Thoughts on Little Dorrit
Finally finished Little Doritt (it should be called Long Dorrit) after many weeks. And similar to posts on The Pickwick Papers and Martin Chuzzlewit, thought I'd share some random musings. Potential spoilers ahead.
It is a long book and I admit I, as others have said, found it a slog at times. There are some very long chapters that don't advance the plot hugely (looking at your Mr Merdle) and the main plot is quite hard to see at some points in terms of what is the main thread to follow, around which other things are developing too.
Of course they could all be equal but somehow it feels like Dickens couldn't decide what to put forward more - the fate of the Dorrits or the criminal Rigaud (also Blandois or Lagnier) and so between the two you constantly asking, what has this got to do with that other story I've just spend 45 minutes reading 3 chapters on etc.
Arthur Clennam is not quite enough of a leading man to really root for - he is not passive but also not a man of action. His infatuation with Pet, for example, feels strange that he never advances a suggestion towards her - but perhaps that was the social mores of the day. His intention to advance Daniel Doyce's invention is also presented as futile, as per the Circumlocation Office's purpose, but it still feels like he just goes and sits in rooms for a long time without doing a lot, same with how he manages the business for DD.
Little Dorrit could easily have felt too saccharine to work but Dickens does a good job of painting her in such a way that you can believe her fortitude and selflessness quite easily and the way she is almost left behind at the end fo the first of the book is utterly believable by her awful family.
The chapter Little Dorrit's Party is sublime. The chapter that introduces the Circumlocation Office is hilarious.
I found Flora Finching more annoying than funny, but her Aunt is good comic relief, especially her irrational hatred of Arthur. The turnkeys in the Marshalsea are good and the descriptions of life in there are utterly bleak, vivid and eye-opening as to how people really lived in the past and what Dickens must have seen as the huge wealth gap that existed and the meanness of life for so many people in London.
>!The section where they go to Italy and we hear about Henry Gowan's painting - and that Riguard becomes a sitter for him - feels incredibly long, laboured and tiresome, I just couldn't not find much interest in it beyond showing us the Dorrits now had money but Amy (LD) was not really able to relax. !<
DEFINITE SPOILER:
>!The denouement of the house collapsing feels both very sudden and unexpected but then you realise quite quickly it is the culmination of Mrs Flitctwick's fear of ghosts and creaking throughout the novel, which I found quite satisfying and clearly Dickens always had that in mind for the plot. The fact it neatly kills of Rigaud is quite handy too eh!<
Overall, I would rank it below Martin Chuzzlewit personally and my least favourite, except Hard Times (although Hard Times itself feels like a novella of Dickens that doesn't bear comparison with his fuller novels)
Lastly - why is there not a Little Dorrit tag? Surely all the novels deserve one?!