How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
'Little mother!'
[...] "Maggy, how old are you?'
'Ten, mother,' said Maggy.
'You can't think how good she is, sir,' said Little Dorrit, with infinite tenderness. [...] 'Or how clever. She goes on errands as well as any one.' Maggy laughed. 'And is as trustworthy as the Bank of England.' Maggy laughed. 'She earns her own living entirely. Entirely, sir!' said Little Dorrit, in a lower and triumphant tone.
'Really does!'
'What is her history?' asked Clennam.
'Think of that, Maggy?' said Little Dorrit, taking her two large hands and clapping them together. 'A gentleman from thousands of miles away, wanting to know your history!'
'My history?' cried Maggy. 'Little mother.'
'She means me,' said Little Dorrit, rather confused; 'she is very much attached to me. Her old grandmother was not so kind to her as she should have been; was she, Maggy?' Maggy shook her head, made a drinking vessel of her clenched left hand, drank out of it, and said, 'Gin.' Then beat an imaginary child, and said, 'Broom-handles and pokers.' (1.9.92-110)
The inversion of Amy and Maggy's roles into mother and child is in equal parts creepy (since Maggy is actually a giant woman in her 30s or 40s) and shows the depth of protective love Amy can dole out. She does seem to prefer to take care of people over being taken care of herself.
Quote #5
The Barnacle family had for some time helped to administer the Circumlocution Office. The Tite Barnacle Branch, indeed, considered themselves in a general way as having vested rights in that direction, and took it ill if any other family had much to say to it. The Barnacles were a very high family, and a very large family. They were dispersed all over the public offices, and held all sorts of public places. Either the nation was under a load of obligation to the Barnacles, or the Barnacles were under a load of obligation to the nation. It was not quite unanimously settled which; the Barnacles having their opinion, the nation theirs. (1.10.9)
This is so funny and great – the standard image of a family tree, spreading out its branches is transformed into a picture of a family as persistent parasite, covering the ship of state.
Quote #6
If Young John Chivery had had the inclination and the power to write a satire on family pride, he would have had no need to go for an avenging illustration out of the family of his beloved. He would have found it amply in that gallant brother and that dainty sister, so steeped in mean experiences, and so loftily conscious of the family name; so ready to beg or borrow from the poorest, to eat of anybody's bread, spend anybody's money, drink from anybody's cup and break it afterwards. To have painted the sordid facts of their lives, and they throughout invoking the death's head apparition of the family gentility to come and scare their benefactors, would have made Young John a satirist of the first water. (1.20.1)
Well, that's a very nice pat on the back for yourself, narrator – because whatever John Chivery can't compose in the way of a satire is, of course, exactly what the narrator is in the process of writing.