What do we learn about Charles Dickens On the treatment of children

Middle class citizens were insecure about their social legitimacy, which led English society to be hateful and cruel. Many middle-classes wanted to be different from the lower class, so they stigmatised the lower class citizens as lazy. The middle-classed society transformed earning them wealth as a sign of moral virtue, the success of individual efforts and interpreted poverty as a sign of weakness and of a poor individual. An example of a working class citizen would be Charles Dickens. At the age of twelve, Dickens was made to leave education and placed in a factory. Within a few weeks his father was jailed in a debtor’s prison, where he was eventually joined by Dickens’s mother and siblings. Dickens lived on his own at this point. Being temporary orphaned he carried on working in the factory. He was taught by a senior worker how to work more efficiently.

Oliver’s life demonstrates the ways in which children were treated. He had been orphaned as a baby which was commonly known in Dickens’s time and was made to live in a workhouse. In the middle-class English society, those who couldn’t support themselves were considered immoral. Therefore, those individuals shouldn’t enjoy any privileges or luxuries in their reliance on public assistance families were split apart when entering the workhouse. Husbands were separated from their wives, unless they were going to produce more children. Children were separated from their mothers and brothers were separated from their sisters because patrons thought the ‘lower classes’ would have a ‘natural’ inclination toward incest. Oliver Twist also suffered starvation, which those who were living in the workhouse suffered severely because the wanted to encourage the residents to find work and to support themselves. Dickens described the workhouse as an awfully despicable place; children to go to as they were made to do hard labour and they weren’t treated properly, they weren’t given the daily food and water necessities. This shows Dickens thought that the workhouses were a bad idea and that they should be abolished. The board thought that the workhouse was a brilliant idea, that it was a form of punishment and a way of keeping people off of London streets. The board represents those of the middle-class who feel as though those of the lower-class deserve to be kept separated from those of the middle-class and deserve to be treated like constant workers.

Oliver being sold tells the reader that adults believed that orphaned children’s lives were worthless but were good for trading and being sold. Dickens manipulates the reader into feeling sympathy for Oliver. He uses language to make Oliver out to be the victim like most orphans were in them days. London symbolises chance and freedom which the reader feels that Oliver should receive but when Oliver arrives there he finds things he has never seen before such as dark alleyways, prostitution etc.