It took a little while for the cast of characters to weave together in this story, but once they did, I was pretty hooked. I have a mild screen-crush on Mathew MacFayden, who played Mr. Darcy in a recent adaptation and was also in Any Human Heart. The story's plot was sparingly about love--rather--it was a commentary of social stratification and the legal system of England during the era.
I'm continually shocked at the absurdities of the ancestry to our modern legal system. In this book, Dickens clearly depicts how England dealt with debt. Rather than relinquishing collateral as we do now, the English sent their debtor's into special debt prisons, which were privately owned (!). The person that held the debt determined the sentence and the prisoners were sometimes held for decades. The families of the person that held the debt frequently lived in the prison with the debtor, but were free to go and they frequently obtained jobs which they used to pay for the debtor's upkeep.
The story also exemplifies the length that people will go to hold their status as an upperclass member of society.
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