Little Dorrit  A book that was “more seditious than Das Kapital” as George Bernard Shaw said.  Were Dickens’s figures fictional agents for the radical change as Bernard Shaw suggests?  Was George Orwell right when he said that "in Little Dorrit, Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached".  Was Dickens a real revolutionary or was he a great caricaturist and a conservative in reality?  Did Dickens manage to criticize the Government or was he swallowed by the system?  What is Dickens’ political and literary legacy to our age?  Was Dickens writing from personal experience?  What was London like during Dickens’ time? Charles Dickens, Circa 1840 From an oil painting by R. J. Lane.

Little Dorrit: the story and the characters Little Dorrit Arthur Clennam the Money collector. Little Dorrit's Father The villain: Rigault Mrs Clennam Jeremiah Flintwinch Mrs Clennam’s servant Mr. Merdle: the banker the skroutz like vilain and his daughter

Main points of the story  It’s the love story of little Dorrit and Arthur Clennam.  It’s all about money. About sudden reversals of fortune that is from the poverty to immense riches and vice versa.  It’s about “the poverty trap”, that is naïve and honest people who become victims of cruel bankers or Skroutz like landlords. On the other hand it’s the solidarity of the people that make them endure the harsh living situation.  It’s a satire of the incompetence of the government and the bureaucracy of the day.  It’s about banking frauds and stock market bubbles.  Dickens is writing from personal experience, since his father was imprisoned because of debts and this is the reason of his strong critique to the government.  Dickens makes use of paradoxical situations to strengthen his case. That is: how can a man pay his debts if he is imprisoned… or what is the purpose of the Circumlocution Office, a place of endless bureaucratic confusion, where forms need to be filled in to request permission to fill in more forms… Charles Dickens, 1844 From a miniature by Margaret Gillies.

What was London like during Dickens’s times?  London was the most advanced industrially economically politically city in the world.  London was overcrowded because of the sudden rise of the population during due to the capitalism boom, people were living in slums, underpaid or unemployed.  There was tremendous poverty, prostitution, outbreaks, sanitation problems because London infrastructure could not cope with/follow the rising demands of society.  There were many political and law reforms. Philosophical radicalism and utilitarianism was the major political and philosophical movement of the time (John Stuart Mill was one of the beginners).  Another movement/reform was based on Thomas Carlyle who brought the Romantic radicalism and according to whom utilitarianism was fine as long it improved matters but didn’t help or ignored the mind of the spirit and the imagination. Thomas Carlyle was a respected historian in his day and his 1837 book “The French Revolution: A History” was the inspiration for Dickens’ 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens, 1849 From a daguerreotype by Mayall.

What impact to the society did Dickens have through his books?  Dickens talks about the injustice: the poor should be given proper care, decent homes, decent education, proper sanitation.  Dickens criticizes that poor people aren’t a priority to the government which gives them nothing but demands a lot.  Dickens takes a lot of his ideas from Thomas Carlyle and marries them with his own mentality that stir people up and do something.  From one point of view, he is a radical – he writes to radical publications after all. But, at the same time he creates an independent position for him as if he were seeing things from above and he turns to be middle class in the end. Charles Dickens, 1859 From an oil painting by W. P. Frith, R.A.