I found Little Dorrit unexpectedly painful to read, because the society scenes left me wincing every time. "Save yourselves!" I wanted to shout at the characters, but of course they could not hear me and would not have heeded me even if they could. It reminded me strongly of Our Mutual Friend -- I feel certain that the Veneerings would have frequented the Merdles' dinner parties.
In my last post about the book I said I must have skipped over a 5-page chunk of text inadvertently in my hugely pregnant state, but it was actually a bigger block than that. There are two chapters that I do not remember at all, not in the slightest. And they're important chapters. The good news is that I finished the book with far fewer questions this time around, but the bad news is that I'm still scratching my head about what happened in 2002. Maybe I moved the bookmark to my target page, nodded off in the first of the two forgotten chapters, and thought the next day that I should start reading at the bookmark? Maybe I was so tired at the end of one day that my eyes passed over the words but my oh-so-pregnant brain failed to comprehend them? I will never know, I guess. But! I'm glad I filled in those gaps! Sometimes Dickens is elliptical, but two chapters' worth of big revelations would be a lot to elide.
I found the book's portrayal of the costs of wealth to be unexpectedly timely. We still don't believe that the love of money is the root of all evil, right? Maybe we ask ourselves: who could help loving money? Money buys freedom! I still shudder a little, though, thinking about the the ways that money imprisons some of the Little Dorrit characters. After I finished the book I felt an urgent need to catch up on charitable giving for the year. I got everything all squared away through the end of May and still felt unsettled, so I proceeded with the June giving as well.
Generally I've found that I uncover more to enjoy in a Dickens novel the second time through. Even though I'm glad I read Little Dorrit last month, I wouldn't really say that I enjoyed it. Lots to think about, less to delight in. Not my favorite May Dickens Read-Along, but at least I know now what Mr. Clennam wanted to remember!
I opted to listen to LD, and am doing so only when I go for walks or am doing stuff around the house, so I am making my way through it sloooowly.
I agree it’s painful. I am really curious about your thoughts about Tattycoram. (I’m only just past the chapter in which Clennam and Meagles visit Miss M and T declines to return home.) I'm pretty sure the novel is asking us to straightforwardly side with Clennam and Meagles, but both times I’ve read it (last time was in college, 30 years ago) I can’t help seeing Meagles as a devastating portrait of self-deluded do-gooding. His instructions to her to keep counting sound to me like a jarringly modern version of some parenting manual’s rote instructions for ‘time outs.' There’s a LOT I don’t remember (all those plot twists and turns that I always forget in Dickens as soon as I finish), but I do remember (or I think I do?) Pet’s fate and the way Tatty repents and replaces her, and how it struck me as unconvincing way back when. And I can't wait for the chapter from Miss Wade's pov--another instance of Dickens perhaps unintentionally winning my sympathy when he's not entirely trying to solicit it!
I’ve also been struck by the way LD’s goodness gets ratcheted up to unbearable levels… Bleak House’s Esther S seems more interesting, b/c so much more ambivalent. She shows the costs—the difficulty of inhabiting this role—so much more clearly. With LD, her idiot dad and awful sibs and their failures to appreciate her just seem too much—the self-pity I see Dickens vicariously enjoying just makes me cringe.
Esther’s case also keeps suggesting itself to me as a revision of Tattycoram’s…both orphans ‘rescued’ from bleak fates by well-meaning folk—but Jarndyce educates Esther for a middle-class life (b/c of her parentage? But she’s ‘illegitimate’) while Tatty is never (apparently) educated or expected to be more than a servant (like Charley, who’s quite content to be Esther’s maid, and happily commodifies herself when Jarndyce tells her to present herself to Esther as a present, a scene that always makes me shudder).
And just in general, I’m struck by all the echoes and parallels between this set of characters and those in other Dickens novels. So I’m definitely enjoying the process of listening to it overall, though it’s a critical kind of enjoyment, I guess :)
Posted by: Nicole | June 09, 2021 at 09:07 PM