Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens: a summary of the plot

Imprisonment is the central theme of “Little Dorrit”, whether the prison be one of iron bars, a closed heart or mind, or those of politics, administration and economics. The prison that looms largest is that of the Marshalsea, where people could be consigned for many years for being unable to pay their debts. Charles Dickens is here making use of his own childhood experience, when his father, John Dickens, became a “resident” for a few months in 1824, bringing humiliation on the whole family.

The book opens in a prison in Marseilles, where the chief villain of the story, Rigaud (who also uses the name Blandois) is introduced, along with several people who are detained in quarantine on their way to London. These include Arthur Clennam, who is returning home from China where his father has just died, to London, where he finds his mother living in a dismal first-floor room, confined to a wheelchair from which she conducts the family business.

At his mother’s house, Arthur meets Amy Dorrit (usually referred to as “Little Dorrit”), who is doing casual sewing jobs there. He follows her home and discovers that she lives with her father at the Marshalsea prison, where he has long been imprisoned as a debtor. Indeed, William Dorrit has become immensely proud of his status as “the father of the Marshalsea”. The Dorrit family also comprises William’s brother, plus another daughter and a son.

Arthur becomes curious as to why the Dorrits are in this situation, which is why he encounters the “Circumlocution Office”, a satirical invention on the part of Dickens that represents all the offices of government that exist solely to push pieces of paper from place to place without ever actually doing anything useful.

Arthur also meets the Meagles family (who had been fellow detainees at Marseilles) and the engineer Daniel Doyce. Having decided to have nothing to do with his mother’s business affairs, which he suspects are based on sharp practice, he goes into partnership with Doyce, who is a brilliant inventor but no good as a businessman. He also becomes reacquainted with Flora Finching, who had been the love of his life many years before but is now fat and silly. She is the daughter of Christopher Casby, the grasping landlord of a slum tenement, Bleeding Heart Yard, which is not far from the Marshalsea.

Clennam and Doyce visit the Meagles at Twickenham, where they meet Henry Gowan, who is courting Pet, the Meagles’ daughter. Also there is Pet’s maid Harriet, who is known as Tattycoram, having been “adopted” from Coram’s Foundling Hospital and who is mistreated by the Meagles family.

The sinister character Rigaud calls on Mrs Clennam. He is clearly in possession of a secret that greatly alarms the old lady, but she refuses to confide in her son, who is genuinely concerned for her welfare despite the rebuffs he suffers at her hands.

The major turning point in the novel is the revelation that William Dorrit is, after all, not a pauper at all but entitled to a large estate. This has come about through the efforts of Pancks, who is Casby’s rent collector but is shocked by the conditions in which the tenants of Bleeding Heart Yard are forced to live. On Arthur Clennam’s behalf, Pancks discovers the document that allows the Dorrit family to leave the Marshalsea.

However, William Dorrit is freed from one prison only to enter another, that of his own pretensions. He is convinced that he must now enter the society to which his wealth entitles him, and thus takes on all the trappings that that entails. He employs a governess, Mrs General, to educate his daughters in the ways of society, a move that horrifies Amy, who only wishes to be herself.

In undertaking a grand tour of Europe, the Dorrit family meet the now married Gowan and Pet (accompanied by Tattycoram), and Rigaud, at the convent at the head of the Great St Bernard Pass.

At Martigny, William Dorrit meets Mrs Merdle, who invites him to invest his money in her husband’s London bank. Many others have also done so, including Arthur Clennam. However, William Dorrit never returns to England, as he loses his mind at a dinner given in Rome by Mrs Merdle, addressing his fellow diners as though they were prisoners at the Marshalsea, and dies soon afterwards.

Tattycoram has been persuaded to run away by the mysterious Miss Wade, a strong-minded but self-tormenting young woman who is one of Dickens’s most interesting minor characters. She is traced by Arthur to Calais, where it is discovered that she possesses papers that have been stolen from Mrs Clennam by Rigaud. However, she refuses to surrender these. Arthur is convinced that these contain evidence that will be of benefit to Amy Dorrit.

Merdle’s bank collapses, and its owner commits suicide. The Dorrit fortune disappears as a result, as does the capital of Doyce and Clennam. Arthur now becomes a Marshalsea prisoner himself. However, truths begin to be revealed, based on the documents suppressed by Mrs Clennam and stolen by Rigaud. In particular, a codicil to her husband’s will had left money to Amy Dorrit, and Arthur turns out to have been only the stepson of Mrs Clennam.

In a dramatic scene, Mrs Clennam, who is being blackmailed by Rigaud, rises from her wheelchair and leaves the house, determined to find Amy and seek her forgiveness. The old house collapses, killing Rigaud in the process.

At the end, many prison doors are thrown open, with Arthur being released from the Marshalsea when the stolen papers are returned, and from his emotional prison in which he had refused to allow his growing love for Amy to show itself. Pancks also forces Casby to free his tenants from their servitude in Bleeding Heart Yard, with Pancks revealing Casby to be a hypocrite and oppressor. Arthur and Amy are married.

© John Welford