SOURCE: Carlisle, Janice M. “Little Dorrit: Necessary Fictions.” Studies in the Novel 7, no. 2 (summer 1975): 195-214.

In the following essay, Carlisle examines the relationship between Little Dorrit as a work of fiction, and the various fictions or illusions created within the novel by its characters.

On the last page of Little Dorrit (1855-57), Dickens describes the wedding of Amy Dorrit and Arthur Clennam. Literally the last words accorded to a character are spoken by the most minor of them all, “the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was”¹ of Saint George's Church. He explains the “special interest” that observers take in Little Dorrit's wedding:

“For, you see,” said Little Dorrit's old friend, “this young lady is one of our curiosities, and has come now to the third volume of our Registers. Her birth is in what I call the first volume; she lay asleep on...