The Ticklish Topic: Finance and Ideology in Little Dorrit

This article examines Dickens's treatment of financial speculation in Little Dorrit. I argue that, in this novel, Dickens engages critically with the fantasy structure of speculation: with the dreams it sanctions, and the desires it legitimates. Finance as 'fever' and finance as 'fantasy' are the two sides of the same coin. The first section discusses the 'magic of finance' as represented by the elusive figure of Merdlle, contrasting his frauds with Panck's successful scheme. The second section investigates Arthur Clennam's ambivalent role in the economic unconscious of the text, drawing on žizeck's insights into the workings of ideology. The novel embraces the moral lesson of individual responsibility by punishing Arthur for his speculation while ultimately redeeming Panck. Speculation stands condemned when a middle-class character, actively involved in the industrial sphere, attempts a leap towards the illicit goal of unearned welath, but the same fantasy appears less illusory when experienced by a character who has not yet been granted the kind of bourgeois freedom that Arthur enjoys in the text.