Summary
Mrs. Clennam finds Amy alone at the prison and makes her read the documents. She then begs Amy to not reveal the secret to Arthur until after Mrs. Clennam's death, and Amy agrees. The two women plan to return to the Clennam house to prove to Blandois that Amy already knows the secret, and that his blackmail holds no power. As they walk up to the mansion, it suddenly crumbles and crashes to the ground. Blandois, who was inside, is killed in the collapse; Flintwinch is missing and presumed dead, but has actually fled to Amsterdam with money stolen from the Clennam business. Mrs. Clennam has a sort of fit as she watches her home collapse, and is paralyzed and mute for the rest of her life.
Casby demands that Pancks work harder to extract more money from the tenants, and stop visiting Arthur in prison so much. Pancks finally becomes fed up with his cruel and greedy employer and follows him to Bleeding Heart Yard, where he calls him out for being a terrible landlord and humiliates him in front of everyone. Meanwhile, in the wake of Merdle's suicide, Mrs. Merdle, Fanny and Edmund are all unhappily living together in reduced circumstances. Similarly, Mr. Meagles is constantly fighting with Henry. When Amy tells Mr. Meagles a bit about the legal documents related to the Clennam secret, he offers to travel around looking for the originals. He follows clues that lead him to Miss Wade in Calais but she refuses to help him. However, Tattycoram sneaks out and reunites with Mr. Meagles, bringing him the documents and begging to be reunited with him and his family. She does not want to live with Miss Wade any more. Meagles delivers the documents to Amy, and then immediately departs for Russia in pursuit of Doyce.
Continuing to spend a lot of time with Arthur in prison, Amy confides to him one day that she actually has no money: because her father invested his fortunes with Merdle, all the money was lost and she inherited nothing. Relieved they are on equal footing, the two agree to marry, and when they share this news with Flora, she is gracious and supportive. A short time later, Meagles brings Doyce to the prison with the good news that Doyce has found fame and fortune in Russia. Doyce forgives Arthur for his mistakes, pays off his debts, and gives him his former job back. Amy discreetly burns a piece of paper, giving up her claim to money from the Clennams. She resolves to eventually tell Arthur the truth about his family, but not about the money. The two of them are quietly married a few days later, and go on to live a happy and peaceful life together.
Analysis
At the start of the novel, Mrs. Clennam held a position of power over Amy as her employer, but these roles are now reversed when Mrs. Clennam begs Amy not to reveal her secret. The request shows an uncharacteristic vulnerability to Mrs. Clennam, since she has always been cold and distant to Arthur, but she cannot bear to have him despise her for lying to him. Amy shows her empathy and compassion since she does not become angry with the woman who arguably ruined her life. By agreeing to continue to hide the secret, Amy also delays accessing any money which at this point she could actually benefit from. Nonetheless, she is gentle and compassionate with Mrs. Clennam and also makes a thoughtful decision about Arthur's needs.
Although Mrs. Clennam seems to have partially redeemed herself by voluntarily confiding her secret to Amy, the consequences of her actions take on symbolic form with the collapse of the Clennam mansion. Both her poisonous secret and the merging of financial and domestic life have corrupted the Clennam house as a site of business and home life where, as scholar Jacob Jewusiak puts it, "even the spaces marked as refuge from the public world of finance are vulnerable to the credit economy they are supposed to escape" (Jewusiak p. 291). The collapse marks the end of her ability to control others, leaving her literally powerless to move or speak. After she has feigned paralysis for decades, she ironically ends her life actually incapacitated. It also serves conveniently to remove the villainous presence of Blandois from the novel, delivering an apt punishment for his schemes and trickery when his plot literally collapses on top of him.
While Amy declines to reveal the secret about Arthur's parentage to him, she does reveal another significant detail: she no longer has any money. While so many of the other characters have chosen their spouses because they wanted to access wealth, the revelation that Amy is penniless is the detail that frees Arthur to propose to her. They are both on equal footing and can start their marriage as true partners. This perspective is what promises that they will go on to lead a happy life together, and also explains why Amy burns the paper that would have entitled her to claim money owed to her. Money would not make Arthur love her more, and might make him love her less. Amy has seen what happened when she acquired money in the past, and it did not make her any happier. Now she can freely choose the economic position she wants to occupy in her future. This choice shows her exercising a type of economic autonomy granted to few other characters in a novel where most seem subject to the whims of capitalism; as Jesse Rosenthal explains, "Amy, in other words, gets the message about her inheritance; she is free to dispose of it as she will" (Rosenthal p. 293).
This choice is of course linked to the restoration of Arthur's income by Doyce. Much like how Amy showed forgiveness to Mrs. Clennam and how Mr. Meagles forgives Tattycoram, Doyce is tolerant of Arthur's mistake and freely gives him a second chance, showing trust in his ability to make better decisions in the future. By doing so, Doyce distinguishes himself as someone who would be a good parental role model in a novel mostly populated by bad parents. This theme also continues with the small note that Arthur and Amy go on to be surrogate parents to Fanny's children, with whom she continues a Dorrit family legacy of neglect.
