Life for victorian children in Dickens' time

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David Scullion S2D

How literature, in particular Charles Dickens, presents a picture of life for children in Victorian times – Pre 20th Century

I am going to examine the hardships endured at home, in institutions and in society of children in Dickenson times. At this time poverty and cruelty was rife and commonplace in society, institutions which were supposed to care for children, exploited and abused their authority over them. These institutions were run by greedy, corrupt hypocrites, whose only main interest was making money, and usually exploiting the children at their disposal to make the money they so desired. We also see cruelty and neglect in domesticated situations, parents and guardians taking their children for granted, or not appreciating them. In my exploration I will be using the novels, “Oliver Twist” and “Great Expectations”.

Dickens understood the life and hardships of children because he himself had a difficult childhood; he never forgot the experience of poverty and misery. For us to comprehend the times of Charles Dickens it is necessary to know the background of his life. Dickens was born in 1812; his father was clerk working for the Navy Pay office, so even at an early stage in his life he had an opportunity to see life along the Thames and the Docks of London. As he turned twelve years old, his parents got him a job in a Factory, he hated every minute of the job. At this time Dickens started to experience the poverty stricken parts of London and it greatly concerned him, during his time in the factory his family were imprisoned in a debtor’s prison, Dickens grew angry at the cruelty and misery when he visited the prison and over the years his resentment of poverty, cruelty and injustice continued to develop as he lived in London, the central hub of the world at that time, he began to understand the ugly underside of life in the capital. Dickens was a social critic, you could also tell from his writing that he had a social conscious, and understood a place like London at this time. Arguably his greatest novels were those which feature prominently children and their hardships, I will now explore some of these novels.

In one of Dickens great novels ‘Oliver Twist’, we see children as slaves in the workhouse, forced to work under their cruel and exploiting authority figures. From early on in this novel we experience many examples of cruelty, neglect and hypocrisy. The authorities of the workhouse see the children as commodities which they can use to their advantage, to make money, to exploit them. The adults who run the workhouse think they are doing the right thing, the perceive themselves as the epitome of fairness, taking in the poor and feeding them and letting live under a roof instead of the streets, when in truth the workhouse is an exploitation of the normal people within it such as Oliver, The authority figures are nothing more than hypocrites which Dickens use’s to show us example of when adults neglect and exploit children.

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There are numerous examples of exploitation and neglect in this novel, but the greatest example is when Oliver asks for more. This scene in the novel is one of the greatest scenes of literature, this passage highlights Charles Dickens talent in describing the situation in his novels beautifully, it also shows where Dickens sympathy lies with the children. In this passage Dickens portrays the young boy as a hero; Oliver is used as an expressive figure for all the exploited children within the workhouse, when he asks

Please Sir, I want some more”.

The master’s reaction to ...

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