Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens
First published 1857.
Kindle e-book.
A long and complicated story in the tradition of many of his best novels, but not memorable, at least not in the class of his best - DC, Great Expectations and so on. But it is better than his worst - Hard Times, Bleak House... I completed it about a month ago, but am able to find the time to put in down here only now. And already my recollections of the story are confused.
Amy 'Little' Dorrit has the distinction to be the first child to have been born in the debtor's prison, Marshalsea, where her father is interred for many decades, together with his family. Her mother dies in childbirth leaving behind two other children, Fanny and Edward. Amy becomes the general support of the entire family, especially of her self-pitying father who pretends, to himself as much as to the rest of the world, to bear the entire weight of the family misfortunes on his shoulders, to ensure that his children continue to lead a genteel, upper-middle class life. In fact, it is Amy, who works both in and outside the prison, and the family's many well-wishers and generally the good folks around, who occasionally advance small sums of money, who bring a degree of physical comfort to the children and the father. When she turns 21, she goes to work for a mysterious lady, Mrs. Clennam, who lives with the grotesque servants Mr. Flintwich and his wife. There are shades here of Miss Havisham from 'Great Expectations'. Mrs Clennam is part of another story thread, that involves her son Arthur Clennam, some nasty 'foreigners' - Italians - and various other characters and story lines that may be summarily described as 'Dickensian'. The plot is more elaborately and more faithfully explained in Wikipedia, and elsewhere on the net.
The book has three general characterizations I enjoyed immensely. The first was the harshly sarcastic description of the goings on at a generic government office, called the 'Circumlocution' Office. 'No business could possibly be done without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart'. The Office specialized in figuring out ways 'HOW NOT TO DO IT', no matter what was required to be done. It was manned by parasites and hangers-on, whom Dickens called the Barnacles. All the 'officers' in the Circumlocution Department were members, one way or another, of the Barnacle family and attained their respective offices not through any merit or effort, but almost solely because of the rampant nepotism. Dickens describes how Arthur Clennam, the protagonist, goes to this office to seek information about why the father Dorrit was imprisoned. He is sent from one clerk to the other, and one officer to the other, many of whom are not available at that time, and when he does find one present, told to come later, told it is lunchtime or teatime, told that this was not the Office for such information, but not told which was the correct one, and so on. All very familiar! There is of course a major difference to the situation here and today. In Chennai (actually I suppose anywhere in India) in the 21st century the Circumlocution Offices actually DO something, but only and only if properly bribed. Dickens does not mention this particular venality in the Offices of his time and country.
The other characterization I enjoyed, related to that of the Circumlocution Office, was of the political system and the parliament, as it existed in 19th century England, though many of its features are also found today in India (and in the rest of the world). He talks about how 'every new premier and every new government, coming in because they upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it'. Dickens savages the political and parliamentary system, calling it simply a means to keep the Circumlocution Office in existence and defend it fiercely when it was attacked.
The third aspect that Dickens talks about in this book which I found interesting is about capitalism running wild. Mr. Merdle is a filthy rich man, and is treated with the kind of awe and respect reserved today for Mukesh Ambani or Bill Gates. He is shown to obtain his money by a kind of Ponzi scheme, which suddenly collapses, leading to Mr. Merdle's suicide. What was enjoyable to read was the way Dickens describes the attitude of all round to Mr. Merdle and his wealth. One set of particularly interesting exchanges takes place between Mrs. Merdle and Fanny Dorrit, before and after the latter's family comes into money. Fanny, unlike her sister Amy, is a sharp, tough, young lady. She snares the heart of Mrs Merdle's son, marries him, and then sets about repaying her mother-in-law for all the insults she had to bear before she became rich.
There are many of the usual Dickens touches in the book, but it does not hold together very well. The story is too confusing and it does not unfold well. And there are no truly memorable characters - no Micawber, no Heep, not even a Joe Gargery. Both Arthur and Little Dorrit are colourless - pale replicas of David Copperfield and Agnes.
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