Little Dorrit - nobody's fault, everyone's in it

The recent serialisation of Dicken's Little Dorrit was remarkably well timed on the question of unexpected wealth followed by unexpected crash. In an earlier film version of the book, however, the subtitle is added to remind us of the subtle point that Dickens was making throughout the story: Nobody's Fault. This refrain runs through each of the intricate threads of the book and is especially interesting in relation to Arthur Clennam recently returned from 20 years in China. He imagined that his family must be responsible for Mr Dorrit's extended stay in the Marshalsea debtors' prison, and tried to assuage what he felt sure was his guilt in this other family's story, and in doing so unwittingly set up the conditions in which a greater tragedy was to play out.

In the meantime, Mr Merdle, man of the age, was held captive in his position of money maker. Few wanted the trouble of working out how to make their own money increase in value, rather they clamoured to press their cash into his bank in the irrational belief that Merdle could make it increase in value.

A third theme includes the Circumlocution Office where legal documentation and process are entirely submerged in arcane process and bureaucratic nightmare coupled with men who, robbed of any access to worthwhile work of their own, barely rise above the pettiness of obstruction and snobbery.

In the telling of the tale Dickens draws out the characters, and allows this to be the motor of the story. The overall 'fault' is the accumulation of faults of the players.