Little Dorrit

Arthur Clennam is the illegitimate son of a businessman and his first wife, though he is raised by his father’s second wife, who took him away from his birth mother. He had a strict, religious upbringing and remembers long days at church and his mother punishing him by locking him in a closet as a child. When he is 20, Clennam becomes engaged to Flora Casby against the wishes of both of their families; as a result, Mrs. Clennam exiles him to China, and he spends another 20 years there, working on the family business though he has no interest in it. At the beginning of Little Dorrit, Clennam is just returning from China after the death of his father. He falls in love with a fellow passenger on his boat who is half his age, Pet Meagles, yet he has no plans or hopes for the future once he returns to London since he plans to quit the family business. After the death of his father, Clennam has suspicions that his father had wronged someone in his past and felt guilty about it when he died. Clennam investigates this suspicion throughout the novel, despite his mother’s rejection of the idea.

Clennam feels disappointed that he has not lived his life the way he would like to. Like Amy, his course in life has been guided entirely by the wishes of his family. Clennam feels obligated to respect his mother’s wishes, despite his uneasiness around her. His sense of disappointment and powerlessness leads him to feel much older than his years. He often speaks of himself as an old man with his life behind him despite being only 40 and having many new experiences ahead of him. When he becomes interested in the business of the engineer Daniel Doyce, he is drawn out of his woes and becomes Doyce’s business partner. Yet, it is largely Amy who draws Clennam out of his sorrows as she shows him how she feels fortunate despite her circumstances.

Though Clennam remains directionless with regard to his career and his financial prospects, he is always inclined to do good by others whenever he can. He takes an active interest in his mother’s seamstress, Amy, and he helps her family once he discovers that they live in the Marshalsea prison. Despite William Dorrit’s doubts about his instincts, Clennam is a good judge of character and his first impressions about others prove to be good assessments of their moral characters. He also has a strong conviction about wrong and right; in a pivotal moment in the plot, he takes on full responsibility for the debt of his and his partner’s business. This leads Clennam to financial ruin but spares his partner’s reputation. In this way, his selflessness and sense of duty mimics Amy’s. Clennam’s goodness is ultimately rewarded as he marries Amy, who is equally virtuous, and they live a happy and useful life together.

The Dorrits are a well-bred family who are known for their gentility before William Dorrit’s business interests lead him to fall into debt, resulting in imprisonment at the Marshalsea. Due to his upper-class status, the authorities allow him to bring his wife and two children to live with him in comfortable lodgings at the prison, where his youngest daughter is born. Mrs. Dorrit dies eight years after Little Amy Dorrit is born, and young Amy acts as a caretaker toward her father and older siblings, Fanny and Tip. Amy gets a job outside the prison and ensures that the family has the money to send Tip and Fanny to school and also helps them find jobs outside of the prison. She arranges dance lessons for Fanny and a job dancing at a theater their uncle Frederick works at. Frederick plays the clarinet in the orchestra, and he is often so focused on his music that he cares little for the social status that his other family members are so desperate to obtain. Amy helps Tip find many jobs, yet he quickly grows bored with them and ends up imprisoned for debt himself. The Dorrit children conceal all this information from William, worried that he will feel worse about his imprisonment when he learns what his children must do to support him.

William, Fanny, and Tip are all proud of their gentility and use this status to their advantage within the prison. They often think themselves to be superior to those around them and berate Amy for spending time with people they think are beneath them. William, however, enjoys the appearance of being generous to the other inmates, who nickname him “the Father of the Marshalsea;” his calculated acts of kindness bolster his social status, which he enjoys. The Dorrits’ pride becomes even more pronounced after they are freed from the Marshalsea and regain their wealth and land. They make every attempt to erase the past 20 years of their life and appear as if they have always lived like gentry. This involves ignoring and forgetting the people who helped them get out of prison. They also act hypocritically and cruelly toward those who are poor or in debt, just like they used to be. Though Amy and Frederick do not participate in this hypocrisy, they usually do not protest it. However, when Frederick sees them berate Amy for her generous and kind nature, he takes them to task, pointing out their selfishness and false pride. Though Dickens does not portray the Dorrits as entirely bad, their pride and selfishness contrast with Amy’s virtues, developing the theme of Pride Versus Duty. William Dorrit dies believing he is still trapped within the Marshalsea though he is actually free, and his brother Frederick is so stricken by this that he dies at his bedside just after. Fanny and Tip end the novel impoverished and in unhappy circumstances, though Amy does everything she can to help them and their children.