Rigaud confesses to fellow prisoner John Baptist that he is accused of murdering his wife in a Marseilles prison.

Arthur Clennam meets the Meagles family and their servant Tattycoram while held in quarantine on a ship near Marseilles.

Clennam returns to London and visits his cold, bedridden mother, who refuses to discuss his father's mysterious inscribed watch.

Clennam spots a young seamstress secretly entering the Marshalsea prison after leaving work at his mother's house.

Clennam visits the Marshalsea and is introduced to William Dorrit, the self-styled Father of the Marshalsea.

Clennam visits the Circumlocution Office to investigate William Dorrit's debt and is sent in circles without receiving any information.

Pancks approaches Clennam and asks him to share everything he knows about the Dorrit family.

Pancks reveals to Clennam that William Dorrit is heir to a fortune large enough to clear all his debts.

Amy and Clennam rush to the Marshalsea to tell William about his inheritance; he is overjoyed but distressed at the delay.

The Dorrits leave the Marshalsea in triumph; Amy faints in her room and is forgotten by her family in their haste.

The Dorrits travel Europe with a hired chaperone; William dies after losing his mind at a dinner party in Rome.

Mr. Merdle dies by suicide at a public bathhouse, and his vast financial fraud is exposed, ruining his investors.

Clennam sells his share of the business to protect Doyce from debt and is arrested and imprisoned in the Marshalsea.

The crumbling Clennam family house collapses as Mrs. Clennam and Amy return to confront Rigaud, crushing him inside.

Doyce returns to London with a new fortune, Clennam is released from prison, and he and Amy are married.

The main plot follows Arthur Clennam's return to London and his fateful encounter with Amy Dorrit, a seamstress secretly supporting her imprisoned family. Clennam investigates the Dorrit family's debt and, with Pancks's help, discovers that William Dorrit is heir to a fortune that can free him from the Marshalsea. The Dorrits are released into new wealth and travel Europe, but family pride and reckless investment lead to ruin. William Dorrit dies in mental decline abroad, and the collapse of Merdle's fraudulent financial empire devastates all who invested. Clennam sacrifices himself to protect his business partner and ends up imprisoned in the Marshalsea himself. The novel closes with Clennam freed through his partner's returned fortune and his marriage to Amy.

The headline events driving Little Dorrit from prison to freedom.

Clennam tells his mother he wants to leave the family business; she hires Flintwinch as her business partner instead.

Amy Dorrit secretly worked as a seamstress outside the Marshalsea from age thirteen to financially support her imprisoned family.

Tip Dorrit attempts various professions outside the prison but falls into debt and is himself imprisoned in the Marshalsea.

Clennam is locked inside the Marshalsea overnight and speaks with Tip, learning of Amy's fierce devotion to her father.

Clennam secretly pays off Tip's prison debts through Plornish, asking that his identity as benefactor remain unknown.

Amy and Maggy visit Clennam's lodgings late at night and then spend the rest of the night homeless on the streets.

Young John Chivery attempts to propose to Amy on the Iron Bridge; she gently refuses, saying he misunderstands her feelings.

Fanny Dorrit shows Amy the expensive bracelet Mrs. Merdle gave her as a bribe to stay away from Edmund Sparkler.

Clennam becomes Daniel Doyce's business partner and invests in Doyce's factory at Bleeding Heart Yard.

Pet Meagles marries Henry Gowan, and Clennam reconciles himself to the fact that she will never be his.

Edmund Sparkler is appointed to a position at the Circumlocution Office through the influence of the Merdle and Barnacle connection.

Fanny Dorrit decides to marry Edmund Sparkler solely as an act of spite against his overbearing mother, Mrs. Merdle.

Young John Chivery tells Clennam that Amy has long been in love with him; Clennam re-reads her letters in astonishment.

Pancks publicly confronts and humiliates Casby in front of his Bleeding Heart Yard tenants, exposing him as a greedy hypocrite.

Tattycoram returns to the Meagles carrying Rigaud's iron box, which contains documents that could expose Mrs. Clennam's secrets.

This pool covers the supporting events that shaped the novel's characters, beginning with Clennam's break from the family business and Amy's years of secret, selfless labour to sustain her imprisoned family. Key moments include Clennam secretly freeing Tip from debt, Amy and Maggy's dangerous night wandering the streets, and Young John Chivery's failed proposal to Amy on the Iron Bridge. The romantic and social entanglements of Fanny Dorrit and Edmund Sparkler play out against the Merdle family's rise to influence, while Clennam builds a new identity as Doyce's business partner. The pool reaches its emotional turning points as Young John finally reveals Amy's love to Clennam, and Tattycoram's return with Rigaud's iron box sets the stage for the novel's resolution. Together these events illuminate the loyalty, duty, and quiet suffering that define the world of the novel beyond its headline plot.

Secondary moments that shaped the lives of Little Dorrit's characters.

Affery wakes in the night and witnesses what seems to be a secret meeting involving two versions of Flintwinch.

Clennam confronts his mother with his suspicion that his father wronged someone; she silences him by summoning Flintwinch.

Rigaud is released from his French prison and forces John Baptist Cavalletto to travel with him after finding him at a roadside inn.

John Baptist Cavalletto is struck by a coach in London and rescued by Clennam, who leaves his card at the hospital.

Clennam decides not to pursue his romantic feelings for Pet Meagles, concluding he is too old and she cannot love him.

Amy dines at Casby's home and Pancks secretly reads her palm, hinting at knowledge of her family's coming fortune.

Tattycoram runs away from the Meagles to live with Miss Wade; Clennam and Meagles track her down but she refuses to return.

Rigaud, calling himself Blandois, arrives at Mrs. Clennam's house and shows particular interest in her husband's inscribed watch.

Amy writes to Clennam from Europe admitting she feels homesick, misses her old friends, and fears growing distant from him.

Frederick Dorrit protests his family's snobbish mistreatment of Amy and condemns their hypocritical pretensions to social superiority.

Clennam learns from John Baptist that the man known as Blandois is the murderer Rigaud, and the two join forces to find him.

Rigaud reappears at the Marshalsea and admits to Clennam that he has been extorting Mrs. Clennam with a damaging secret.

Amy visits Clennam in the Marshalsea; he confesses his love for her but refuses to accept her offer to pay his debts.

Mrs. Clennam reveals to Amy that Arthur is his father's illegitimate son and that she suppressed a will leaving money to Amy.

On the morning of her wedding, Amy asks Clennam to burn the contents of Rigaud's box unread, forfeiting her inheritance.

This pool tracks the hidden forces and pivotal revelations that drive Little Dorrit's deeper story, from Affery's strange dream-visions of concealed meetings to Clennam's tense confrontation with his secretive mother. The release of the murderer Rigaud from a French prison sets him on a collision course with the Clennam household, where he discovers secrets worth exploiting. Amy's growing isolation in Europe, Frederick's courageous defence of her character, and Clennam's discovery that John Baptist can identify Rigaud all build toward an inevitable reckoning. The pool culminates in Rigaud's extortion scheme at the Marshalsea, Amy's prison visit where Clennam finally confesses his love, and Mrs. Clennam's devastating revelation about Arthur's birth and the will she suppressed. Amy's final act of burning the will's contents on her wedding morning is the ultimate selfless gesture, closing the novel's central mystery in an act of quiet devotion.

The secrets, decisions, and discoveries that changed everything in Little Dorrit.