Little Dorrit

Like many of Dickens' novels, Little Dorrit was published in serial form. It consisted of 19 installments, illustrated by 'Phiz'. Dickens loved this form of publishing because it gave him a sense of intensity, and a closeness to his readership; in fact, he was writing only a few chapters ahead of the people reading it! The novel features the young Amy Dorrit who was born and brought up in the Marshalsea Debtors' Prison, a place close to the author's heart because his own father was imprisoned there for non-payment of debts


The Circumlocution Office

We might associate Dickens only with descriptions and situations of industrialisation and deep-set poverty. Yet Dickens is much more than this. He looks to causes, and the social structures, institutions and ideas which work in the background and sustain and propagate injustice. Returning to Dickens, it seems to me so obvious he is bright, fresh and incredibly relevant to today’s world. His world is ripe for our picking. Put it beside ours, and things light up.

Here is one area then: institutions. We can think of how he satirises the complex apparatus of the judiciary system in his great work Bleak House, but what about the “Office”...in particular government offices? I have been thinking about this for some time, having worked in offices myself in student holidays. And we all contact them on the phone (if we can get through). They are strange places indeed. Obviously, you can’t make too many generalisations, offices appear necessary, for one thing, for the functioning of society. And some people like working in them, or dealing with them. But many don’t... They can become places of tyranny, of boredom, disconnection, and alienation for the worker, a cog in a vast system; and for the outsider, an impregnable fortress, or machine, working at an infuriatingly slow pace, full of rules and regulations you can do nothing against.

One of the “best” offices in Dickens is to be found in Little Dorrit (1855-1857). It is called The Circumlocution Office. Now what is this? It is a government department, run purely for the benefit of its obstructive officials (sounds familiar?). It is of no social benefit. In fact, it is toxic. The character Arthur Clennam visits the office trying to find out about a man called William Dorrit, and he is passed from official to official. It is a satire of that well-known phenomenon, bureaucracy.

And as is only right, its name is long-winded, self-important and pompous, but if you take the trouble to look at its meaning, all is there: circumlocution means speaking in a roudabout way, using an unnecessary number of words to express an idea (which is perhaps not even worth expressing). It is, in fact, the process of evasion: “It being one of the principles of the Circumlocution Office never, on any account whatever, to give a straightforward answer.” (Little Dorrit, Book 1, chapter 10). Typically Dickensian, this use of a long-winded word. He loves to make fun and prick the bubble of self-importance. There is much to say about Dickens and language itself. More of that later.

Cover of Serial, Vol.4, March 1856