Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (suggested reading .TXT) 📕
Description
Little Dorrit, like many of Charles Dickens’ novels, was originally published in serial form over a period of about 18 months, before appearing in book form in 1857.
The novel focuses on the experiences of its protagonist Arthur Clenham, who has spent some twenty years in China helping his father run the family business there. After his father dies, Arthur returns home to London. His mother gives him little in the way of welcome. She is a cold, bitter woman who has brought Arthur up under a strict religious regime concentrating on the punitive aspects of the Old Testament. Despite this upbringing, or perhaps in reaction to it, Arthur is a kind, considerate man. He is intrigued by a slight young woman he encounters working as a part-time seamstress for his mother, whom his mother calls simply “Little Dorrit.” Arthur senses some mystery about her mother’s employment of Little Dorrit, and proceeds to investigate.
There are several subplots and a whole host of characters. Compared to some of Dickens’ work, Little Dorrit features a good deal of intrigue and tension. There are also some strong strands of humor, in the form of the fictional “Circumlocution Office,” whose sole remit is “How Not To Do It,” and which stands in the way of any improvement of British life. Also very amusing are the rambling speeches of Flora, a woman with whom Arthur was enamored before he left for China, but whose shallowness he now perceives only too well.
Little Dorrit has been adapted for the screen many times, and by the BBC in 2010 in a limited television series which featured Claire Foy as Little Dorrit, Matthew Macfayden as Arthur Clenham, and Andy Serkis as the villain Rigaud.
Read free book «Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (suggested reading .TXT) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Charles Dickens
Read book online «Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (suggested reading .TXT) 📕». Author - Charles Dickens
She shut the book and remained for a little time with her face shaded by her hand. So did the old man, otherwise still unchanged in attitude; so, probably, did the old woman in her dimmer part of the room. Then the sick woman was ready for bed.
“Good night, Arthur. Affery will see to your accommodation. Only touch me, for my hand is tender.” He touched the worsted muffling of her hand—that was nothing; if his mother had been sheathed in brass there would have been no new barrier between them—and followed the old man and woman downstairs.
The latter asked him, when they were alone together among the heavy shadows of the dining-room, would he have some supper?
“No, Affery, no supper.”
“You shall if you like,” said Affery. “There’s her tomorrow’s partridge in the larder—her first this year; say the word and I’ll cook it.”
No, he had not long dined, and could eat nothing.
“Have something to drink, then,” said Affery; “you shall have some of her bottle of port, if you like. I’ll tell Jeremiah that you ordered me to bring it you.”
No; nor would he have that, either.
“It’s no reason, Arthur,” said the old woman, bending over him to whisper, “that because I am afeared of my life of ’em, you should be. You’ve got half the property, haven’t you?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Well then, don’t you be cowed. You’re clever, Arthur, an’t you?”
He nodded, as she seemed to expect an answer in the affirmative.
“Then stand up against them! She’s awful clever, and none but a clever one durst say a word to her. He’s a clever one—oh, he’s a clever one!—and he gives it her when he has a mind to’t, he does!”
“Your husband does?”
“Does? It makes me shake from head to foot, to hear him give it her. My husband, Jeremiah Flintwinch, can conquer even your mother. What can he be but a clever one to do that!”
His shuffling footstep coming towards them caused her to retreat to the other end of the room. Though a tall, hard-favoured, sinewy old woman, who in her youth might have enlisted in the Foot Guards without much fear of discovery, she collapsed before the little keen-eyed crab-like old man.
“Now, Affery,” said he, “now, woman, what are you doing? Can’t you find Master Arthur something or another to pick at?”
Master Arthur repeated his recent refusal to pick at anything.
“Very well, then,” said the old man; “make his bed. Stir yourself.” His neck was so twisted that the knotted ends of his white cravat usually dangled under one ear; his natural acerbity and energy, always contending with a second nature of habitual repression, gave his features a swollen and suffused look; and altogether, he had a weird appearance of having hanged himself at one time or other, and of having gone about ever since, halter and all, exactly as some timely hand had cut him down.
“You’ll have bitter words together tomorrow, Arthur; you and your mother,” said Jeremiah. “Your having given up the business on your father’s death—which she suspects, though we have left it to you to tell her—won’t go off smoothly.”
“I have given up everything in life for the business, and the time came for me to give up that.”
“Good!” cried Jeremiah, evidently meaning Bad. “Very good! only don’t expect me to stand between your mother and you, Arthur. I stood between your mother and your father, fending off this, and fending off that, and getting crushed and pounded betwixt em; and I’ve done with such work.”
“You will never be asked to begin it again for me, Jeremiah.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it; because I should have had to decline it, if I had been. That’s enough—as your mother says—and more than enough of such matters on a Sabbath night. Affery, woman, have you found what you want yet?”
She had been collecting sheets and blankets from a press, and hastened to gather them up, and to reply, “Yes, Jeremiah.” Arthur Clennam helped her by carrying the load himself, wished the old man good night, and went upstairs with her to the top of the house.
They mounted up and up, through the musty smell of an old close house, little used, to a large garret bedroom. Meagre and spare, like all the other rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer than the rest, by being
Comments (0)