Strength for Difficult Times: Inspiration From Dickens’s ‘Little Dorrit’

The cover of an 1855 serial edition of "Little Dorrit" by Charles Dickens. Public Domain

The great 19th-century novelist Charles Dickens possessed a distinct genius for portraying innocence and goodness with resplendent attractiveness. From little Davie in “David Copperfield” to Esther Summerson in “Bleak House” to Amy Dorrit in “Little Dorrit,” Dickens offers readers humble and innocent characters that help them believe that goodness can be found in humanity.

Skeptical modern critics accuse Dickens of crafting unrealistically virtuous characters, arguing that, in effect, that no one is really like that, no one is that perfect. Anne Stevenson, for example, writes that “on any other terms than those of allegory, angelic Amy would be squirmingly hard to swallow.” But this accusation is unfair. While such shining souls are rare, we do encounter them from time to time. Dickens’s characters remind us of that truth. They present us with inspiration for our own struggles, and show us how to persevere in the midst of hard times by clinging to the good and the true.

Little Dorrit is a character of quiet perseverance, patient suffering, and undying devotion. The story takes aim at the false values and vain priorities of high Victorian society. These include the emptiness of wealth and the prison of selfishness.

Hablot Knight Browne depicted Amy Dorrit leaving Marshalsea prison, in an 1857 illustration in Charles Dickens's "Little Dorrit." Public Domain

Contrasted with Victorian excess is little Amy Dorrit, whose humble virtue carries her through a world of suffering to a well-deserved reward. Her fate emphasizes that true nobility and value is often to be found in hidden lives and forgotten places, where it’s warmed by love and self-sacrifice, not in the cold grand ballrooms, jewels, fortunes, and feathered tiaras of high society.

As one reviewer put it, “The ‘heart’ of this novel is one shy young woman whose quiet resilience in the face of immense oppression moves all, as she champions the power of introversion and self-sacrificing love. … With Dickens’s creation of Amy Dorrit, he spotlighted not boldness and opportunism, but, rather, quiet resilience, self-sacrifice and the sheer goodness of the heart.”

Great Acts of Devotion

The novel, published in serial form between 1855 and 1857, tells of the Dorrit family, which is confined to a debtor’s prison, and Arthur Clennam, the gentleman who tries to lift them out of poverty. At the novel’s opening, Amy’s father has spent over 20 years in the Marshalsea Prison for debtors. This central plot point was likely inspired by Dickens’s encounter with the prison as a child when his own father was imprisoned there for a few months. This incident profoundly affected the young Dickens.

The long years of confinement, shame, regret—coupled with a tendency to egoism and self-pity—have turned Mr. Dorrit into the shell of a man. He’s ceaselessly striving and searching to recover fragments of his lost dignity. His wife died many years before, and his three adult children continue to suffer the consequences of their imprisonment. His deadbeat son, Tip, is in and out of the prison, his older daughter, Fanny, moves in somewhat disreputable company, and his youngest child, Amy, has dedicated herself to caring for her father in the dismal prison. She willingly accepts a secluded and thankless life for the sake of love. Not only does she provide her father with much attention and love, but she also looks after her siblings as a second mother. She even works as a seamstress to provide money for the family. It’s this work that leads her to encounter Mr. Clennam at his mother’s house. The cold, imperious old woman has hired Amy to do some work for her.

Clennam meets Amy just as he returns from living abroad for 20 years after an unhappy childhood. He’s casting about for direction in life when his eye falls upon the timid little seamstress. He befriends her and her destitute family after following her home to the Marshalsea Prison.

The Prison of Self-centeredness

Dickens uses and reinterprets the prison motif throughout the novel, revealing to readers the various forms of confinement in human life: physical jails, psychological manipulation, and the prison of one’s own self-centeredness. Stevenson goes so far as to say that “Little Dorrit is essentially a morality play, an allegory of the imprisonment and ordeal of Everyman, who sets forth on a journey whose ultimate end is freedom of the spirit through disinterested love.” While Stevenson perhaps overemphasizes the allegorical nature of the work, she rightly highlights the central cord around which all the various plot strands wind: the journey to true freedom through love.

Mr. Dorrit is an excellent example of the self-absorption that imprisons him. Even when he’s freed from the Marshalsea through the good offices of Clennam and finds that he’s heir to an immense fortune, he remains psychologically imprisoned. He desperately tries to conform to self-flattering social conventions and bury his shameful past, wearing himself out with worry over his newfound status and what other socialites will think of him.

Mr. Dorrit, Tip, and Fanny obsess over what is “proper” for the role dictated by their sudden wealth, a part Amy struggles to embrace. She alone maintains her full integrity, refusing to be seduced by the spectacle of wealth, power, and the empty show of worldly ambitions. Instead, she maintains her simplicity and her constant care and concern for others.

"Arthur Clennam tells the Good News," 1924, by Harold Copping. In this depiction, Arthur Clennam tells Mr. Dorrit and his daughter that they have inherited a vast fortune. Public Domain

Amy suffers greatly over the course of the novel. In the Marshalsea, she undergoes the physical deprivations of poverty. Worse still is the emotional turmoil. Her view of her father at the novel’s beginning is a conflicted one. When Clennam first meets Amy at the Marshalsea, he observes this: “Her look at her father, half admiring him and proud of him, half ashamed for him, all devoted and loving, went to [Clennam’s] inmost heart.” She suffers by seeing her father reduced to such a poor state.

She also suffers from the ingratitude and dismissiveness from most of her family, despite all she’s done for them. Their ingratitude only becomes more acute after they become wealthy. She bears all this for the most part silently. It pains her to pain others, too, such as the prison gatekeeper’s son whose proposal of marriage she feels bound to decline since she cannot return his affection. In addition, she endures the deaths of multiple loved ones over the course of the novel.

But Amy’s her greatest sorrow is her unrequited love. She quickly develops feelings for the kind-hearted Arthur Clennam, but he has eyes for another young lady. Although Clennam’s hesitant nature deprives him of the opportunity to marry that lady, other circumstances lead to a lengthy separation between Clennam and Little Dorrit. With neither Arthur’s company nor his love, she carries this quiet anguish in her heart, like a wound hidden under clothing. Arthur simply thinks of her as a good friend.

Humble Heroism

Despite her own suffering, Amy always seeks to lessen the sufferings of others. She becomes the embodiment of the self-sacrifice that is the antidote to the self-centeredness pervading the novel. Critic Nasrullah Mambrol says that she holds the “key of affection” that leads the other characters out of their respective prisons. Similarly, a review from “Thoughts on Papyrus” accurately states, “Dickens makes a point that heroism, courage, and true strength do not necessarily imply one single bold action, and these are also found in one’s daily devotion, in unshakeable faith, in unquestionable loyalty, in compassion and in the will not to give up, despite one’s hopelessly horrific circumstances.”

Though such isn’t always the case in the real world, Dickens chooses to reward this type of humble heroism: Amy’s fortunes take a turn for the better. At the end of the novel, Amy’s love for Clennam is returned at last.

An 1857 illustration by Hablot Knight Browne, depicting the marriage of Arthur Clennam and Amy Dorrit, based on Charles Dickens's book "Little Dorrit." Public Domain

Against a backdrop of mystery, intrigue, satire, and social critique, filled with characters of signature Dickensian quirkiness, the great novelist tells a tale of love and its quiet endurance in the face of hardship. It’s in her commitment to love that Amy discovers the true riches that contrast so sharply with the monetary success blinding so many of the other characters. As she says to Clennam after he, too, is imprisoned in the Marshalsea,

“I never was rich before, I never was proud before, I never was happy before, I am rich in being taken by you, I am proud in having been resigned by you, I am happy in being with you in this prison, as I should be happy in coming back to it with you, if it should be the will of God, and comforting and serving you with all my love and truth. … I love you dearly! I would rather pass my life here with you, and go out daily, working for our bread, than I would have the greatest fortune that ever was told, and be the greatest lady that ever was honoured.”

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