Family Affairs explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Family Dynamics and Obligation

  Arthur's decision to abandon the family business creates tension with his mother, who feels betrayed and disappointed, highlighting the conflict between filial duty and personal choice.

• Imprisonment and Confinement

  Mrs. Clennam is physically confined to her wheelchair and emotionally confined by her rigid sense of duty and guilt, while the house itself feels like a prison of decay and stagnation.

• Bureaucracy and Institutional Corruption

  The family business is described as out of date and out of purpose, with dealings that have progressively declined, suggesting a system that has become irrelevant and stagnant.

Characters to notice

• Arthur Clennam

  Arthur informs his mother of his decision to leave the family business, explores the decaying house, and observes Little Dorrit.

• Mrs. Clennam

  Mrs. Clennam reacts with austere disappointment to Arthur's decision, appoints Jeremiah Flintwinch as partner, and shows a reserved interest in Little Dorrit.

• Mr. Flintwinch

  Jeremiah Flintwinch is appointed as Mrs. Clennam's new partner, darts a look of resentment at Arthur, and later dines with Arthur.

• Little Dorrit

  Little Dorrit is observed as a quiet, shabbily dressed young woman who works as a seamstress, avoids dining in company, and is treated with a fine gradation of hardness by Mrs. Clennam.

• Affery Flintwinch

  Affery provides Arthur with information about Little Dorrit and is described as having no will of her own, following the lead of 'them two clever ones'.

Key passages

• “I shall never be better any more. It is well for me, Arthur, that I know it and can bear it.”

  Mrs. Clennam declares that she will never recover and accepts her suffering as a form of penance.

  This reveals Mrs. Clennam's austere and self-punishing attitude, which is central to her character.

• “Little Dorrit let herself out to do needlework. At so much a day—or at so little—from eight to eight, Little Dorrit was to be hired.”

  Little Dorrit works as a seamstress, hired by the day from eight in the morning to eight at night.

  This introduces Little Dorrit's industrious and humble role in the household.

• “The gaunt rooms, deserted for years upon years, seemed to have settled down into a gloomy lethargy from which nothing could rouse them again.”

  The empty, long-abandoned rooms of the house had become permanently lifeless and dreary.

  This description emphasizes the decay and stagnation of the Clennam household.