Going into Society

"Society, taken in the lump, is all dwarfs (...) And when you’ve no more left to give, they’ll laugh at you to your face..." A man sets up a circus in a respectable neighbourhood and draws an audience with the main attraction: a dwarf, named Mr. Chops. One day, Mr. Chops wins the lottery and leaves. But life outside the circus is not as he imagined. Going into Society is a dark story about naivety, humiliation and the disappointing importance of money. It is believed that Vladimir Nabokov’s short story The Potato Elf (1929) about a dwarf named Fred who works in a circus, was inspired by this classic Charles Dickens story. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English author, social critic, and philanthropist. Much of his writing first appeared in small instalments in magazines and was widely popular. Among his most famous novels are Oliver Twist (1839), David Copperfield (1850), and Great Expectations (1861).