Little Dorrit (Annotated)

by Charles Dickens

society pursues me.

Paranoid

But the wrongs society has heaped upon me are treasured in this breast.'

He is planning revenge against society at large.

he would have presented himself at Mr Casby's door, if there had been no Little Dorrit in existence;

we all deceive ourselves—that

as to motives of...

(look to the rats young and old, all ye Barnacles, for before God they are eating away our foundations, and will bring the roofs on our heads!);

She thought what a good father he would be.

I would tell him that he can never, never know how I feel his goodness, and how my good father would feel it.

the weak figure with its strong purpose,

witch excursion.

Is Dickens suggesting that Mistress Affery is witch-like?

as her shadow descended on it from the witch-region of sleep.

Another witchcraft allusion.

Strange, if the little sick-room light were in effect a watch-light,

Time shall show us. The post of honour and the post of shame,

there was something wrong in the gloomy house.

Thinking of her, and of the possibility of her father's release from prison by the unbarring hand of death—the only change of circumstance he could foresee that might enable him to be such a friend to her as he wished to be, by altering her whole manner of life, smoothing her rough road, and giving her a home—he

'It's not put into his head to be buried. It's put into his head to be made useful. You hold your life on the condition that to the last you shall struggle hard for it. Every man holds a discovery on the same terms.'

a calm knowledge that what was true must remain true, in spite of all the Barnacles in the family ocean, and would be just the truth,

There was something in his way of spurning them out of their places with his heel, and getting them into the required position, that Clennam thought had an air of cruelty in it.

Rigaud?

How expressive that heightened colour in her face, that fluttered manner, her downcast eyes, her irresolute happiness! When had Clennam seen her look like this?

To this Gowan had no objection. No, he knew he was too safe.

There was a passing cloud on Mr Meagles's good-humoured face when they all three (four, counting the dog, and he was the most objectionable but one of the party) came in to breakfast.

There is something sinister about Mr Gowan.

there is much less difference than you are inclined to suppose between an honest man and a scoundrel.'

the Gowan family were a very distant ramification of the Barnacles;

It was an instinctive testimony to Little Dorrit's worth and difference from all the rest, that the poor young fellow honoured and loved her for being simply what she was.

Arthur Clennam is starting to feel similarly.

when I come outside the gate, I am unprotected and solitary.'

Amy does not want her association with The Marshalsea known outside the Marshalsea. Young John Chivers is associated with The Marshalsea. Neither does she want her external associations (i.e. her work for Mrs Clennam) known within the Marshalsea.

I hope you will have a good wife one day, and be a happy man.

Amy knows the nature of Young John's interest in her. Could her new friendship with Arthur Clennam be a factor in her rejection of Young John Chivers?

she looked down into the living grave on which the sun had risen, with her father in it three-and-twenty years,

the uncle instinctively taking Amy's arm as the arm to be relied on:

I shouldn't care,' said the Daughter of the Father of the Marshalsea, 'if the others were not so common. None of them have come down in the world as we have. They are all on their own level. Common.'

I have an interest in the little creature, and a respect for her

Her life has been one of such trial and devotion, and such quiet goodness, as you can scarcely imagine.

all kinds of calamities happened to his country because it did things that England did not, and did not do things that England did.

no country which failed to submit itself to those two large families could possibly hope to be under the protection of Providence;

foreigners were always immoral;

he's looking for somebody he don't want to see,

His eyes looked so very sinister,

she thought with a sudden coldness,

his trembling lips had turned colourless.

Monsieur Rigaud

utter disregard of other people,

the old wicked facility of the hands that had clung to the bars.

most evil of smiles,

whatever he did, he overdid, though it were sometimes by only a hairsbreadth),

take me through the rooms on my way out,

Canvas the house, as a thief!

always found the visitor looking at him, Mr Flintwinch.

He is looking for the opportunity of getting Mr Flintwich out of the way.

It seems to me hard that he should pay in life and money both.'

the place was something like a prison.

with his nose coming down over his moustache and his moustache going up and under his nose,

Rigaud

Mr Blandois was on the spot to pay his respects to the ladies. When he gallantly pulled off his slouched hat to Little Dorrit, she thought he had even a more sinister look, standing swart and cloaked in the snow, than he had in the fire-light over-night.

Rigaud

More treacherous than snow, perhaps, colder at heart, and harder to melt, Blandois of Paris by degrees passed out of her mind, as they came down into the softer regions.