The title of this chapter seeks in a ‘tongue in cheek’ way to wrest Miss Wade's torment away from its familiar self-imposed shackles to a torment that is at least in part connected to frustration with her less than sympathetic creator. This is a small step but one that is nonetheless significant because perhaps of all Charles Dickens's characters, Miss Wade, from the serial novel Little Dorrit, has been locked up for far too long in walls that are thought to be entirely of her own making. Certainly, Miss Wade does offer up her confessional text ‘The History of a Self-Tormentor’ to a male auditor and this unfortunate piece of writing very conveniently gives readers the permission to dismiss her as a highly disturbed self-saboteur. But Miss Wade is not simply hoist by her own petard — her creator has had an active hand in making the poor quality fuse for the petard. So, whilst it may be ‘a commonplace in criticism’ (Barrett 200) to note that the primary metaphor of Little Dorrit is the prison, it is far from commonplace to note that Miss Wade's particular blend of psychological imprisonment owes as much to her own distorted views as to Dickens's wish to figuratively lock her up and throw away the key.