Little Dorrit (Annotated)

by Charles Dickens

The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement.

Imprisonment a common theme throughout book.

The fair little face, touched with divine compassion, as it peeped shrinkingly through the grate, was like an angel's in the prison.

The pure innocence of a child!

Compagnon de la Majolaine!

his moustache went up, and his nose came down.

Characteristic descriptor of Monsieur Rigaud.

a penitential garb of soot,

Prison-like imagery

dire despondency.

Through the heart of the town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed, in the place of a fine fresh river.

The Thames?

pity themselves for their old places of imprisonment.

'I know nothing of summer and winter, shut up here.

Like a prison.

I have seen so little happiness come of money;

It can buy me nothing that will not be a reproach and misery to me,

by the girl who had appeared when the bell was rung; the same who had been in the dimly-lighted room last night.

Little Dorrit

there was more consideration and care in it than naturally belonged to her utmost years;

Punctual to the moment, Little Dorrit appeared; punctual to the moment, Little Dorrit vanished. What became of Little Dorrit between the two eights was a mystery.

She had an extraordinary repugnance to dining in company;

A delicately bent head, a tiny form, a quick little pair of busy hands, and a shabby dress—it

If Mrs Affery had had any will or way of her own, it would probably have been unfavourable to Little Dorrit.

the eyes intently looking at his son as they had looked when life departed from them, seemed to urge him awfully to the task he had attempted;

What is the source of Arthur's distrust?

he left the home he had so lately found, with depressed heart.

he resolved to watch Little Dorrit and know more of her story.

somebody came from some Office, to go through some form of overlooking something which neither he nor anybody else knew anything about.

epitomising the administration of most of the public affairs in our right little, tight little, island.

lord set you up like a corner pin,

Bowling analogy

The doctor was scarcely the kind of apparition to inspire a patient with a sense of absolute completeness,

one little life, hardly stronger than theirs, appeared among the multitude of lesser deaths.

It's freedom, sir, it's freedom!

Interesting observation for a prison.

We have done all that—we know the worst of it; we have got to the bottom, we can't fall, and what have we found? Peace.

Crushed at first by his imprisonment, he had soon found a dull relief in it.

the lock and key that kept him in, kept numbers of his troubles out.

he languidly slipped into this smooth descent, and never more took one step upward.

the shabby old debtor with the soft manner and the white hair, was the Father of the Marshalsea.

more than twenty years of residence gave him a claim to the title.

At what period of her early life the little creature began to perceive that it was not the habit of all the world to live locked up in narrow yards surrounded by high walls with spikes at the top, would be a difficult question to settle.

her clasp of her father's hand was to be always loosened at the door which the great key opened; and that while her own light steps were free to pass beyond it, his feet must never cross that line.

Child of the Marshalsea and the child of the Father of the Marshalsea,

Not the same thing, though both refer to the same person.

for her wayward sister; for her idle brother;

Consequences of growing up in prison.

'Is he sorry not to be there now?' 'N-not particular,' said the turnkey.

listless crowd

He decided to will and bequeath his little property of savings to his godchild, and the point arose how could it be so 'tied up' as that only she should have the benefit of it?

'Supposing she was tender-hearted, and they came over her.

the turnkey thought about it all his life, and died intestate after all.

The first half of that space of her life was only just accomplished, when her pitiful and plaintive look saw her father a widower.

The child was only eight years old when her mother died.

the Child of the Marshalsea took upon herself a new relation towards the Father.

Through this little gate, she passed out of childhood into the care-laden world.

she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were,

Her father and siblings were surrendering to a life of despair.

Shall we speak of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life!

no knowledge even of the common daily tone and habits of the common members of the free community who are not shut up in prisons;

drinking from infancy of a well whose waters had their own peculiar stain, their own unwholesome and unnatural taste;

She took the place of eldest of the three, in all things but precedence; was the head of the fallen family; and bore, in her own heart, its anxieties and shames.

a man so broken as to be the Father of the Marshalsea, could be no father to his own children.