Going explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Social Class and Hypocrisy

  Pancks exposes Casby's benevolent facade, revealing the hypocrisy of the upper classes who exploit the poor through intermediaries.

• Bureaucracy and Institutional Corruption

  The legal system's failure to secure Arthur's release reflects institutional corruption and the powerlessness of individuals.

• Wealth and Moral Decline

  The Merdle scandal's aftermath shows how wealth and speculation lead to moral decay and suffering.

Characters to notice

• Mr. Pancks

  Suffers from self-reproach over Arthur's imprisonment, publicly denounces Mr. Casby as a hypocritical exploiter.

• Mr. Casby

  The Patriarch, exposed by Pancks as a deceptive proprietor who profits from squeezing tenants.

• Arthur Clennam

  Lies very ill in the Marshalsea, the cause of Pancks's guilt.

• Mr. Rugg

  Sees no legal break for Arthur's enlargement.

Key passages

• “If it had not been for those infallible figures which proved that Arthur, instead of pining in imprisonment, ought to be promenading in a carriage and pair, and that Mr. Pancks, instead of being restricted to his clerkly wages, ought to have from three to five thousand pounds of his own at his immediate disposal, that unhappy arithmetician would probably have taken to his bed, and there have made one of the many obscure persons who turned their faces to the wall and died, as a last sacrifice to the late Mr. Merdle's greatness.”

  Pancks's obsessive calculations about Arthur's supposed wealth and his own lost fortune are the only thing keeping him from despair and death.

  Illustrates Pancks's guilt and the devastating impact of Merdle's fraud.

• “You're a driver in disguise, a screwer by deputy, a wringer, and squeezer, and shaver by substitute. You're a philanthropic sneak. You're a shabby deceiver!”

  Pancks accuses Casby of being a hypocrite who exploits others through an agent while pretending to be benevolent.

  Central to the chapter's theme of exposing hypocrisy.