Victorian Voices: The Social Critique of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was one of the
most beloved and distinctive novelists of Victorian England. He was born in the
coastal town of Portsmouth in southern England as the child of a clerk in the
Naval Pay Office. Due to harsh conditions, his family had to struggle with
economic problems. A friend of his father's offered Charles a job in a
shoe-blacking factory, and he began to work. Two weeks later, his father was
arrested and sent to Marshalsea Prison for debt. His family went to live in
prison with him, as was the custom; however, they decided that Charles should
remain outside, living with a woman who took in young boarders, to maintain
some stability and continuity in his life. He lived with a woman who provided
board for young students, enabling him to continue his education and work.
The months during which
Charles lived alone and worked in the blacking warehouse were traumatic, and
the intense feelings of humiliation and abandonment that Dickens experienced
shaped his fiction in profound ways. Dickens utilized his own experiences to
craft characters like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Pip in "Great Expectations" whose
mistreatment reflects Dickens's strong critique of society. These characters
not only resonate with readers personally but also function as instruments for
social commentary and critique. It was, however, a most painful life for him.
Years afterward, he was writing of his own experiences when he put down in "David Copperfield" such
sentences as these:
"I know I do not
exaggerate, unconsciously, or unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources,
or the difficulties of my life... I know that I worked from morning until
night, with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about
the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the
mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a
little robber or a little vagabond. How much I suffered it is, as I have said
already, utterly beyond any power to tell. But I kept my own counsel, I did my
own work."
In the story of "David Copperfield" the great
novelist has told, more fully than in any other of his books, the story of his
own life. ("The Journal of Education," 1912, p. 39). At fifteen, Dickens started working as a junior clerk
at a law office, and eighteen months later, he became a freelance newspaper
reporter. He initially published literary sketches anonymously. In 1836, on his twenty-fourth birthday, he published
the collection "Sketches by Boz".
The success of this volume led to a commission from the publishers Chapman
& Hall to serialize a book with companion illustrations. The result was
"The Pickwick Papers" (1836—37), which brought Dickens fame and
prosperity. Mr. Dickens is said to have been at this time "singularly and
noticeably prepossessing; bright, animated, eager, with talent and energy
written in every line of his face." The alchemy of a fine nature had
transmuted his disadvantages into gold. To him the lessons of such a childhood
and youth as he had had were energy, self-reliance, a determination to overcome
all obstacles, to fight the battles of life in all honor and rectitude, so as
to win. From the middle of his father's affairs, he had taken away a lesson in
method, order, and punctuality in business and other arrangements. "What
is worth doing at all is worth doing well" was not only one of his favorite
maxims, but it was the rule of his life. And, again, "throughout his life
he worked desperately hard.
Despite the bleakness of Dickens's view of society and
the fierceness of his criticism, his novels invariably conclude with a
sentimental affirmation of the virtues of home and heart. Readers and critics,
spanning both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, frequently perceived this
sentimentality as dulling his social analysis. While Dickens endeavors to
employ fiction to stir the human heart and elicit humanitarian sentiments, the
domestic sanctuaries depicted in his novels seldom catalyze change in the world
beyond their confines.
Charles Dickens' depiction of women in his novels
reflects his personal experiences and relationships. Specifically, it mentions
two types of female characters: those depicted as inadequate in maintaining
domestic order, possibly influenced by Dickens' own family life, and those
portrayed as impossibly good and unattainable ideals, possibly inspired by
women he knew in his early adulthood. Charles Dickens fell in love with Maria
Beadnell, who came from a wealthy banking family. However, their courtship was
discouraged by Maria's family, who believed Dickens was not suitable for her.
This rejection left Dickens feeling a deep sense of loss, as he perceived Maria
as his ideal woman, despite being unable to be with her. In 1858, Charles
Dickens separated from his wife, marking a notable shift in both his personal
and professional life. Additionally, he gave up his participation in amateur theatricals
and instead began a series of lucrative professional readings of his own works.
However, these readings took a toll on him, both emotionally and physically,
leading his doctor to advise him to cease the readings due to their exhausting
nature.
Dickens builds character from a repeated set of
gestures, phrases, and metaphors. For instance; In "Hard Times,"
Dickens consistently associates Mr. Gradgrind with the concept of squareness,
reflecting not only his physical attributes but also his personality and
worldview. This repetition of the square motif helps to establish Mr.
Gradgrind's character traits and contributes to the overall thematic
exploration of utilitarianism and rigidity in the novel. It marks many elements
of his novels—their baggy plots, filled with incidents; the constant
metaphorical invention of their language; and the multitude of their
characters. Dickens builds characters through a repeated set of gestures,
phrases, and metaphors. For instance, Mr. Gradgrind in 'Hard Times' is
consistently associated with the squareness of his physical attributes. As
Dickens's career progresses, his fiction becomes increasingly complex. Within
this complexity, the recurring traits that characterize his characters take on
deeper meanings, symbolizing emotional fixations and societal distortions. In
Dickens's early fiction, there is a celebration of human peculiarities through
comedic exaggeration. However, as his career progresses, this comedy transforms
into grotesque portrayals, where the distortions of caricature mirror the
failures of humanity in his darkening social vision. Shaw suggests that
although Dickens didn't see himself as a revolutionary figure, his work had
revolutionary implications. This implies that while Dickens may not have
intentionally set out to incite revolution, his writings had a profound impact
on social consciousness and reform.
As Dickens's career progressed, he became more urgent and explicit in his social criticism. This is evidenced by his choice of subtitle for "Hard Times" and his dedication of the book to Thomas Carlyle. The dedication to Carlyle, a renowned social critic, indicates Dickens's ambition to follow in Carlyle's footsteps and contribute to the tradition of social indictment through literature. The distinctiveness of Dickens's fiction is so pronounced that critics often discuss it as if the individual worlds of all his novels were continuous. Dickens's tendency to repeatedly explore subjects that captivated his imagination contributes to this perception. One such subject is prisons. "A Visit to Newgate" is his earliest work on this topic, to which he returns many times in novels such as "Great Expectations," "Oliver Twist," "The Pickwick Papers," and "Little Dorrit." For Dickens, prisons represent a particular social injustice, the most distressing setting in which to contemplate criminality and guilt. They serve as a metaphor for the psychological captivity his characters create for themselves and the system through which society enforces its discipline. Throughout his fiction, key elements of Victorian society, like prisons, acquire multiple layers of significance.
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