Little Dorrit (3)

The third cluster of Little Dorrit episodes hinged on the past's sheer inescapability: even as characters tried to forget, censor, or disown their disreputable past, they found that the past continually manifested itself in their very minds and bodies.  Mr. Dorrit, now wealthy--and thus possessed of a new lineage of sorts--disowns both Arthur Clennam and any mention of the  Marshalsea, but still interprets every action, every word through the Marshalsea prison; Mrs. Clennam, enjoined to "not forget," is all the more haunted by...whatever it is.  (Stay tuned!)  This return of the repressed past is even parodied in Rigaud's horrified encounter with Jeremiah Flintwinch (before Rigaud realizes, that is, that Jeremiah is Ephraim's identical twin).  Interestingly enough, once the Dorrits have left the Marshalsea and embarked on their "Grand Tour," they remain imprisoned by their surroundings, which often seem cramped even when outdoors--the Venetian canals, for example, or the ominously foggy forest (complete with weird zooming action).  We repeatedly see shots of Amy Dorrit looking not so much at her surroundings as up above them, perhaps contemplating the sky that she shares with her beloved Arthur.  Meanwhile, the prison bar motif continues, as when we glimpse Rigaud peering through windowpanes or, more significantly, Mr. Merdle through the bars of his parrot's cage. 

While Davies has, amazingly, managed to refrain (so far?) from his usual quota of heritage sex, the erotic hovers around the miniseries' periphery.  The most blatant example, of course, is Rigaud, who spends a lot of time invading the ladies' personal space; his stock villainy manifests itself in part as sexual threat.  But there are also more subtle examples, as when Amy encounters a handsome gondolier or when she briefly contemplates a bronze male nude...presumably missing its figleaf.  Amy's Grand Tour seems, in part, to be about sexual awakening.  While there's some obvious stereotyping going on here about French and Italian men, such sexual displays are exotic only because overt, as Mr. Clennam the elder's suspicious visits to the boarding-house suggest.