Natalie Leeder on Dorrit

In ‘Little Dorrit’s London: Babylon Revisited’, Nancy Aycok Metz argues that Little Dorrit acts as a response to the changing shape of London in the mid-nineteenth century. Whilst she acknowledges that such an interest in the transitory nature of the metropolis is nothing new in Dickens’ work, she maintains that in Little Dorrit he visits the theme with a deeper critical eye and seriousness.

Aycok Metz suggest that the novel engages with contemporary archaeological discourses which were brought to the public eye; in 1951 Household Words told ‘The Story of Giovanni Belzoni’, and that same year Austen Henry Layard returned to England. The images of ruined civilizations touched the romantic imagination, and there was a vogue of landscape images of London as a ruin. Aycok Metz emphasises the depiction of the ruined city in Little Dorrit, which she argues ‘sometimes reads like a museum guide to “lost” London’.

In this it differs from the immediacy of the descriptions in Dickens’ other novels; Little Dorrit plays with distance. Aycok Metz uses Mrs Clennam’s house as an example of the temporal confusion of the novel, as architecture serves to remind us of the past: it is an ‘anomaly’ among the changing metropolis as it clings to a long gone stability.

Aycok Metz argues that this distance is particularly relevant from a readerly perspective; removed by time, we are forced away from any sense of integration. We must share the detached consciousness of the characters as they ‘camp out on the ruins of the past’. Clennam walks down empty streets, reminiscent of a lost civilization, which parallels the depopulation of the city (whilst the slums continued to grow). This contrasts to Dickens’ usual portrayal of the crowds of London, and such journeys as Oliver, Snagsby and Florence take through the metropolis.

Another historical influence Aycok Metz draws attention to is the improvements in London from 1847-54, such as the railways, a new sewer system and slum clearance. The visible ruin and upheaval is reflected in the ruins of Little Dorrit. The Italian episodes in the novel serve to further this image, as they provide a reminder of the fate of Rome, hinting at London’s own destiny.

Aycok Metz argues that Clennam attempts to confront the past that is ever present in his surroundings, but struggles with its fragmented and empty nature: ‘discontinuity rules’. His experience of it as such is reflected in the more minor characters such as Flora. They are forced to return to the past. To conclude, Aycok Metz draws upon Dickens’s own experience of return as he revisits the prison ‘so closely associated with his own early and intense pain’.

Ultimately, Aycok Metz’s reading of Little Dorrit is an interesting insight into Dickens’ world and its discourses. However, it seems to fall short of any deep analysis of the novel. There is little in the essay that could be disputed as such, but it never seems to go far enough to truly penetrate Little Dorrit’s London.