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Do It or Dorrit

1991; Duke University Press; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1345660

1945-8509

Ruth Bernard Yeazell,

Contemporary Literature and Criticism

Sometime in early autumn of 1855, Charles Dickens apparently decided that novel he had been tentatively calling Nobody's Fault should be renamed Little Dorrit-a change he accounted for in a letter to a friend by declaring that new title a pleasanter sound in my ears, and equally applicable to same story.' Despite author's bland explanation, however, believe we need to take seriously famous protest of a shrewd critic-to my mind, indeed, best critic this difficult novel is ever likely to have. refer, of course, not to Lionel Trilling but to Flora Finching. of all strangest names ever heard, Flora says, the strangest, like a place down in country with a turnpike, or a favorite pony or a puppy or a bird or something from a seed-shop to be put in a garden or a flower-pot and come up speckled. Despite these apt remarks on strangeness of name, Flora has no sooner heard her father mention a Little Dorrit than she seems to know what one is good for: I said at moment, she tells Arthur Clennam, Good gracious why not have her here then when there's anything to do instead of putting it out.2 And having employed Dorrit to make dresses for her, Flora returns to puzzling question of name when seamstress's sudden acquisition of wealth puts an arbitrary stop to her labor. The dress shall never be finished by anybody else but shall be laid by for a keepsake just as it is and called Little Dorrit, Flora announces when seamstress is compelled to abandon her current project, though why that strangest of denominations at any time never did myself and now never shall! (1.35.404). By professing herself hopelessly baffled even as she instinctively associates Little Dorrit's name with her work, Flora as usual sells herself short, especially if we gloss these last remarks with invaluable commentary of her fellow critic in same scene: Don't believe it's his doing! Mr. F's Aunt declares of Arthur Clennam. He needn't take no credit to himself for it!