'Little Dorrit' readalong

[Piggywaspushed]

Hello and welcome to our next proposed Dickensalong after the success of our previous readalongs!

On our previous thread I suggested our first month as commencing in April and convening on June 1st to discuss the first instalment : gives everyone time to get copies and get settled down.

Everyone is welcome! We always start with about 10 people and end up with about 5...

Instalments I have chosen follow Dickens' shorter 19 instalments (which were all exactly the same number of pages originally - that must have taken considerable planning and editing!) but come in pairs or trios:-
The novel comprises only two Books, which forces a break at a particular point, too.

May 2021 - Book One , Chapters 1-11
June - Chapters 12-18
July - Chapters 19-25
August - Chapters 26- 36
September - Book Two Chapters 1-11
October - Chapters 12-18
November - Chapters 19-26
December - Chapters 27 - 34

So finished by 2022. I think that suits reading speed of most.

Happy Reading!

Yes, I agree, Piggy. They probably did marry young out of necessity. It's sad that Little Dorrit's slight stature and childlike appearance is due to malnourishment.

Just checking - is it chapters 19-25 for July?

I’m really enjoying following and hope I’ve caught up by the next chat. I’ve finished two other books and not replaced them so hopefully will be ready.

yup 19-25!

I wrote down the main characters and have to admit it's made a difference reading the book

There's an index of characters at the front of my edition; it's very useful!

I can’t get away from the Victorian Age at the moment and am reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman before I get back to Dorrit. It’s interesting that John Fowles has picked up on the preference for the childlike woman; Charles Smithson thinks of his conventional fiancé Ernestina as being like a child (not envy). If he marries her I’m going to throw the book across the room - although I am aware it’s a pick your own ending sort of book so hopefully this can be avoided.

Oh I’ve had this on my shelf for a very, very long time.

I've just finished June's chapters - yes, I know it's nearly the end of July!! Nothing to add to your general chat. I feel a bit confused about several of the elements and am not sure how it will all come together. But there's still plenty of time for that, right?

Place-marking for the next installment!

Me too!!

I still have two chapters to read so I will be back later today when I’ve done that!

I definitely had to Shmoop my chapters this month! So many chapters with so many characters up to so much as yet unclear stuff! What Is Pancks? Who is Pancks? Why is Pancks? Who were all those people going to Dunstable and all over, and why Chivery? Obviously that chapter was particularly about the idea of not judging people by outward appearances : Casby seeming affable but being dreadful and Pancks possibly a good guy, despite being a debt collector. And Flora may be aggravating but she was kind to Little Dorritt, although is potentially using her?

I find Dickens ultra confusing when he doesn't name characters but calls them eg 'the Patriarch'. I have to keep checking who that is! I can spot Casby by his idiolect at least but I still am never sure who is related to whom in this novel of marriages and remarriages. Shmoop refers to LD as a book full of horrible, horrible people.

I loved the bit about the English and their attitude to foreigners and was particularly amused by Dickens' rendering of how they talk to foreign people! E ope you leg well soon!

This was wryly apt even for today:

in the first place , they were vaguely persuaded every foreigner had a knife about him ; in the second they held it to be a sound constitutional national axion that he ought to go home to his own country. They never thought of enquiring how many of their own countrymen would be returned upon their hands from divers parts of the world

Farage and Yaxley-Lennon/Robinson would certainly make great Dickens villains...

I've managed to finish July's chapters today. Definitely confusing and I've had to use Shmoop but I'm enjoying the book.

I read these chapters a while ago, so I need to reread them again to get up to speed. Here are a few random thoughts, as I go through a chapter at a time.

Chapter 18. I am finding William Dorrit very annoying, so much so, that I'm making sarcastic comments in the margins of my book. His superior attitude to his brother Frederick is irritating. He is incredibly condescending towards him, and feels superior to him. Frederick probably has a harder life in comparison to William as William's every need is taken care of; he is completely cosetted by Amy.

William feels slighted over Mr Chivery senior's lack of respect towards him, due to Amy's rejection of young John's advances and he goes into a tirade of self-pity and Amy wears herself out trying to mollify his hurt feelings, even staying up all night by his bedside and soothing him. (Insert sarcastic comment here!)

Once he has wallowed enough in self-pity, he does spare Amy a thought and acknowledges her hard life inside the prison... barely. But it's still all about himself.

I like this description which ends the chapter; 'The spikes had never looked so sharp and cruel, nor the bars so heavy, nor the prison space so gloomy and contracted. She thought of the sunrise on rolling rivers, of the sunrise on wide seas, of the sunrise on rich landscapes, on the sunrise on great forests, where the birds were waking and the trees were rustling; and she looked down into the living grave in which the sun had risen, with her father in it, three-and-twenty years...'

This reflects how enclosed and stifled her life is in this confined, dark place. Poor Amy!

Oops. That was chapter 19.

This was a collection of chapters that generally didn’t seem to bear much relation to each other, so I found it all a bit confusing. I also don’t feel the story has moved on much (although I’m sure things have been mentioned that will turn out to be important later!). Nice to see Cavaletto back although I’m still not clear who he is and what he’s doing in the book. I did love them trying to speak Italian to him by basically just shouting shortened English sentences at him!

Chapter 20. Knowing one's place in society and keeping it.

I liked the description of the opera House. I used to play in the orchestra of various musicals and operas and the description of Amy going in through the stage door into the dark cavernous theatre and Frederick in the murky depths of the orchestra pit was very well done.

It occurred to me that Frederick is in another sort of prison, albeit a musical one. He is mouldering away in the depths of the pit, reading from his score, not bothering to lift his eyes from the page to see what's going on around him; a running joke with other performers. He sounds defeated by life.

Fanny Dorrit is another unlikeable character. She also feels superior towards her sister and likes to point out that she wasn't born in prison as Amy was. She feels superior towards everyone else in her company too. 'None of them have come down in the world as we have. They are all on their own level. Common.' Like father, like daughter. She likes to remind Amy of her own place in the family as 'a tranquil, domestic, home-loving, good girl' or general slave.

Mrs Merdle is completely preoccupied with her position in society and will maintain it at all costs. She comes across as an artificial, mercenary, odious person. She is ruthless about looking out for herself and also her son's position in case he hooked up with Fanny and was disinherited on marrying her. She throws Fanny a trinket and a few coins to pay her off, which Fanny accepts, her pride intact, since she refused him.

Chapter 21. Introducing Mr. Merdle. He is very highly esteemed; I suppose you could call him a big-wig! He seems like a quiet, subdued, self-effacing man, unlike his wife. We get the impression that all is not well with him.

Chapter 22. Arthur Clenham might be developing feelings for Amy Dorrit. He thinks about her a lot in the shadow of the prison, though as we have mentioned before, the reference of Amy as 'his poor child' is jarring to a modern-day reader.

We can sense Amy's embarrassed reaction to the begging letters that her father and brother send Arthur via Maggy. She scurries home to them as her presence there keeps them on the straight and narrow. The poor girl can never stray away without feeling guilty.

Poor Amy, her sister and father are self-absorbed idiots and the third self- absorbed idiot, Flora, has likely brought Amy into her home as she doesn't like Arthur's friendship with her and wants to keep her close. Shmoop was definitely my (highly amusing) friend in July.

By all accounts, Dickens was supremely self absorbed. I guess you write what you know!!

Yes. I think that Arthur and Amy are unusual in that they are the only ones who care a bit about other people.

I did read the chapters in time this month but didn’t get round to sharing my thoughts! I agree Flora is a self-absorbed idiot but I felt more at sympathy for her this month - at 40ish she seems ridiculous flirting with Arthur, but Arthur at the same age is still an eligible bachelor. She was manoeuvred by suicide threats into marrying a man she didn’t love shortly after being forcibly split up from Arthur, and is clearly unhappy and drinks a lot to cope. I’m still enjoying it overall but there was a lack of forward movement this month.

So Chapters 26-36 in August. Hopefully, I'll get done. Have the dreaded covid at the moment so running behind on things .

@Piggywaspushed hope you're feeling better soon.