Little Dorrit · Chapter
Going! explained
Little Dorrit tends to the ill Arthur Clennam in the Marshalsea while managing the chaotic lives of her family and the Merdles.
What happens
Little Dorrit tends to the ill Arthur Clennam in the Marshalsea while managing the chaotic lives of her family and the Merdles. Mr. Meagles travels abroad to recover incriminating papers left by Rigaud, facing comic misadventures. He eventually returns and gives Little Dorrit a box of documents, expressing his grief over his daughter Pet's marriage to Henry Gowan.
Themes in this chapter
Imprisonment and Confinement
Arthur Clennam is confined to the Marshalsea due to illness and debt, while Little Dorrit is bound by duty to care for him and her family.
Social Class and Hypocrisy
Fanny and Mrs. Merdle's rivalry highlights the performative nature of high society, and Mrs. Merdle's rehabilitation after her husband's scandal exposes class-based double standards.
Secrecy and Revelation
Mr. Meagles' quest to recover Rigaud's papers underscores the importance of hidden documents and the threat of exposure.
Characters to notice
- Little Dorrit
Devotes herself to nursing Arthur Clennam and managing her family's affairs, anxiously wondering about Fanny's future children.
- Arthur Clennam
Lies ill in the Marshalsea, too weak for emotional conversations, relying on Little Dorrit and Mr. Meagles.
- Mr. Meagles
Travels abroad to trace Rigaud's papers, enduring comic language barriers and false accusations; returns to give Little Dorrit a box.
- Fanny Dorrit
Proud and fitful, she quarrels with Mrs. Merdle and is resolved to be comfortless and wronged.
- Henry Gowan
Decides to distance himself from the Meagleses, allowing Mr. Meagles to support Pet and her child more liberally.
- Mrs. Merdle
In gauzy mourning, she feuds with Fanny Dorrit and emerges from her husband's scandal as a championed society figure.
Key passages
“The changes of a fevered room are slow and fluctuating; but the changes of the fevered world are rapid and irrevocable.”
While Arthur's recovery in his sickroom is gradual and uncertain, the outside world undergoes swift and permanent transformations.
This opening line contrasts the stillness of illness with the relentless pace of societal upheaval.
“He was so considerate as to lay no injunctions on his wife in that particular; but he mentioned to Mr. Meagles that personally they did not appear to him to get on together, and that he thought it would be a good thing if—politely, and without any scene, or anything of that sort—they agreed that they were the best fellows in the world, but were best apart.”
Henry Gowan, though not forbidding his wife from seeing her parents, tells Mr. Meagles that they don't get along and suggests they amiably agree to stay apart.
Gowan's polite but cold dismissal of Mr. Meagles reflects his snobbery and the strain on family ties.
“Still, with an unshaken confidence that the English tongue was somehow the mother tongue of the whole world, only the people were too stupid to know it, Mr. Meagles harangued innkeepers in the most voluble manner...”
Mr. Meagles firmly believes everyone should understand English, so he loudly lectures innkeepers abroad, dismissing their native languages as nonsense.
This humorous passage satirizes British provincialism and Mr. Meagles' stubborn optimism.