Compare the ways in which at least two of the texts you have studied explore the theme of social deviance. You will need to specify what this deviance consists in, and give details of how the Victorian social norms are transgressed.

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Compare the ways in which at least two of the texts you have studied explore the theme of social deviance. You will need to specify what this deviance consists in, and give details of how the Victorian social norms are transgressed.

Like any novel depicting the theme of social deviance, the basis of the text is taken from the social and political climate’s that are appropriate to the time that the text is written. Indeed, during Queen Victoria’s reign, the social alienation of the working class as well as societies prejudices towards women helped to spawn literature that exhibited the other side of the so called ‘coin’, with stories that challenged the general social perceptions of these ostracised groups. These concepts that questioned Victorian social ‘norms’ are best illustrated in the texts Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre, with both texts producing manifestations through the stories protagonists of attitudes that don’t conform to the expected traits of either the working class or women. Furthermore, both Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte draw parallel’s in their respective texts to aspects of their own lives by reflecting the prejudices that they personally incurred whilst growing up in Victorian Britain.

   One of the central themes common to both texts that echoes the childhood of the authors – particularly Dickens – is the social gap between the middle class and the working class, with both authors embodying these social issues through the presentations of Fagin and Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist, as well as Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre.  

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  In my opinion, the bullish attitudes that both authors are able to establish through Fagin and Mr Bumble with Oliver, and Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst with Jane, are a direct reference to the middle-class bureaucrats and their oppressive treatment of the lower class. To elaborate, parish beadle’s like Mr Bumble who at the time were said to have believed in the concept of giving charity to the less fortunate, are instead presented by Dickens as the oppressor, as illustrated in the various instances that Mr Bumble punishes Oliver.

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