The Victorian age was a really prosperous age for

the rapid growth of industrialization, mechanization,

and modernization of the country. The effect of the
industrial revolution brought a new spirit to the age.
England was able to get access to items that were
produced more rapidly than before and because of
which people were able to buy the products at a
cheaper price because of mass production. But this
abrupt industrial growth and mechanization also
brought problems associated with it, the most
prominent one being the exploitation of the labouring-
class. The Victorian era furthered the wealth gap
between the privilege-class and the working-class.
Aristotle's idea of mimesis argues that works of
art are the imitation of real life. Thus, literature as a
form of art is tightly bound to the situation of real
life during the time the literary works were created.
The situation of the world and the spirit of the age
can serve as inspiration, setting, and background of
the story. Furthermore, it can act as a response
toward social and political issues during that era.
So Victorian literary writers typically responded
to the social issues through their literary work, due to
which during the nineteenth century literature grew
massively and thus giving rise to one of the popular
form of literature of that time, novels, particularly
the ‘industrial novels’, which mostly dealt with the lives
of working and middle classes, the changing education
system, riots and lock-outs against industrialism and
unemployment, love stories between the working and
middle classes, and many other issues concerning the
Industrial Revolution.
The industrial novels all share some common
characteristics: the detailed documentation of the
suffering of the poor, the reproduction of working-
class speech through dialect, criticism of the effects
of industrialism, the discussion of contemporary
reform movements like Chartism and Utilitarianism,
and some attempt — usually individual and internal —
at a solution to social problems. Frequently the plot is
developed around a sensitive protagonist, usually male,
whose moral, intellectual, or emotional development
spans the course of the novel and whose romantic
attachments are troubled and conflicted. The
protagonist is typically searching for a way to express
or mitigate the dissatisfaction of the working class as
he takes his role as their spokesman. The industrial
novel, which combined narrative interest with protest,
was a response to a particularly dismal period in which
bank failures and the scarcity of jobs created
conditions that many writers saw as deplorable.
One of the greatest novelists of this era was
Charles Dickens, who used fiction effectively to
criticize economic, social, and moral abuses in the
Victorian era. Dickens showed compassion and
empathy towards the vulnerable and disadvantaged
segments of English society and contributed to
several important social reforms. His works enjoyed
unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and by
the twentieth century critics and scholars had
recognized him as a literary genius. Some of his most
famous works are: The Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver
Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), A
Christmas Carol (1843), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of
Two Cities (1859), etc.
Oliver Twist (1837-1839) was one of Dickens’s
earliest works. What makes it unique is that it is a
progress (A progress is a story where the main
character does not change). He goes through his
journey affecting other characters, but not changing
himself. This makes the theme of the story
interesting because the theme is usually what the main
character learns, for example, innocence triumphs
over evil was one of the basic themes of this novel.
 Dickens’ presents the joint themes of Education
and Workhouse Life by contrasting workhouse
children to street children of London. As part of the
rich (carefully arranged parts or details; detailed and
complicated in design and planning) framework (a basic
structure underlying a system, concept, or text) addressing the
themes, Dickens contrasts workhouse children to
street children using the issue of language.
Specifically, Oliver had exceptional language skills
though he had been "beaten, and starved, and shut up,
many and many a time" in the Poor Law specified
child's farmhouse while the Artful Dodger can't
readily be understood by the standard English
speaker. Dickens exposes the failings of the English
approach to education while simultaneously
underscoring the missed potentiality for success in
the workhouses. Let’s take a look at the introduction
scene of Dodger:
 "Hullo, my covey! What's the row?" said this
strange young gentleman to Oliver.
 "I am very hungry and tired," replied Oliver: the
tears standing in his eyes as he spoke. "I have
walked a long way. I have been walking these seven
days."
  "Walking for sivin days!" said the young
gentleman.
While Oliver's speech may sound to modern
readers like an affectation (behaviour, speech, or writing
that is pretentious and designed to impress) on Dickens' part
or like a stylistic mistake, Dickens was in fact
deliberately illustrating his joint themes. Readers
contemporaneous with Dickens would have immediately
recognized the truth of the situations being exposed
and satirized by the elegance of the one's speech and
the virtual incomprehensibility of the other's speech.
The contrasting language used by Oliver and the
Dodger shows the value and necessity of education.
The language of Oliver illustrates the results of
successful education whereas the language of the
Dodger illustrates the results of the society’s failure
to provide education.
Dicken’s intellectual apparatus was not of the
strongest, he was in a way the most instinctive (a
natural ability that helps you decide what to do or how to act
without thinking) of all the great English novelists except
Emily Bronte, and sentimentality was often his way of
handling difficult moral problems. This can be seen in
Nicolas Nickleby (issued in monthly parts, 1838-1839)
where the solution to the problem of the hero and his
family comes suddenly from the unmotivated
benevolence (kind and helpful) of the Cheeryble
brothers, two causally met strangers.
A Christmas Carol (1843), an allegory of spiritual
values versus material ones. In A Christmas Carol,
Scrooge’s initial penny-pinching reflected the values
that took hold during the Industrial Revolution.
Dickens illustrated what happens when individuals view
relationships and other people through the prism of
money. Charles Dickens showed Scrooge having to
learn the lesson of the spirit of Christmas, facing the
reality of his own callous attitude to others, and
reforming himself as a compassionate human being.
Dickens exposed the tremendous gap between the rich
and the poor (like every other Condition of England
text). Through this novella, Dickens proposed that
connecting individuals to one another is what
ultimately corrects the social injustice created by
capitalism.
Coketown, the city of fact, foreshadows the
emergence of a monstrous mass urban society based
on rationalism, anonymity, and dehumanisation. The
dominant feature of the town is its inherent ugliness.
Its inhabitants lack individuality and are the product
of an inhuman materialistic society.
“It was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of
a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of
which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever
and ever, and never got uncoiled…where the piston of the steam
engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an
elephant a state of melancholy madness…inhabited by people
equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours,
with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work
and to whom everyday was the same as yesterday and tomorrow.”

The social commentary of Hard Times (1854) is quite

clear. Dickens is concerned with the conditions of the
urban labourers and the excesses of laissez-faire
capitalism. He exposes the exploitation of the working
class by unfeeling industrialists and the damaging
consequences of propagating factual knowledge at the
expense of feeling and imagination.

Dickens challenged the drudgery (hard boring

work) of education through the parody of Gradgrind
who continuously demands facts be instilled into the
children. The education system is the first flaw
mentioned founded on the Utilitarian theory – "the
greatest good for the greatest number" Mr.
Gradgrind also based his own beliefs on this theory
and has made it the foundation and philosophy of his
school. The result is that the students in his school
are not seen as human beings, but as people who are
born to be filled with facts.

The plight of women and their struggle to survive

in a competitive world was well represented in the
novel and it also sheds light on issues such as
prostitution, which was regarded in Victorian society
as a serious social illness for example Nancy.
Victorians strongly believed that a woman's place was
at home, thus she was known as the ‘angel of the
house'. Fallen women who lost their virginity or were
impregnated before marriage would not be tolerated.
Which also was one of the core reason why Oliver's
late mother decided to give birth to Oliver
anonymously.
In conclusion, the Utilitarian system, the
Industrial Revolution and Laissez-faire capitalism are
harshly criticizing by Dickens because these systems
do not allow for compassion and the nurturing aspect
of the human beings imagination and self-esteem.
Dickens believed that if actions are taken to include
the compassion of humanity, the education system and
the rights of people who are less privileged than the
country’s economy would be in a better state.
  If you think this essay is too big then search in the
web: Short summary of Hard times, Oliver Twist

3. Bleak House (1853)

Dickens had begun his attack on the in-built absurdities of

the bureaucratic behemoth that is the British legal system
with Dodson and Fogg in Pickwick and revisited his
contention that “the law is an ass” here to extraordinary
effect.

The seemingly never-ending case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce

at its centre rumbles on indefinitely, gradually chewing up
the disputed inheritance in question until no one can
remember its origins and there are no spoils left for the
victor in any event: “Innumerable children have been born
into the cause; innumerable young people have married into
it; innumerable old people have died out of it.”

The kindly Chancery lawyer John Jarndyce meanwhile finds

himself legal guardian to Esther Summerson – unknowingly
the daughter of Lady Dedlock, whose past drives the
mystery - and to Richard Carstone and Ada Clare, the wards
of the court who fall in love and hope the case will be
resolved in their favour.

Harold Skimpole – a sponging associate of Jarndyce who

disingenuously insists on his state of childlike innocence to
wheedle his way out of adult responsibility – and the
ludicrous dancing master Turveydrop appear among another
unforgettable supporting cast.

4. Oliver Twist (1839)

Perhaps the best known of the author's stories outside of A

Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist casts its orphan hero among
the thieves of London: Bill Sikes, Fagin, and the Artful
Dodger.

Dickens used his own unhappy adolescence in the workhouse

to sketch in Oliver’s childhood under Mr. Bumble and his
experience as a journalist to report the plight of street
children, forced into pickpocketing and worse by desperate
necessity.

Site: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/books/features/charles-dickens-christmas-
carol-best-novels-great-expectations-david-copperfield-
oliver-twist-a8664516.html

In the 1800s, England became revolutionary with the Industrial Revolution and
the new class system, which brought more citizens that are middle class and their
ideals into the government.

By Mr. Blackadder: When the going gets tough, the tuff

hides under the table.