Little Dorrit study guide contains a biography of Charles Dickens, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Micro-retelling: It tells about the fate of the family of the weak and conceited bankrupt William Dorrit, who spent 20 years in the London Marshalsi Debt Prison. After she married his father, she found out that Mr. Clennam had already had a child with another woman. Amy Dorrit was born in the Marshalsea, a debtors' prison, where her father has been incarcerated for so long he dines out on the fact,regarding himself as a local celebrity. Arthur has also, at Pancks's suggestion, invested a lot of money from his business in Merdle's scheme; Doyce is traveling abroad at this point, so he can't intervene to stop his business partner. Mr Meagles then seeks out Arthur's business partner Daniel Doyce from abroad. They travel over the Alps and take up residence for a time in Venice, and finally in Rome, displaying pride over their new-found wealth and position, unwilling to tell their past to new friends. Arthur's questions about the business and whether anything unethical has ever been done lead to an estrangement with his mother, who cuts him off from working for the company. Back Contents Forward All materials on the site are licensed Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported CC BY-SA 3.0 & GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) Miss Wade: Another traveller held in quarantine in Marseilles. She hears the sounds of the building, all mysterious to her. Arthur is happy to see Affery, a servant he remembers fondly, but is ill at ease with her husband, Jeremiah Flintwinch, an employee of the family business who now seems to work closely with his mother. She takes care of Mrs Clennam and of Arthur before he went to China. The financial house of Merdle, Edmund Sparkler's stepfather, ends with Merdle's suicide; the collapse of his bank and investment businesses takes with it the savings of the Dorrits, the firm of Doyce and Clennam, Arthur Clennam, and Pancks. She is afraid of both her husband and her mistress. Mr Gilbert Clennam: Uncle to the father of Arthur Clennam, and who started the family business. Arthur and Amy get married at the end of the novel, and go on to live a happy and modest life together. John Chivery fantasizes about marrying Amy Dorrit. This leads to him seeing Tattycoram, Miss Wade, and Blandois talking together, which alerts his suspicion. In 2001 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio adaptation of five hour-long episodes, starring Sir Ian McKellen as the narrator.[7]. Mr Plornish: Plasterer who lives with his family in Bleeding Heart Yard. Fanny, however, thrives in her new position, and when she runs into Mrs. Merdle and Edmund Sparkler in Venice, she starts flirting with him again. There is a stand-off between the two women. Mrs Dorrit: She arrived at the prison a day after her husband, with their two children. Daniel Doyce: He is an inventor of mechanical devices, with a trail of successes in Paris and St Petersburg. Blandois left a copy of the papers he obtained from Jeremiah's brother at the Marshalsea for Little Dorrit. He lives with his daughter’s family when their finances improve. The Clennam house collapses, killing Blandois, and Mrs. Clennam suffers a seizure that leaves her mute and paralyzed. She is the daughter of Mr. Dorrit, who was taken to Marshalsea, a debtor’s prison. Arthur is sent to debtor’s prison and is a broken man. When the bank collapsed, Arthur also lost all the capital of the business enterprise he and Daniel Doyce owned and operated. Little Dorrit, left alone, returns to London to stay with newly married Fanny and her husband, the dim-witted Edmund Sparkler. The fifth adaptation was a TV series co-produced by the BBC and WGBH Boston, written by Andrew Davies and featuring Claire Foy (as Little Dorrit), Andy Serkis (as Rigaud/Blandois), Matthew Macfadyen (as Arthur Clennam), Tom Courtenay (as William Dorrit), Judy Parfitt (as Mrs Clennam), and Alun Armstrong (as Jeremiah/Ephraim Flintwinch). [8], "Movie Review At the 79th Street Theatre", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Little_Dorrit&oldid=997648438, British novels adapted into television shows, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2018, Articles to be expanded from November 2015, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. He's a rent collector. [6] The fourth adaptation, in 1987, was a UK feature film of the same title as the novel, directed by Christine Edzard and starring Alec Guinness as William Dorrit and Derek Jacobi as Arthur Clennam, supported by a cast of over 300 British actors. Mrs Clennam had insisted on bringing up little Arthur and denying his biological mother the right to see him. Fanny, Little Dorrit’s sister, becomes a dancer and moves in with her uncle, Frederick, who is a clarinet player. She does not wish to have independence and she posesses strange character quirks and insecurities that make her unlike the heroines of feminist authors. Mr Dorrit assumes the role of Father of the Marshalsea, and is held in great respect by its inhabitants, as if he had chosen to live there. Little Dorrit makes sure that her brother and sister get some form of education while she learns to sew and embroider. He is frustrated that he gets nowhere but he does re-encounter Mr. Meagles, as well an inventor named Daniel Doyce. I refused him because I do not love him. Fanny adjusts rapidly to the ways of society, and is sought by the same young man, Edmund Sparkler, who pursued her in her poverty in London, but with a new start that is acceptable to his mother. Arthur is sent to debtor’s prison and is a broken man. Mr Rugg: Attorney for Mr Pancks and for Doyce & Clennam, also landlord to Pancks. Mrs Clennam: Wife of Mr Clennam, who ran the family business in London. She calls Little Dorrit her little mother, as Maggy is taller and bigger than Little Dorrit. Another subplot concerns the Italian man John Baptist Cavalletto who was the cellmate of Rigaud in Marseilles, though jailed for a minor crime. Mrs General: Widow hired by William Dorrit to guide his daughters in the ways of society when the family is rich. ... That his mother may be scheming to get him to marry Amy That his family is somehow implicated in the ruin of the Dorrit family He visits Arthur Clennam at the Marshalsea prison, happy to learn the Circumlocution Office did not put him into the debtors' prison, and tries to explain to Arthur the value of their office doing nothing. She is proud never to show any feelings, and always speak calmly. Ch. Amy Dorrit Amy Dorrit, called Little Dorrit because she is the youngest child of the family, born in the Marshalsea Prison. Mr Henry Gowan: Handsome young man, related to the Barnacle family, but not closely enough to have more than a small annual income from his mother. She is aloof, but makes a connection with Tattycoram. Among those who invested money with Merdle was Arthur. He pursues Minnie Meagles and marries her around the time that the Dorrits become rich, mainly supported by his in-laws. Fanny gets married then goes off with Sparkler and Dorrit to England, leaving Amy alone in Rome with Mrs General. Unwilling to yield to blackmail and with some remorse, the rigid woman rises from her chair and totters out of her house to reveal the secret to Little Dorrit at the Marshalsea. His father is a turnkey. She was pushed away by Mrs Clennam and Gilbert Clennam. Amy, otherwise known as Little Dorrit, lives in the Marshalsea Prison with her father, William, who is the prison’s longest-serving inmate. Arthur does not trust Blandois and has been trying to figure out what connection he has to Mrs. Clennam, so he keeps investigating these strange coincidences. One day, Mr. Merdle is found dead. Fanny thinks Mrs. General wants to marry Mr. Dorrit. When he returns to England, she maintains a hope that he will fall in love with her again, though she has changed greatly. While Arthur's father was on his deathbed, he had given Arthur a watch to give to his mother with a message inside, while murmuring "Your mother," which Arthur mails to Mrs Clennam. Amy Dorrit. He is also known as Lagnier in an inn in France after he persuades the jury he is not guilty, while most of France knows he was guilty. The group includes Arthur Clennam, a man of 40 who is returning home after 20 years in China, the Meagles family (husband, wife, their beautiful daughter Pet, and Tattycoram, an orphan who was adopted to be Pet's companion), and Miss Wade, a mysterious and reserved woman who is travelling alone. Little Dorrit seems to require someone to care for as an essential part of her existance. I am very fond of John, but I could never feel that way about him. "Little Dorrit": Ladies of Leisure (01:48) Fanny tells Amy she has become a nursemaid for Pet and it reflects poorly upon the Dorrit family. Arthur and Amy get married at the end of the novel, and go on to live a happy and modest life together. Mr Nandy: Father of Mrs Plornish. Amy does not think she can learn to be a socialite. The biological mother of Arthur Clennam: She is never named in the story, except as Arthur's biological mother and the first wife of his father. She has them but denies it; Tattycoram slips back to London with the papers and presents them to Mr Meagles, who gives them to Little Dorrit. Now that Fanny is wealthy, Mrs. Merdle is willing to tolerate her, and she eventually gets her husband to secure her son a job in the Circumlocution Office. Fanny agrees to marry Edmund, since she wants to be wealthy and independent, and the two get married and travel back to London, accompanied by Mr. Dorrit. Little Dorrit, novel by Charles Dickens, published serially from 1855 to 1857 and in book form in 1857. Then he goes back to Italy, all prepared to ask Mrs. General to marry him. On Heartland, Chris Potter plays Tim Fleming, Amy and Lou’s father who left when they were young. Mr Christopher Casby: Also called The Patriarch, for his deceptively kind appearance, with long grey hair. Mrs Clennam feels this is her right to punish others, because they hurt her. The prison in this case is the Marshalsea, where Dickens’ own father had been imprisoned. The other major subplot is the satire of British bureaucracy, named as the Circumlocution Office, where the expertise is how not to do it. Frederick Dorrit: Elder brother of William, uncle to Edward, Fanny and Amy. Amy Dorris is a model and actress who has accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York in 1997. Their mother died when Amy was eight years old. She is linked with Rigaud, and with whom he left the valuable box of Clennam family papers. When Little Dorrit walks with him from the Plornish home to the prison, it is a cause of a major row between father and daughter, for being seen with a man from the poorhouse. Although born and bred in the prison, Amy is far from being downtrodden and has grown up to be a gentle and kind-hearted yet enterprising and spirited young woman. Little Dorrit is a 2008 British miniseries based on Charles Dickens's serial novel of the same title, originally published between 1855 and 1857.The screenplay is by Andrew Davies and the episodes were directed by Adam Smith, Dearbhla Walsh, and Diarmuid Lawrence.. It's not clear to me why Mr. Clenham left money to Amy Dorrit. Rigaud: European man who is in prison in Marseilles awaiting trial for murdering his wife. He becomes friends with Arthur Clennam. However, Arthur is disappointed to learn that Pet is already in love with a man named Henry Gowan, a spoiled artist. About this time, Amy also learns that her sister Fanny has been courted by a man named Edmund Sparkler, who is the stepson of the famously wealthy businessman Mr. Merdle, and she has been paid off by his mother to stop seeing him. He is 40 years old single, and meets new friends in the quarantine. ~Amy Dorrit, Little Dorrit (2008) (In case you're wondering where #5 went, I wrote about her during Sense and Sensibility Week back in November.) Flintwinch eventually got his hands on the document and gave it to his twin brother for safekeeping, who took it to Amsterdam. He is the one poor man who William Dorrit allows to visit him. The Dorrits leave prison and start spending their money. There, during an illness, he is nursed by Little Dorrit. Little Dorrit E-Text contains the full text of Little Dorrit. Little Dorrit contains numerous sub-plots. Mr Ferdinand Barnacle: Younger member of the noble family and friends with Henry Gowan. Eventually, Arthur enters into business with Doyce. After the blackmail attempt, he fled London and was said to be known as Mynheer von Flyntevynge in Amsterdam and The Hague. Dickens' story provided inspiration for the web comic The Adventures of Dorrit Little (http://dorritlittle.com/) by artist Monica McKelvey Johnson. An example would be why Ester refused to marry Mr. Guppy in Bleak House - she was technically still the daughter of a noblewoman, ... Frederick Dorrit, Amy's uncle - because there's a clause that if he happens to have a daughter of his own at 50, then the money would go to her. The patron was Frederick Dorrit, the kind musician who had taught and befriended Arthur's biological mother, and the beneficiary is his niece, Amy Dorrit. To the honour of her father, who is embarrassed to acknowledge his financial position, Little Dorrit avoids mentioning her work outside the prison or his inability to leave. With Flintwinch having fled, Amy sends Meagles to look for the copies of the document that Blandois gave to Miss Wade. Little Dorrit seems to require someone to care for as an essential part of her existance. They meet again when the Dorrits are wealthy, and he pursues Fanny until she agrees to marry him. Mrs Plornish: Wife of the plasterer and a good friend to John Baptist Cavalletto when he arrives in Bleeding Heart Yard, and a friend to Arthur Clennam. The adult children are free to pass in and out of the prison as they please. A novel by English author Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit tells the story of Amy Dorrit, known as Little Dorrit, who is born, brought up, and wed in the prison where her father has been confined for failing to pay his debts. Little Dorrit forms the backdrop to Peter Ackroyd's debut novel, The Great Fire of London (1982). The book witnesses the shortcomings of the society and the government of the period and is a work of satire. Dorrit invests all his money with Merdle, Fanny's new (step)father-in-law. She was an orphan taken in by the Meagles. When Mrs Clennam became an invalid needing much care, she decided that Flintwinch and Affery should marry, so they did. Tattycoram: Maid to Minnie Meagles. Over time he becomes the "Father of the Marshalsea," based on his social ways, maintaining the expectations of the class in which he was raised. An example would be why Ester refused to marry Mr. Guppy in Bleak House - she was technically still the daughter of a noblewoman, ... Frederick Dorrit, Amy's uncle - because there's a clause that if he happens to have a daughter of his own at 50, then the money would go to her. Clennam is now imprisoned in the Marshalsea, where he becomes ill. The way I understand it, either Arthur and Amy are half-brother and half-sister (sharing the same mother), OR they each have separate mothers, in which case Mrs. Clennam owes Amy nothing. Arthur has spent the last twenty years in China with his father, handling that part of the family business.
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