Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (novel #263)

  

Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure. ~ Daniel Doyce to Arthur Clennam

 

Indeed! There must have been a lot of learning going on in this slightly atypical Dickens story.

 

• Author: Charles Dickens
• Victorian lit, British lit
• First Published: 1857
• My edition: Project Gutenberg, free book (eBook)
• Setting: England, briefly in France and Italy, early 19th century
•  Also by this author (that I’ve read): Most of his novels and short stories. For a complete listing, see my Dickens page.

Of the title character, I always assumed Little Dorrit was a child. Dorrit, Amy Dorrit, is a young woman of 22, but she is so slight that she is sometimes mistaken for a child. To her friends and family she is Little Dorrit, a sobriquet she happily owns. Before she was born, Her father, William Dorrit, was confined to the Marshalsea, England’s notorious debtor prison. His family is allowed to live with him, though they may come and go. Little Dorrit, is born within the walls of the Marshalsea and her mother dies when she is a child. Tending to father and family, is the sum of her life’s story—a life she is contentedly suited to.

 

Atypical I said, though I am hard pressed to elucidate. I felt it more than I apprehended it. Dickens usually woos me to love some humble character and then breaks my heart when they suffer cruel injustice. The humble character, in this instance Little Dorrit, is the soul of virtue, kindness, humility, and love, but she isn’t miserable; I couldn’t quite pity her. The cruel injustice, so different in this case, comes from good fortune. William Dorrit experiences a reversal of fortunes. He and two other children want to forget their former shame. With it, they also forget Little Dorrit’s constancy and labors of love on their behalf. She is an embarrassment when she does not, in their eyes, rise to the family’s new social status. For this they cruelly berate her, and now—she is pitiable.

 

There are other reversals of fortune; in other directions, and other Dickens hallmarks: preposterous caricatures, a heinous villain, comic relief, a hopeless love story, and that signature oh, so satisfying justice in the end. This is the second Dickens novel in a row with a talking bird (part of the comic relief), though the talking parrot in Little Dorrit does not steal scenes as the Raven Grip did in Barnaby Rudge.

 

Did I mention two Dickens in a row? I just finished 700+ pages of Barnaby Rudge when The Classic Club Spin landed on this 1,000+ page story. And before the two Dickens novels I had the 800+ page Stephen King novel 11/22/63. I am ready for some lighter_­ fare—literally as in something lighter than a 3 pound book.

 

But I don’t mean to complain. All three were very good. For Little Dorrit…

 

I give it 4 out of 5 stars

 

 

 

This was title #31 of 50 for The Classics Club Challenge –Round IV, and my spin read for The Classics Club Spin #45

 

Have you read Little Dorrit? Did you find it atypical? Where do you rank it amongst Dickens’ novels?

 

.