A King Lear of the debtors' prison: Dickens and Shakespeare on mortal shame

Social Research, Winter, 2003 by Alexander Welsh

In a brilliant passage reminiscent of the description of the hangers-on of the debtors' prison in book 1, Dickens renders the British expatriate community in Italy:

   It appeared, on the whole, to Little Dorrit herself, that this
   same society in which they lived, greatly resembled a superior
   sort of Marshalsea. Numbers of people seemed to come
   abroad, pretty much as people had come into the prison;
   through debt, through idleness, relationship, curiosity, and
   general unfitness for getting on at home. They were
   brought into these foreign towns in the custody of couriers
   and local followers, just as the debtors had been brought
   into the prison. They prowled about in the churches and
   picture-galleries, much in the old, dreary, prison-yard manner.
   They were usually going away again to-morrow or next
   week, and rarely knew their own minds, and seldom did
   what they said they would do, or went where they said they
   would go: in all this again, very like the prison debtors.
   They paid high for poor accommodation, and disparaged a
   place while they pretended to like it: which was exactly the
   Marshalsea custom. They were envied when they went away,
   by people feigning not to want to go: and that again was the
   Marshalsea habit invariably (2.7.427-28).

By such comparisons Dickens begins to generalize his theme. If the shadow of the Marshalsea wall falls upon many who have never been near the place, then the prison has become something like a metaphor for life itself. A profound irony resides in the contrasting titles of the two halves of the novel, "Poverty" and "Riches": these two words may signify a distinction without a difference.

Little Dorrit herself, and only Little Dorrit, wordlessly comprehends this irony. She is the one member of the family who is unable to celebrate her father's inheritance of riches or to strike the new poses that reflect it. Like Cordelia in the first scene of Shakespeare's play, she holds back and bides the time. In book 2 the point is made repeatedly that her thoughts return to the prison in London, which her father scolds her for not forgetting. In the last pages of book 1, as the family enter the carriage that will start them on their journey, Amy is forgotten and almost left behind in the prison. Clennam has discovered her senseless on the floor of her room there and bears her in his arms to the departing carriage (like Lear bearing Cordelia at the end of the play?). Fanny scolds her unconscious sister for not changing "her ugly old shabby dress" (1.36.359); but Amy will preserve that dress and deliberately put it on when she returns to the Marshalsea to seek out the hero, in her father's old room, at the end of the novel.

The death of William Dorrit in Rome, while his new good fortune is still upon him, provides the most moving chapter in Little Dorrit and confirms all of its heroine's intuitions. The occasion is a dinner party hosted by Mrs. Merdle, with other fashionable expatriates present, plus "the usual French Count and the usual Italian Marchese." While they are still at table, Mr. Dorrit calls disconcertedly to his daughter: