SOURCE: Linehan, Tom. “The Importance of Plot in Little Dorrit.” Journal of Narrative Technique 6, no. 2 (spring 1976): 116-31.

In the following essay, Linehan refutes the common critical claim that thematic concerns in Little Dorrit are of much greater importance than plot.

Criticism has rarely been in more agreement about a Dickens novel than in the common opinion that plot in Little Dorrit can be dismissed as unimportant. Regardless of the context in which discussion occurs, critics generally demote plot to the level of cumbersome intrigue and stagy, sentimental melodrama. The principal characters in the main plot, Amy Dorrit and Clennam, are viewed as wooden and unconvincing, the least memorable figures in the novel. Orwell's observation in “Charles Dickens” has acquired almost prescriptive force in criticism of Little Dorrit: “The last thing anyone ever remembers about these books is their central story.”¹ John Wain implies that even Dickens would endorse...