Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens: Narrative

Dickens was influenced by the Bible, gothic novels, fables, and nursery rhymes. His plots are artificial, sentimental, and episodic.

The theme of industrialism

The set of the novel is London with its development and its industrial situations. We see revolutionary ideas with a critique about corruption in society. He denounced London's crime, London's town with terrible descriptions.

Characters

He created caricatures to arouse reader’s interest. He described people’s habits and the language of the middle and lower classes in modern London. He took the point of view of poor people, outcasts, and working classes.

A didactic aim

Children are very important in Dickens’s novels. He would describe the natural order of things by making children the moral teachers. He aimed to arouse in the reader the love for children, and his task was to alleviate human sufferings.

The workhouses

Before, poor people were helped by parishes. Parishes gave them food, help, and shelter, but there was an overcrowding of poor people. With the “Poor Law Amendment Act”, workhouses were built to help parishes and encourage people to be independent in work. Workhouses could accommodate 158 people at the same time, but they were divided into three classes:

• Those able to work, but unemployed, who had hard work, for example, stone breaking.
• Those unable to work, because they were old or sick.
• Children.

These classes were separated, and also men and children wore a uniform and had one meal a day plus two portions of gruel (water and cereal). In 1929, workhouses were abolished and transformed into hospitals. We know that in these workhouses, food, medical care, and education for children were better than in poor houses.

Victorian novel

In this age, there was a communion of interests between writers and their readers because there were more consumers of literature, for example, thanks to circulating libraries and periodicals. In fact, Victorians wrote in periodicals a lot about social problems. The novel became a new form of literature and entertainment, and in them, we found social changes, social progress (like the industrial revolution), and the growth of towns. Novelists aimed to reflect on the evil in society and social injustice. In this period, women read and wrote a lot because they spent a lot of time at home, and for this reason, they became the new “novel-buyers”.

Types of Victorian novels

• The early Victorian novel with Dickens, featuring humanitarian themes and the ideas of his age.
• The mid-Victorian novel with romantic and gothic traditions.
• The late-Victorian novel with themes of naturalism and scientific themes.

Some features of the Victorian novel include:

• Voice of an omniscient narrator that comments on the plot.
• Setting in a city with the industrial revolution, for example, slums.
• Long and complicated plot.