopted daughter, Tattycorum (sp?), who rightly runs away from home? Deep into Book 2 and about 2/3 through the novel, Tatty's character begins to emerge - as we see her under the sway of the stern (but probably emancipated and a forerunner of contemporary feminism and women's rights?) Miss Wade and with some as yet unexplained connection to family that Arthur almost married into (the comically talkative widow whose name I can't remember - I'm just overwhelmed by the # of characters, sorry). In an odd and not quite believable stretch, Arthur follows her, unnoticed, through the streets of London and overhears much of her conversation w/ Miss Wade and with the Frenchman, Blondois?, who has hovered on the perimeter of this narrative - with some dark secret about at least one of the characters - since the first chapter.

Problems with Book 2 of Little Dorrit

Book 2 of Dickens's Little Dorrit introduces yet another major character - Mrs. General, hired by Mr. Dorrit as a tutor for his daughters, teaching hem etiquette and manners supposedly, but obviously a phony and a fraud and a source of comic relief at her expense - teaching the young women to say "prism" and "Pap" because pronouncing p-words makes their faces prettier (Dickens refers to her work as "varnishing") - but she's obviously after Mr. D's newfound riches. We'll see how long he can maintain his new life, attended by a dozen at least servants and traveling through Europe for no particular reason. The problem, however, with Book 2, based on the first several chapters, is the Little (Amy) Dorrit is so relentlessly good and such a doormat for her domineering sister, Fanny, that our interest in her inevitably wanes. And the social commentary, of course, in Book 2 is a dull blade: Whereas Book One focused to a degree on the mistreatment of debtors in particular and all prisoners in general, with some terrific satire on government corruption and obfuscation - The Circumlocution Department - the satire and commentary in Book 2 is just on the extravagant behavior of the nouveaux riches - a pretty easy target and of little direct concern to most readers then and now. That said, it's still Dickens and includes some fine passages, and though we all sense that Dorrit will squander his wealth and though we all know the LD will inevitably marry Arthur Clennam, we're still curious as to how these turns of event will come about.

The strange opening of Book 2 of Little Dorrit

Book 2 of Dickens's Little Dorrit (1855) opens, as did Book 1, in a remote (from London) setting, in this case at a mountain pass in what I think is the French Alps, at some kind of monastery that puts travelers up for the night; the travelers are at first not introduced to us, so the feeling is somewhat unsettling - who are these people (3 groups of travelers, as it happens)?, what's their connection to all that's gone before in this novel?, what brings them here, together? Again, that's much like the opening to Book 1, which introduces a # of characters who play no clear role in the novel until much later. Similarly, Dickens is no doubt the ultimate London chronicler, and LD is in every way a novel about London and its politics, class conflict, prison system, social castes - so why open both sections of then novel in France? But, of course, we know we're traveling with an experienced guide - the unsettling openings serve the purpose of heightening our attention and curiosity. By the end of the long first chapter in Book 2 Dickens discloses - we've figured most of this out already - the names of the 3 groups of travelers: A large contingent of Dorrits (including a new character, a woman who seems to be teh traveling companion of Mr D?); the sorrowful Gowans, with Pet now a year into her doomed marriage and her husband, the phony artist, as obnoxious and disagreeable as ever; and the Frenchman whom we met in Chapter 1 and who appeared briefly at the Clennam home where he seems to be intent on righting some grievous error or crime in the family past. The emotional heart of this chapter concerns a request from Arthur Clennam (the protagonist) to one of the Dorrits - Little (Amy)? - if she ever encounters Pet in her travels, to see if she is happy in her marriage ("If you're traveling in the North Country fair"); Pet assures the inquirer that she is, but that's obviously a cover-up. We expect the narrative to resolve itself soon on London and to give us more direct information as to how the sudden wealth and social stature as changed (and ruined?) the Dorrit family.

Thoughts about the end of Book One of Little Dorrit and what might happen in Book 2

A former colleague used to say his family believed that if all the world's income were distributed evenly it would take about two weeks before the rich would be rich again and the poor would be impoverished. Did Dickens think the same? In one of the weird and in fact impossible narrative twists, so weird and improbable that these twists are sometimes called "Dickensian," CD concludes Book 0ne (at the halfway mark) of Little Dorrit with father Dorrit suddently coming into a huge and unexpected legacy - enough to pay his debts and get him and his family out of the debtors' prison and to begin to live a life of luxury. It takes no time for him to get a beautiful house, liveried servants, a horse and equipage, etc., and to move off to his new life. To his credit, at least he makes a modest distribution to all of the debtors still in prison - though does nothing to really change their lives in any way (he's more interested in his farewell luncheon and in the praise heaped upon him). We suspect that he will be just as crude and stupid and self-centered w/ all his wealth as he was as an imprisoned debtor - completely w/out learning or sympathy from his experiences. I read the book many years ago and have no precise memory of the plot - but I also suspect, following the class-bias of my former colleague's family, that Dorrit will squander his wealth and wind up back where he started. The real question in the 2nd part of LD will be how this sudden wealth - much like a lottery winner's sudden wealth today - will alter Dorrit (if at all) and in particular will alter how people react and behavor toward him, and toward his family - particularly the eponymous Little (Amy) Dorrit. We know that she will never change, but how will she react to the attention soon to be paid to her? It's been obvious from page one that eventually the protagonist, Arthur Clennom, will recognize that he's in love with LD - but will he be too late? Will she be blindsided by a suitor who's really after her money? Will she be pressured by her evil father to marry for rank and wealth and not for love? There's a long way to go in this novel - it's possibly D's longest? - with many strands still loose at the halfway mark.

The heartbreak at th heart of Little Dorrit, and a sin to expiate

Two contrasting chapters nearing the mid-point in Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit (1855), as one chapter presents the sad news, to Arthur Clennom (the protagonist) that the woman, Pet (!), whom he is in love with - and whom he tries, comically, to convince himself that he does not love, as he imagines he wouldn't have a chance w/ her - comes to him and tells him she's in love w/ his odious rival: a match that Arthur knows will be horrible for Pet but also that all his hopes are dashed. He should have acted sooner, he should have been forthright, he should have for once taken a risk - and now he's like the singer of a million blues songs (e.g., You Don't Know Me),, a guy who deserved much better (and is likely to find true love, one imagines, somewhere over the next thousand pages). Another chapter harks back to the first chapter, when we meet a nasty guy on the verge of release from a French prison; now, on a typically Dickensian stormy night in London, the Frenchman shows up at the door of Arthur's mother's dingy house, talks his way into an audience w/ the nasty old woman, tries to ingratiate himself w/ her business agent, and hints that he's trying to rectify a great wrong done by the Clennom family, all mysterious to this point to readers - except that we know Arthur has a sense of a family sin that must be expiated, that he must discover and expiate - and we sense that somehow or other this sin and expiation must involve the eponymous Little (Amy) Dorrit, that a sense of guilty (or a need to keep LD close and dependent?) is what led Arthur's mother to take on LD as a seamstress.

A heroic moment in Little Dorrit, and in all of literature

As noted in previous post, a running theme in Dickens's Little Dorrit (1855) concerns characters oblivious to their own nature and their own faults or worse, the prime example being Mr. Dorrit himself, who continues to exploit his daughter (the eponymous Little, aka Amy), who has devoted every minute of her life to caring for the needs of her father and sacrificing her own comforts and potential happiness. In regard to Mr. D., Dickens adopts an unconventional narrative strategy and never says outright that he is a tyrant and a fool; rather, the narrator keeps saying what an honorable and respected man he is, while of course meaning and conveying the precise opposite. In a parallel section of this extreme complex narrative, we see the Meagles family, introduced to us in the mysterious 2nd chapter as they along w/ the protagonist (Arthur Clennom) and others are released from quarantine and continue on a journey from Asia home to England. Here, the narrator is more opaque; Mr. Meagles continues to describe himself and his wife as "practical," and in a sense that's true, from his POV. The strange thing about the M family is that they have 2 daughters: Pet (with whom Clennom has fallen in love, though he cannot admit this even to himself) and Tatticorum (not sure of spelling), whom I think is an adopted daughter and perhaps of mixed race (again not sure, would have to re-read earlier chapter). Meagles's self-delusion is that he treats the two daughters equally and that he has provided a loving and caring home for Tatty. But we see from the outset this she is full of repressed rage - Meagle's is always telling her to "count to 25" to soothe her outbursts. At last, about about 1/3 through this (long!) novel, Tatty refuses to bow down to her ignorant and selfish father; she leaves home, and, once tracked down (to the flat of Mrs. Wade, a mysterious woman who was also in the quarantine and who seems solitary and antisocial) she lets him have it - recounting the many ways in which Pet has been favored and Tatty abused. It's a heroic and political moment in this novel - in fact, in literature - as the oppressed one revolts and punctures the facade of courtliness and generosity that covers up class abuses across English society, then and maybe now. It's also a warning shot: will Little Dorrit ever speak up to her own abusive father?

The vast # of characters in Little Dorrit and what that signifies

Again, I have to note that I'm by no means a Dickens expert and some of these observations about Little Dorrit may be off the mark, but it does seem to me that this novel represents another - a final - step in Dickens's work, in particular regard the structure and the panoply of characters. Yes, of course, many of his early and mid-life novels involve multiple characters, but LD seems to be the first that introduces the characters, initially, as if they're unrelated; it's a challenge for readers (or listeners) to keep the cast of characters strait, and there are sometimes long gaps between the appearances of the characters - for ex., at about the 1/3 mark I'm reading a chapter about a young woman who, hilariously, talks nonstop, w/out commas, as the narrator notes (funny to draw our attention to the text - breaking the 4th wall so to speak) and I had no recollection of who she was or how she fit in (she was the woman whom the protagonist, Arthur Clennom, would have married had he not followed his father into business in China). Note in particular the first three chapters that introduce sets of characters who have yet to play any significant role in the narrative. Dickens is clearly pushing narrative to its limits - I have no idea whether he might have been able to read translations of Russian novels, but the great Russian novelists did so as well, albeit most of them in Dickens's wake) - and it would help to have a cast of characters at the front of the novel (maybe some editions do). The effect - and this is true throughout Dickens - is a peculiar double-vision: Seen in one way, the collection of initially unrelated characters show the complexity and vastness of the human populace; seen another way, the sudden interactions of these characters w/ one another - running into one another unexpectedly on various jaunts and rambles - suggest that London is like a village, where everyone knows everyone else and where you're likely to run into acquaintances every time you go out on the street.

Dickens's rhetorical device in narrating Little Dorrit

I'm by no means an expert on terms of rhetoric, but I think the term "antiphraxis" applies to much of Dickens's work; the term refers to the rhetorical technique of saying one thing to mean its exact opposite. The best-known example comes from Marc Antony's funeral oration in Julius Caesar: "But Brutus is an honorable man,/So are they all honorable men." Dickens's narrators, and especially so in Little Dorrit (1855) adopt a similar point of view toward the characters described, the best example being Dickens's depiction of Mr. Dorrit, Amy/Little D's father and the Father of the Marshalsea (the debtors' prison to which he has been confined for life. Repeatedly, Dickens notes how Dorrit is respected by all in the prison and that he is a wonderful and loving father to his youngest child, LD. But obviously as we read we see immediately that Mr. D is a pompous and irresponsible ass, that the many people whom he thinks love and respect him in the prison believe he's no more than a joke and humbug - and at worst an extortionist to whom they must pay (monetary) tribute, although I suspect that the money that the "forget" and leave behind whenever they visit D is left out of pity (he's far too weak and feckless to be a true prison leader). His behavior toward his daughter is despicable. He makes no effort to arrange for payment of debt and treats the prison as a kind of free public housing, and he has his daughter, whose entire life has been confined by the prison walls, work on the outside to bring in money and to devote her every free minute to tending to his most minute needs. The despicable behavior reaches its nadir when he encourages - without ever stating anything directly - LD to allow the son of the turnkey to "court" her, even though she has made it clear that she has no interest in him in particular and perhaps no interest in marrying anyone. But Mr D sees and opportunity in this liaison and is willfully oblivious of his daughter's feelings. But of course he's a wonderful and honest man, respected by all!

Dickens's treatment of the theme of young love

I am by no means an expert on the work of Dickens, in particular his early novels, but it seems to me that another breakthrough from Dickens in his late-career novel Little Dorrit (1855 - not the 1860s as I'd guessed in an earlier post) is his treatment and depiction of young men in love. I think, from my limited recollection, that there is relatively little about love and courtship in his earlier novels, until the expansive late novels when he depicts mature love relationships in the great Bleak House. LD followed BH by a few years - w/ Hard Times, a Dickens one-off, and his shortest and most polemical novel - and LD is I think the first serious (albeit at times comic) depiction of young love. At about the 25% point, we get a few parallel chapters about the uncertainties and the heartbreak of young courtship: a deftly handled scene in which the protagonist, Arthur Clennom, visits the Meagles home and is obviously swooning over the young daughter, Pet, when a rival shows up, a crude and self-centered man who seems confident that Pet is in love w/ him - and Dickens has some wry observations about how disturbed and upset Arthur would be "if he were in love w/ Pet." We see and feel the painful hesitation of a man who does not know how to express his feelings and speak for himself, possibly letting the potential love of his life slip away (into a terrible marriage). In a parallel chapter, D depicts the young son of the Marshalsea prison "turnkey" who is in love w/ the eponymous Little (aka Amy) Dorrit - and after an awkward conversation w/ her father he follows LD to a bridge where she stands and sadly contemplates the flow of the stream below her, and he asks permission to speak to her and she, in the most polite but firm words imaginable, tells him that he should leave her alone and forget about ever winning her affection; he walks off in deep, perhaps even suicidal, sorrow (he imagines the words that would be engraved on his tombstone). We get in these two chapters all of the pain and missed connections of youth and love - a new turn for Dickens I think, and a theme he would develop further a few years later in what's probably his finest novel, Great Expectations.

The maturation of Dickens's style in Little Dorrit

I may be wrong but it looks to me as if Charles Dickens is working toward a new (for him), introspective literary style in Little Dorrit; previous novel, Bleak House, went about as far as CD could go in social satire, with its comic and at times tragic vision of "Chancery," the interminable court proceedings and the impenetrable legal machinations that drives people to penury or insanity. In LD he takes the satire to another step, this time focusing on the abuse and corruption in the court system, with particular focus on the Circumlocution Department, whose function is to provide sinecures and to slow or derail every inquiry from the public. Though the office itself its CD's creation, the process still feels contemporary to many who seek information, let alone redress, from public officials and agency. Whereas in BH the characters' confrontation with Chancery leads to several long passages and set pieces on the abusive system, in LD the thoughts of those who get entangled in the issues of the debtors' prison are more personal and more revealing of character, in a way I think unique in CD's work up to this point. One fine set piece occurs (about 25% through the novel) when the protagonist, Arthur Clennum, reflects on why he was correct in declining to declare his love for "Pet" Meagles - he sees himself as unworthy of her, in fact unworthy of the love of any woman - an incredibly sad passage - and then, looking out on the river flowing by, he has what would later be recognized as a kind of epiphany, thinking about the eternal flow of the waters and finding that soothing, but in an unexpected way - the waters, he recognizes, are oblivious to pain. So as he looks out and thinks he indirectly conveys to us his pain and sorrow, which he could never express directly, and it's as close as he can come to an admission that he should have declared his love to Pet, and that his failure to do so at the right moment may have locked him into a sorrow and loss and self-denigration for the rest of his life. Of course we also suspect that he will find redemption and love, most likely with the title character, Little (i.e., Amy) Dorrit - whom at present he sees as too young and declasse for his love interest - but that may change.

Dickens

There's no doubt that Dickens's account of the Circumlocution Department, in Little Dorrit, is among the highlights not only of D's work but of al British social satire - a direct descendant of Swift and a forerunner of 20th-century dark comedy and social commentary. The idea of a government agency whose sole purpose is to never provide aid or information will ring true painfully for too many supplicants and journalists. The sense of nightmare futility obviously was developed further by Kafka and also anticipates the bureaucratic nightmare depicted in Seghers's Transit. And the humor of course is an early anticipation of such absurdities as Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks. Dickens has here moved beyond his account of Chancery in his previous novel, Bleak House, and has imagined not just a government agency that does its job poorly but one who does its job - preventing public access and information and providing sinecure appointments and do-nothing posts - to perfection .

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Character types in Dickens

Dickens is of course known for his sharp delineation of character; some of his characters are all-good (right now I'm reading Little Dorrit, and the eponymous Amy Dorrit is an example of pure benevloence; Esthe Summerson in Bleak House as well, and some of his male protagonists perhaps such as Copperfield or Pip - others abound) and others are all-bad (Fagin, Mr. Gradgrind if I have the name correct), but his most significant and original characters are those who think they're bad but are actually good (see Great Expectations) and, in particular, those who think they're good but are actually bad - e.g., Mrs Jellybellly (?) in BH, who is devoting her life to the care of children in The Congo while completely oblivious to the needs of her own children, living in neglect and squalor. Mr. Dorrit, Amy/Little D's father, is a perfect example of the "thinks he's good" character: He makes a big today about how he is the "Father of th Marchalsea," which is to say the longest-dwelling member on the London debtors' prison, and does nothing to try to better his life while living off the labor of his younger daughter an in his officious manner extorting "gifts" from those who visit the prison; he acts as if his meeting each visitor and newly arrived prisoner is an act of kindness and benevolence, and that all of these visitors and prisoners find it a great honor to have an audience with the "Father," while in fact he's  just a lazy extortionist who exploits others, his family included. His mild manner and seeming politesse mask, for a time, the essential laziness and greediness of his character. Dickens's sympathies are obviously w/ the prisoners - the debtors' prison was a terrible institution that had already, I believe been abandoned by the time Dickens was writing LD, in the 1860s or so?, but part of Dickens's greatness as a writer is that he is neither servile nor sympathetic to all those exploited and ruined by the corrupt prison system; some of them, such as Mr. Dorrit, are both victims and executioners.