Timeline and Summary

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• Born to a poor dancing girl.
• His dancing girl mother is forced to give him up to Mrs. Clennam to be raised as her son.
• Experiences a deprived, cold, unloving, and generally horrible childhood.
• At 20, has a romantic relationship with Flora Casby and gets secretly engaged.
• His mother objects to the relationship, and Arthur is shipped off to China to work with his father at Clennam & Co.'s offices there.
• Twenty years later returns to England, and meets the Meagleses in quarantine.
• In London Arthur goes to his mother's house and resigns from the firm. There, he meets Little Dorrit and has an immediate suspicion that she is somehow tied up with some crime his family has committed.
• When visiting the Meagles family, Arthur falls in love with their daughter Pet, who just wants to be friends.
• Through Meagles, Arthur meets Daniel Doyce, an inventor and factory owner. Arthur buys into the factory and is put in charge of its finances.
• He helps a wounded Italian ex-smuggler named Cavalletto to get a place to live and hires him as a night-watchman at the factory.
• Arthur reconnects with Flora – now Flora Finching. She's a totally silly widow who still has a crush on him.
• His friendship with Amy Dorrit deepens, and he gets Flora to give Amy work in order to help her out. Arthur also tries to investigate the actual debts Dorrit is in prison for but runs into a bureaucratic wall at the Circumlocution Office.
• Arthur tries to help Meagles recover his maid Tattycoram from the sinister Miss Wade, to no avail.
• Flora's father's clerk Pancks enlists Arthur's help in investigating the history of the Dorrit family.
• Arthur breaks the news to Amy that her family is rich and her father can leave prison.
• A year later, he receives several letters from Amy about how the Dorrits are traveling around the continent.
• He is depressed and lonely without Amy Dorrit around.
• Pancks tells Arthur about a great investment opportunity – in Merdle's enterprises.
• Arthur visits his mother and encounters the terrifying and clearly evil Blandois. When he tries to intervene, his mother unceremoniously kicks him out.
• After Blandois disappears, Arthur tries to find him. He discovers instead that Miss Wade has been using Blandois to spy on the Gowans.
• Arthur sinks all the money from Doyce & Clennam into the Merdle stock. When Merdle is discovered to be a fraud, Arthur takes the blame for his own losses and is promptly locked up in debtor's prison.
• Amy comes back to London to take care of him. Eventually she reveals that the Dorrits have lost all their money too and that they can get married.
• Cavalletto finds Blandois, and Arthur clears his mother's name.
• Doyce comes back, gets Arthur out of jail, and gives him back his old job.
• Amy proposes to Arthur, they get married, and live quietly ever after.