How we cite our quotes:
Quote #4
It is very seldom indeed that I can do that, because when I am not out at work, I am with my father, and even when I am out at work, I hurry home to him. But I pretend to-night that I am at a party.'
As she made the confession, timidly hesitating, she raised her eyes to the face, and read its expression so plainly that she answered it. 'Oh no, certainly! I never was at a party in my life.' She paused a little under his attentive look, and then said, 'I hope there is no harm in it. I could never have been of any use, if I had not pretended a little.' (1.14.32-33)
It's interesting how in the beginning of the novel, even though Amy is already a fully-grown young woman of 22, a lot of her speech is childlike. Here, for instance, the repeated word "pretend" sounds like she is playing make-believe rather than painfully going along with her father's denial about the fact that his children have to work to support him. And, of course, "party" really adds to the same sense – like she is acting out a fairy tale about going to a ball.
Quote #5
Mr. Meagles, for six successive days, published a discreetly covert advertisement in the morning papers, to the effect that if a certain young person who had lately left home without reflection, would at any time apply to his address at Twickenham, everything would be as it had been before, and no reproaches need be apprehended. The unexpected consequences of this notification suggested to the dismayed Mr. Meagles for the first time that some hundreds of young persons must be leaving their homes without reflection every day; for shoals of wrong young people came down to Twickenham, who, not finding themselves received with enthusiasm, generally demanded compensation by way of damages, in addition to coach-hire there and back. Nor were these the only uninvited clients whom the advertisement produced. The swarm of begging-letter writers, who would seem to be always watching eagerly for any hook, however small, to hang a letter upon, wrote to say that having seen the advertisement, they were induced to apply with confidence for various sums, ranging from ten shillings to fifty pounds: not because they knew anything about the young person, but because they felt that to part with those donations would greatly relieve the advertiser's mind. (1.28.2)
Dickens's novels are always closed systems. Even though we're in a city, the characters are finite and interact only with each other. So here, it's interesting to get a sense of a wider world out there. How many of these sad young people's stories would make for equally interesting novels?
Quote #6
This old man is always a little old man. If he were ever a big old man, he has shrunk into a little old man; if he were always a little old man, he has dwindled into a less old man. His coat is a colour, and cut, that never was the mode anywhere, at any period. Clearly, it was not made for him, or for any individual mortal. Some wholesale contractor measured Fate for five thousand coats of such quality, and Fate has lent this old coat to this old man, as one of along unfinished line of many old men. It has always large dull metal buttons, similar to no other buttons. This old man wears a hat, a thumbed and napless and yet an obdurate hat, which has never adapted itself to the shape of his poor head. His coarse shirt and his coarse neckcloth have no more individuality than his coat and hat; they have the same character of not being his--of not being anybody's. [...] the little old man is going home to the Workhouse; and on his good behaviour they do not let him out often (though methinks they might, considering the few years he has before him to go out in, under the sun); and on his bad behaviour they shut him up closer than ever in a grove of two score and nineteen more old men, every one of whom smells of all the others.
Mrs. Plornish's father,--a poor little reedy piping old gentleman, like a worn-out bird [...] had retired of his own accord to the Workhouse which was appointed by law to be the Good Samaritan of his district (without the two pence, which was bad political economy). (1.31.1-3)
There's something startling about this. We start with the sad and intimate description of life in the Workhouse – the clothes don't fit and mark the paupers on the street immediately (picture a guy walking around in an orange jumpsuit), all the old men are treated interchangeably and smell like one another. Then we move to the public policy aspect of the place – it was "appointed by law" and in theory is meant to represent Christian charity and kindness in the form of the Good Samaritan, but in practice it begrudges pennies to the men who live there.