Little Dorrit...eventually

So I've started and am halfway through (at least I hope I'm halfway through) my next Dickens, Little Dorrit. Being in England as I update it makes it come alive for me. I know this is one of his more difficult novels to read (one uncle who had to do it for literature described it as painfully boring and my sister Jackie was not able to finish it).

I wondered why. I guess evil (and there is so much evil in this) is tedious. You're just skimming through it hoping to get to the part where he deals effectively with the villain, cutting them down in their not-so-prime. The thing I love most about Dickens is that he has a Sidneyesque sense of justice. Bad men who beat their wives die. (I'm hoping this remains true in this book because the bad man or men, are particularly noxious).

But ploughing through it, (sometimes excessive virtue and a refusal to blame or to see someone for what they are - Nell-Grandfather, Little Dorrit-Father - tires me. But I can see why Little Dorrit keeps making excuses for her weak and selfish father, sacrificing herself, denying herself to gratify his every whim so he can live in the Marshalsea Prison like a poor approximation of a lord. She worries about the whole family. And they, a product of their upbringing and surroundings, take it for granted and don't really care very much for her.

Other people see her for what she is though, and other people try to help her.

Arthur Clennam's former sweetheart Flora makes me laugh with her confusing speech, no commas, always hinting at something that doesn't exist anymore...pretending when there is no cause to. But it's her aunt, the woman with the glaring visage and vicious bark that makes me chortle so hard I spit out my soup.I think she is a creation of genius and to find a character like her (up there with the man in smalls who courted Mrs Nickleby over the fence, after throwing vegetable marrows at her head) is, well, a delightful surprise. I love it when she fixes Arthur Clenham with that glare.

And then comes out with something like:

"There are milestones on the way to Dover."

Which doesn't mean anything, but nobody seems to mind, except for Arthur, who is trying desperately to grasp what is behind the malevolence of these apparently unconnected, disjointed statements.

Ah me.

Well, I'll update again, when I have finished the book. And when I have, there will only be three more to go.

Methinks, it is possible that I'll be done with Dickens 2012, why, in 2012 itself.

And then I'll move on to Hardy.