For those of you who are dedicated Dickensians, I am sure you know the famous story of how, back in 1841, when "The Old Curiosity Shop" was serialized in "Master Humphrey's Clock" Magazine, throngs of New York readers stormed the piers, as the ships came in, bringing the final installment, crying out, "Is Little Nell dead?"
The death of Little Nell is considered one of the great tear jerking scenes in literature. Yet, it really did not do anything for me. When I read "The Old Curiosity Shop," it was with anticipation, and, of course, another go at the Dickens Canon, but overall I thought it a very overrated book.
When I picked up "Little Dorrit," I did not know what to expect. All I knew was it was famous for taking place in a debtors' prison (where Dickens' own father spent a good deal of his time!!!!!!!!) and that, when it was first published, in 1857, it outsold any of Dickens' other books. I can see why, though it is hard to believe it outsold even the popular "David Copperfield," published just seven years before.
"Little Dorrit" is considered, along with "Bleak House" and "Our Mutual Friend," one of Dickens' "social novels," but I have to wonder if it is his most misogynistic. He sets up contrasting women characters as emblems of Good and Evil!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You have the title character, Amy, but known as Little Dorrit, born and raised in the Marshalsea prison, and the most exemplary soul of goodness and dignity, since Agnes Wickfield, in "David Copperfield." Of the "Good" women characters, Little Dorrit is the most resilient and intelligent; the other two, Maggy and Tattycoram, are simple \to the point of being imbecilic, but are essentially gentle souls.
The Evil women are the biggest group of bitches Dickens ever created, starting with Mrs. Clennam, a vindictive woman with a vengeful plot to get back at her husband's adulterous transgression that spans the entire novel, and ruins the lives of just about everyone in it. Even more than Estella's mother, who supposedly murdered, this woman is poison! Fanny Doritt is less evil and more frivolous and selfish, caring for nothing but herself, content to neglect her children and let sister Amy take care of them, as she will. While Miss Wade is as enigmatic as Rosa Dartle from "David Copperfield;" I spent this novel trying to figure if she was a repressed lesbian or simply a repressed spinster. I am still not sure.
If Arthur Clennam is the story's hero, he is one of literature's most ineffectual ones. This is not his fault ("Nobody's Fault" was Dickens' original title for this work) but Mrs. Clennam's, and I will not relate why, and deprive those who haven't read it of an absorbing experience.
I did not expect to be as fond of "Little Dorrit" as I turned out to be. It will stay with me a long time. There is a death scene three quarters of the way through that moved me to tears; only Dickens can pull things off, like this. But, not to worry, things work out, in that Romantic, Victorian way, which is one thing that draws all us readers of such fiction to it.
You don't have to read the Dickens Canon, as I am. But among the Dickens works I think MUST be read, "Little Dorrit" is one of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have a blast, girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
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