About the book

Amy Dorrit has grown up in the Marshalsea, caring for a family whose habits and dignity have been shaped by imprisonment for debt. Arthur Clennam's return to England brings him into her life and into questions about his own family's unexplained obligations. Dickens extends the image of confinement through bureaucracy, domestic authority, money, and the fear of social embarrassment. The Circumlocution Office gives official obstruction a comic institution, while the Dorrit household makes dependence painfully intimate. Changes in fortune do not necessarily release the characters from ways of thinking learned under pressure. The novel's broad network of households and schemes keeps returning to Amy's unobtrusive labour, asking what a society that measures importance through wealth is capable of noticing about care.

Debt and confinement
Care
Social ambition

Why read it

For Dickens's sustained exploration of the prisons people carry into family life, government, and apparent prosperity.

English text

Contents and reading sections

Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
Section 7
Section 8
Section 9
Section 10
Section 11
Section 12
Section 13
Section 14
Section 15
Section 16
Section 17
Section 18
Section 19
Section 20
Section 21
Section 22
Section 23
Section 24
Section 25
Section 26
Section 27
Section 28
Section 29
Section 30
Section 31
Section 32
Section 33
Section 34
Section 35
Section 36
Section 37
Section 38
Section 39
Section 40
Section 41
Section 42
Section 43
Section 44
Section 45
Section 46
Section 47
Section 48
Section 49
Section 50
Section 51
Section 52
Section 53
Section 54
Section 55
Section 56
Section 57
Section 58
Section 59
Section 60
Section 61
Section 62
Section 63
Section 64
Section 65
Section 66
Section 67
Section 68
Section 69
Section 70
Section 71
Section 72
Section 73
Section 74
Section 75
Section 76
Section 77
Section 78
Section 79
Section 80
Section 81
Section 82
Section 83
Section 84
Section 85
Section 86
Section 87
Section 88
Section 89
Section 90
Section 91
Section 92
Section 93
Section 94
Section 95
Section 96
Section 97
Section 98
Section 99
Section 100
Section 101
Section 102
Section 103
Section 104
Section 105
Section 106
Section 107
Section 108
Section 109
Section 110
Section 111
Section 112
Section 113
Section 114
Section 115
Section 116
Section 117
Section 118
Section 119
Section 120
Section 121
Section 122
Section 123
Section 124
Section 125
Section 126
Section 127
Section 128
Section 129
Section 130
Section 131
Section 132
Section 133
Section 134
Section 135
Section 136
Section 137
Section 138
Section 139
Section 140
Section 141
Section 142
Section 143
Section 144
Section 145
Section 146
Section 147
Section 148
Section 149
Section 150
Section 151
Section 152
Section 153
Section 154
Section 155
Section 156
Section 157
Section 158
Section 159
Section 160
Section 161

About the book

Why read it

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