Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens - Brian Rosenberg (essay date 1996)

Brian Rosenberg (essay date 1996)

SOURCE: Rosenberg, Brian. “‘Immeshed in Uncertainties’: The Double Life of Little Dorrit.” In Little Dorrit's Shadows: Character and Contradiction in Dickens, pp. 31-48. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.

[In the following excerpt, Rosenberg examines the prominence of contradiction and division within the characters in Little Dorrit.]

With the single exception of Little Dorrit there is not one of [Dickens's] numerous stories that has not touches of the masterhand and strokes of indisputable genius.

—Unsigned obituary of Dickens, published June 11, 1870, in the Saturday Review

The decision to center a study of Dickens's characters upon Little Dorrit raises two obvious questions: why focus primarily on a single novel and why, given the many possibilities, on Little Dorrit in particular? To neither question is...

[The entire page is 8638 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the: