He Who Trusts in Riches . . .

        That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with the malignity and rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions: is a fact as firmly established by experience as that we human creatures breathe an atmosphere. . . .

        As a vast fire will fill the air to a great distance with its roar, so the sacred flame which the mighty Barnacles had fanned caused the air to resound more and more with the name of Merdle. It was deposited on every lip, and carried into every ear. There never was, there never had been, there never again should be, such a man as Mr Merdle. Nobody, as aforesaid, knew what he had done; but everybody knew him to be the greatest that had appeared.

In these words, which begin chapter 13 of part ii of Little Dorrit, Dickens tells us of the public  fascination, spreading like an epidemic disease, with a rich man named Merdle. Mr Merdle, with no political experience to speak of, has entered Parliament because . . . well, because surely his riches prove him to be a superior human being who understands all that needs to be understood in directing the path of a great nation. People all across London – even in poor Bleeding Heart Yard, where the inhabitants never have enough money to pay their quarterly rent – good Britons everywhere praise Merdle for being “the one, mind you, to put us all to rights in respects of that which all on us looked to, and to bring us all safe home as much as we needed, mind you, fur toe be brought.” They believe that Mr Merdle understands their misery, and they in turn sympathize with his riches to the extent that his very existence provides them the example that assures them that they too would pay their rent if only the roll of the die had caused the slight, trivial change in circumstance that would have made them as rich as the glorious Merdle.

Dickens knows these poor people so well! He understands the psychology that leads them to venerate the rich man who appears to have done everything for them even when he hasn’t done anything for them at all. He knows the rich man very well, too, and describes his downfall with startling realism.

But Charles Dickens didn’t understand everything about people. Silly man! In the tale he spins, when the dreadful truth is uncovered and Merdle’s bankruptcy is known, proving him to be a fraud, a liar, and, contrary to common belief, a terrible businessman, Dickens actually imagines that the people will turn against Mr Merdle.

Prisons and Accounting

Just a few days ago, I wrote that I had to stop trying to write about (capitalized) Meaning in the books I read. And now, all too soon, here am I to pronounce the Meaning of Dickens’s Little Dorrit.

Well, one of the meanings, anyway: redemption from a life of moral accounting.

The idea starts with prisons, a pervasive theme in both literal and figurative forms. The book begins with legal criminals Rigaud and Cavalletto in prison in Marseilles, and the jumping-off point for the main plot is the long incarceration of William Dorrit in the Marshalsea for debt. This much I remembered.

But I'm noticing so much more this time through the book. The workers of London are said to be in prison. The monks at the St. Bernard pass speak of their confinement. Mrs. Clennam says she is imprisoned by her wheelchair and bound to her house. Importantly, even the prisoners who have served their terms are described as having a lingering taint of prison about them. The words of Charles Darnay have been ringing in my ears: “[I am] bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it.”

Many characters keep mental balance sheets of right and wrong, for themselves and for others, operating under the idea that ethical behavior before God (or not) is just a matter of paying off bad deeds with good deeds or jail sentences or money (spent for the good of the state, of course) – just a matter of getting your account into the black. But then at the end (I won't give away all the details on the miniscule chance that you ever read this unjustly forgotten book), one character leaves the prison of keeping accounts and goes out to find the most humble Christian character of the book in order to ask for her forgiveness, and in doing so, the penitent character barely escapes death when the house that represents both prison and accounting literally collapses. The picture is of a passage not just from death to life or from sin to righteousness but from a religious stance that one can bargain with God by means of one's own righteousness to a position of humility, confession, and acceptance of grace.

More words ringing in my ears:

     “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
          because the LORD has anointed me
     to bring good tidings to the afflicted;
          he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
     to proclaim liberty to the captives,
          and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.”

Much of my frustration with the American Church can be summarized by pointing out that a great book by one of the greatest authors in all of history can offer this profound Christian message and not be found on the shelves in a Christian book store.

P. S. Seriously? Blogspot’s spell checker doesn’t know the word “miniscule”?!