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 there a definitive answer. Surely Dickens's characters might fruitfully be studied by looking carefully at all or many of his works, and—if my tendency to extrapolate...