Little Dorrit

Amy Dorrit has grown up within the Marshalsea debtors’ prison, caring for her imprisoned father and supporting her family through sewing. Arthur Clennam returns to England after years abroad and becomes interested in the Dorrits while investigating a possible injustice connected to his own severe household. Their lives become entangled with government bureaucracy, financial speculation and the apparently powerful financier Mr Merdle.

When the Dorrit family unexpectedly inherits wealth, social embarrassment replaces material poverty but does not remove the habits formed by imprisonment. Dickens uses the Marshalsea and the fictional Circumlocution Office to examine debt, confinement, class aspiration and administrative obstruction, showing how institutions and private shame can imprison people even outside literal walls.