Moving in Society explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Social Class and Hypocrisy

  The Dorrit siblings, despite their poverty, maintain a pretentious pride in their family name, while Mrs. Merdle's condescension highlights the hypocrisy of high society.

• Family Dynamics and Obligation

  Fanny's harsh criticism of Amy and Tip's selfish love for his sister reveal the complex and often strained family bonds within the Dorrit family.

• Wealth and Moral Decline

  Mrs. Merdle's wealth allows her to patronize Fanny with gifts, while Fanny's willingness to accept them shows the moral compromises driven by social ambition.

Characters to notice

• Little Dorrit

  Visits her sister Fanny at the theater and later accompanies her to Mrs. Merdle's house, feeling distressed by Fanny's acceptance of gifts.

• Fanny Dorrit

  Proudly receives gifts from Mrs. Merdle and criticizes Amy for lacking spirit, while asserting the family's superiority despite their reduced circumstances.

• Mrs. Merdle

  Receives Fanny and Amy in her grand drawing-room, gives Fanny a parting gift, and speaks condescendingly about social exclusion.

• Tip Dorrit

  Mentioned as having become a billiard-marker after his release from the Marshalsea, and as respecting his sister Amy despite his selfishness.

• Frederick Dorrit

  Practices his clarinet in the lodging and is later given a shilling by Fanny to buy his dinner at a cook's shop.

Key passages

• “If Young John Chivery had had the inclination and the power to write a satire on family pride, he would have had no need to go for an avenging illustration out of the family of his beloved.”

  Young John Chivery could have easily found a perfect example of family pride to satirize within the Dorrit family itself.

  The narrator introduces the theme of family pride and hypocrisy through the Dorrit siblings.

• “The same rank Marshalsea flavour was to be recognised in his distinctly perceiving that she sacrificed her life to her father, and in his having no idea that she had done anything for himself.”

  Tip recognized that Amy devoted herself to their father, but he was oblivious to the sacrifices she made for him.

  Highlights Tip's selfishness and the family's ingrained Marshalsea mentality.

• “If we could only come to a Millennium, or something of that sort, I for one might have the pleasure of knowing a number of charming and talented persons from whom I am at present excluded.”

  Mrs. Merdle wishes for a utopian society where she could socialize with people of lower status without the constraints of class.

  Mrs. Merdle's hypocritical lament about social exclusion reveals the artificiality of class distinctions.