Secrecy in Dickens’s Little Dorrit is more than an ethical issue or social phenomenon, for its presence in the novel encourages an information-based interaction, providing a game-like structure in which characters engage in a contest to keep a secret or reveal it. This thesis argues that exploring this structure requires taking into consideration that concealing specific information results in generating manipulative alternative information relations. The aim is to examine the effect of information withholding on characters’ choices as an effort to identifying the way secrecy gamifies the structure of interaction in the novel. Benefiting from game theory, this study theorizes a novel framework of information problem games, namely Games of Information Disorders, and employs it as a theoretical model to explore the dynamic of interaction and information. The suggested framework, however, provides literary scholars, specifically those interested in investigating information-related questions, a narrative-friendly model unlike the standard mathematical models that traditional game theory offers. It is concluded that when Mrs Clennam withholds information about Arthur’s biological mother, she first structures the interaction with Arthur and, secondly, uses it to structurally entrap him so that she can achieve her goal of keeping the information secret and maintain her desired outcome. Moreover, she also attempts to control this structure by preventing other characters that might know the secret, like Rigaud, from deforming it for their personal benefit. Moreover, this very structure acts as the strategic tool that Dickens employs in forming the complicated information-based connections in the plot of Little Dorrit.

Keywords