I don't think anyone has ever accused dickens of having focused plots, but this one seemed especially unfocused. The 'main character' becomes little more than a side character for the second half of the book, and then she dies. So yeah, I'm not really sure what dickens was thinking...it's like he got bored with that plot so he just shuffled things around and followed the other characters.

Even though there wasn't much to the plot, though, the characters were still signature dickens, which is the biggest reason I read his works.