SOURCE: Winter, Sarah. “Domestic Fictions: Feminine Deference and Maternal Shadow Labor in Dickens' Little Dorrit.” In Dickens Studies Annual 18 (1989): 243-54.

In the following essay, Winter examines the issue of deference in the character of Amy Dorrit and its relationship to Dickens's criticism of British society.

In his essay on Dickens' Little Dorrit (1855-57), Lionel Trilling argues that in this novel “the desire for money is subordinated to the desire for deference.”¹ In Victorian society rituals of deference—a wife's deferring to her husband's wishes, a child's deferring to adult discipline and expectations, or a servant's deferring to a master's or mistress's orders—played an important role in the maintenance of gender and class hierarchies. The crucible of hierarchical relationships and of the deferential strategies for acting out and coping with them is the Victorian “Home”—domestic hierarchies, materially and spiritually supported by feminine domestic labor, perpetuate the bonds...