Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (Charles John Huffam Dickens) was born in Landport, Portsmouth, on February 7, 1812. Charles was the
second of eight children to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens
(1789–1863). The Dickens family moved to London in 1814 and two years later to Chatham, Kent, where Charles spent
early years of his childhood. Due to the financial difficulties they moved back to London in 1822, where they settled in
Camden Town, a poor neighborhood of London.

The defining moment of Dickens's life occurred when he was 12 years old. His father, who had a difficult time managing
money and was constantly in debt, was imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtor's prison in 1824. Because of this, Charles was
withdrawn from school and forced to work in a warehouse that handled 'blacking' or shoe polish to help support the family.
This experience left profound psychological and sociological effects on Charles. It gave him a firsthand acquaintance with
poverty and made him the most vigorous and influential voice of the working classes in his age.

After a few months Dickens's father was released from prison and Charles was allowed to go back to school. At fifteen his
formal education ended and he found employment as an office boy at an attorney's, while he studied shorthand at night.
From 1830 he worked as a shorthand reporter in the courts and afterwards as a parliamentary and newspaper reporter.

In 1833 Dickens began to contribute short stories and essays to periodicals. A Dinner at Popular Walk was Dickens's first
published story. It appeared in the Monthly Magazine in December 1833. In 1834, still a newspaper reporter, he adopted the
soon to be famous pseudonym Boz. Dickens's first book, a collection of stories titled Sketches by Boz, was published in
1836. In the same year he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of the editor of the Evening Chronicle. Together they had 10
children before they separated in 1858.

Although Dickens's main profession was as a novelist, he continued his journalistic work until the end of his life, editing The
Daily News, Household Words, and All the Year Round. His connections to various magazines and newspapers gave him the
opportunity to begin publishing his own fiction at the beginning of his career.

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was published in monthly parts from April 1836 to November 1837. Pickwick
became one of the most popular works of the time, continuing to be so after it was published in book form in 1837. After the
success of Pickwick Dickens embarked on a full-time career as a novelist, producing work of increasing complexity at an
incredible rate: Oliver Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge as part of
the Master Humphrey's Clock series (1840-41), all being published in monthly instalments before being made into books.

In 1842 he travelled with his wife to the United States and Canada, which led to his controversial American Notes (1842)
and is also the basis of some of the episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit. Dickens's series of five Christmas Books were soon to
follow; A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846), and The
Haunted Man (1848). After living briefly abroad in Italy (1844) and Switzerland (1846) Dickens continued his success
with Dombey and Son (1848), the largely autobiographical David Copperfield (1849-50), Bleak House (1852-53), Hard
Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1861).

In 1856 his popularity had allowed him to buy Gad's Hill Place, an estate he had admired since childhood. In 1858 Dickens
began a series of paid readings, which became instantly popular. In all, Dickens performed more than 400 times. In that year,
after a long period of difficulties, he separated from his wife. It was also around that time that Dickens became involved in
an affair with a young actress named Ellen Ternan. The exact nature of their relationship is unclear, but it was clearly central
to Dickens's personal and professional life.

In the closing years of his life Dickens worsened his declining health by giving numerous readings. During his readings in
1869 he collapsed, showing symptoms of mild stroke. He retreated to Gad's Hill and began to work on Edwin Drood, which
was never completed.

Charles Dickens died at home on June 9, 1870 after suffering a stroke. Contrary to his wish to be buried in Rochester
Cathedral, he was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. The inscription on his tomb reads:

"He was a sympathiser to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest
writers is lost to the world."
Famous Works

BLEAK HOUSE

Bleak house is not as the name suggests, it is a happy house, actually two happy houses. The first bleak house is owned by
John Jarndyce in which Esther, Ada and Richard also come to live with him. The second bleak house is meant for Esther and
her husband towards the end of the book.

Containing the most complex, engaging and vast arrays of subplots and minor characters, Bleak House is one of the best
novels written by Charles Dickens. Hypocrisy and social ills is what is greatly addressed by Dickens in Bleak House. Sir
Leicester Deadlock, a British aristocrat lives in CheslyWold in rural Lincolnshire with his wife. The couple is rich and lives
a wonderful life but Sir Deadlock’s wife has hidden a deep secret from him. She gave birth to a child before she was married
to the aristocrat and Captain Hawdon was the father of the child.

She is unaware of the fact that her child is still alive and is now raised by her Godmother and after her death John Jarndyce
takes care of Esther, the child. John Jarndyce is a man with a heart of Gold and raises up Esther with great love and care.
Esther, Ada and Richard become good friends and Ada and Richard fall in love with each other. Lady deadlock once comes
across some legal papers which belong to her husband but she recognizes the handwriting of her lover Captain Hawdon.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit is emphasized in the middle of the book and Richard loses all his money and health fighting the
case. He also marries Ada the love of his life secretly. Richard is incapable of settling in one occupation. Soon both Lady
Deadlock and Esther come to know about their mother daughter relationship and are delighted to learn the fact.

However, they cannot address each other as mother and daughter in the public because of the established reputation of Sir
Leicester Deadlock. Dr. Woodcourt is deeply in love with Esther even though her face is filled with the marks of small pox.
Esther gets acquainted with the disease when she takes care of Jo who suffers from small pox himself. Soon Sir Leicester is
told about his wife’s illegitimate daughter and suffers a heart stroke. Later he forgives his wife fully because she committed
this mistake before they got married. Lady Deadlock is not aware of the fact that her husband has forgiven her and thus she
leaves the house dressed as a poor woman. Her daughter Esther tries to search her and at last founds her near the grave of her
father Captain Hawdon. Later Esther realizes that Lady Deadlock has died out of cold. She is grief stricken. The novel
beautifully portrays the life of the rich Englishmen in Europe.

Themes

Bad parenting and society

Bleak House is filled with bad parents. Esther's aunt, Lady Dedlock, Mrs. Jellyby, the brickmaker, and Mr. Turveydrop, to
take some examples, all abuse, neglect, or generally use their children for selfish reasons, thus quashing the happiness and
development of those children. This poor parenting, in turn, creates disillusioned and disenchanted children, thus
perpetuating the original neglect or abuse. In this way, bad parenting undermines all of society. Indeed, to take the theme one
remove farther, Dickens suggests that England is in a permanent state of bad parenting, with the parents -- the government,
the courts -- neglecting, abusing, or generally using the children -- the people of England.

Weather and society

Throughout the novel, Dickens consistently identifies human moral or subjective states with the weather. This, like the other
grotesque elements of his style, is done with a greatly exaggerated panache. Thus Dickens begins the novel in a deep
"London particular" fog, signifying the foggy confusion of the Court of Chancery. Or, to take another example, Lady
Dedlock is often shown in the rain, which signifies her deep and unending boredom and sorrow. The mud and the cold too
often emphasize the evils of urban life, and their inescapability mirrors the corruption of the society at large. Naturally,
Dickens' sunny days occur when things are chipper and cheery, such as when the young people first arrive at Bleak House.

Names in Dickens

The most prevalent and widely-cited form of Dickens' grotesque style is his tendency to illustrate the nature and morality of
his characters through their names. Because Bleak House has so many people, thus so many names, it is as good a collection
of the variety of Dickens' art of naming as any of his books.

Some of Dickens' characters' names simply announce the bearer's moral destitution -- Krook is an obvious example. Mr.
Smallweed's name captures that characters particular mixture of physical frailty and moral pettiness; it also suggests that
Dickens' would like he and his captilastic, opportunistic kind to be weeded from society. His "good" characters are also aptly
named, as in "Ada Clare," which conjures clarity and simplicity for the reader. Other names allude to occupation as well as
character -- e.g. "Tulkinghorn" is close to talking-horn, and talk is the lawyer's trade. Or Dickens' names could represent a
simple pun, such as Miss Flite and her birds, or a sad commentary, such as Jo's name being similar to Job, suggesting the
many trials that character will endure. The common characteristic: Dickens invites us to interpret the significance of the
names of all of his characters.
This invitation becomes quite interesting when the correlation between name and character is less obvious than in the above
examples. Esther Summerson's name, for instance, is problematic. The reference to the Old Testament Esther implies that
she is a strong character, but Summerson could be seen as ironic. She is no summer's son, she is an illegitimate daughter.
Perhaps it is a reference to the idea that she was conceived in love, the product of a "summer's passion" between Hawden
and the future Lady Dedlock. At any rate, Dickens invites this kind of speculation, asking us to see his name-puzzles as
complex in some cases, simple in others, perhaps according to the relative complexity of the characters the names represent.

In an interesting twist, Dickens' own characters sometimes display his panache for choosing dramatic and evocative names.
For instance, Captain Hawden (whose proper name possibly alludes to his naval status by bringing up the term "hawser")
uses the Latin word Nemo as his pseudonym, which means "nobody". He is, to the plot, indeed somebody, but he refuses to
own up to any part of society, especially his own name, because he has sunk so low. Other characters are given nicknames,
such as Conversation Kenge, that capture an awareness on the community's part of the humor and power of an apt name.
Like their author, these characters seem to relish the puzzle and joy of apt naming.

Chancery in microcosm

Just as Dickens captures the failures of the English state in the metaphor of bad parenting, so too he criticizes the endless
mechanizations of Chancery through various metaphors of ill-run shops, homes or other systems. Miss Flite's pointless habit
of keeping birds awaiting the "Day of Judgement" which never comes is an expression of her own endless waiting for her
case to be settled. Krook's rag and bottle shop, with its piles of useless and decaying stuff, represents in turn the mounds of
mouldy documents rotting in Chancery's hands, and the resulting decay of the "store" -- i.e. the wealth and property -- of
England. Tom-all-alone's is another example of a property gone to rack and ruin because of Chancery.

England's orphan

Continuing the metaphor of the English state as an absent parent, the most egregious form of parental abuse presented by
Dickens is captured in Jo, an orphan. Though he is shown occasional kindness, the overwhelming theme of Jo's life is that he
belongs nowhere. People are constantly telling him to "move on." The state, which must act for him in loco parentis, gives
him two options -- to live on the streets or in the workhouse, that is to say, to choose between death by neglect and death by
abuse. Jo's diseased death -- and the manner in which he spreads his disease throughout society -- caps his role as a living
metaphor for the failure of the English social system. Jo, himself a victim of disease, spreads disease further, thus
perpetuating the ill visited upon him. He is the bleakest soul in Bleak House, and Dickens' most trenchant social text.

The repurcussions of young choice

Dickens provides us with several characters who, through an early passionate sin or hasty decision, foment lasting misery for
themselves and others. Honoria lives a life of boredom and lies as Lady Dedlock, having created a delicate situation for her
daughter as well as herself; Hawdon descends into opium abuse; Honoria's sister, who takes care of Esther instead of
marrying Boythorn, is bitter and cold to Esther her entire life, and dies at a young age. A sub-set of these youthful, fateful
decisions concern Chancery. Miss Flite, we are told, decided in youthful passion to follow her Chancery suit through to the
end, and as a result has been consumed, dessicated and driven mad by the endless litigation of Chancery's process. Similarly,
Richard chooses to depend upon the Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit, which drives him to a life of hatred and paranoia and to an
early, tragic death.

Systems bad, personal accountability good

In Bleak House, Dickens offers a bitter and ironic critique of institutions. Chancery, the system of justice, is the most unjust
system imaginable; Mrs. Jellyby's social activism, which she presents as humanitarian, gives rise to a most inhumane and
neglected household. Indeed, institutions seem inevitably to succumb to the problems that they are supposed to address.
After all, justice depends upon injustice, and so it is in the best interest of Chancery, which makes money through righting
"injustice," to increase injustice.

Rather than depend upon systems or institutions to address society's ills, Dickens calls for individuals to right wrongs and
relieve suffering through freely chosen charity. Humanism pervades the novel, with John Jarndyce going so far as to say in
Chapter 13: "Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own efforts."

Understanding toward sexual misbehavior

Dickens, for his day, treats themes of sexuality with rather un-Victorian (or, at least, unlike our present-day ideas of
Victorians) tolerance and understanding. He paints a largely sympathetic portrait of Lady Dedlock, who bore a child out of
wedlock. In the 1850s, this would have been enough to make her a social pariah, but Dickens paints her detractors
(Tulkinghorn, her sister), not herself, in unflattering light. He makes her suffer, it is true, but he does not condemn her for
her sexual relationship with Captain Hawdon. He also paints Mr. Snagsby, who is under suspicion of being Jo's father for
most of the novel, as a sympathetic character.
Dickens is rather harder on those who subject their natural desires to a principle. Miss Barbary, Honoria's sister who raises
Esther and emotionally neglects her, without Honoria's knowledge, is shown to be a narrow and bitter person, who, rather
than being praised for doing good by raising her illegitimate niece, died young and unhappy after giving up her love for Mr.
Boythorn.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Great Expectations summary centers a boy. His name is Pip. Pip is a young orphan, living with his sister and her husband,
Joe Gargery, the strong but gentle blacksmith of the village.Pip goes to visit his parents’ graves. However, Pip meets
Magwitch, an escaped convict over there. Pip helps the convict. However, he is eventually recaptured and taken back to
prison. Pip continues his simple living as a poor but honest boy. However, he cannot help, feeling discontented with his
place in life.Pip is taken to meet Miss Havisham. She is a strange lady who has shut herself away ever since her wedding
was called off at the last minute. She never leaves her house. Moreover, she still wears her wedding dress and despises men.

Pip meets Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter Estella too. She is being brought up by Miss Havisham to break the hearts of
men. Estella, therefore, treats Pip cruelly especially when she talks about Pip’s background as a common boy. Pip makes
many visits to them and slowly falls in love with Estella. He dreams to become a gentleman so that he could be worthy of
her.Miss Havisham pays the money as a reward for his visit. This allows Pip to become Joe’s apprentice. He works in the
forge with Joe and Orlick. Although it is not what he really hoped for, Pip becomes a steady worker trying to educate and
improve himself with the aid of a local girl, Biddy.During this time, Mrs. Joe is severally attacked. Furthermore, she became
incapable to care for the family anymore. However, Biddy moves into the family home to help them out.One day, Mr.
Jaggers, a lawyer at London visits Pip, who is now a young man. Jaggers tells Pip that he has come into a fortune. He must
move to London in order to become a gentleman, improve his education, and take up a higher class life.Pip convinces
himself that the money has come from Miss Havisham. Also, he interprets that she plans for him and Estella to be a couple.

Pip travels to London. Mr. Jaggers, the lawyer, becomes his guardian till he becomes an adult. He lives with Herbert Pocket,
a young man related to Miss Havisham, who teaches him how to act like a gentleman. She teaches that by developing good
manners, wearing nice clothes, and speaking more formally.Pip is a quick learner. Thus, he was soon able to mix with people
from the upper classes such as Bentley Drummle. During this time Pip repetitively meets Estella, falling ever more deeply in
love with her.Unfortunately, in his efforts to win Estella and make an impact on people, Pip started to look down on others.
He becomes ashamed of his origin. Also, he starts neglecting his family in the process. Furthermore, he felt uncomfortable
even when he returns to attend his dead sister’s funeral. He begins spending too much money and soon he and Herbert were
in debt.

Pip starts feeling that he is being followed. One dark stormy night he answers his door to a ragged figure. He turns out to be
Magwitch, the ex-convict Pip helped out as a child.Magwitch has spent many years in Australia. He transported from
England on pain of death should he return. However, he has made a great amount of money and has risked everything to
come back to him.He tells Pip that he is the mystery benefactor who gave Pip all of his money. Pip is horrified. He feels that
the money is not good. Moreover, he finds that his assumptions about Miss Havisham wanting him and Estella to be together
have been wrong all along.Pip tries to get Magwitch out of the country However, he was unsuccessful. Later, Magwitch dies
in prison and Pip loses his fortune.Later, in great expectations summary, Estella plans to marry Bentley Drummle. Miss
Havisham agrees to help Herbert in setting up his business. However, a tragic incident took place and Miss Havisham is
involved in a terrible fire. This leads to her sad demise.Pip, now older and wiser, returns to his family home. He thinks of
marrying Biddy. However, she was already married to Joe. Later, Pip meets Estella once more who has become a widow.

Themes

The Elusiveness of Dreams

An analysis of Great Expectations shows that characters with less than worthy motives fail to achieve happiness.

1. Pip dreams of being a gentleman to impress Estella. He becomes a gentleman and with his new found wealth
accrues several debts and with his new found status does little to better his society, shunning those who were good
to him–Joe and Biddy–for those who belittle him. He becomes Estella’s bootlick instead of her paramour. The
ultimate irony is Pip’s status is dependent on a convict, exiled for life for a multitude of crimes.

2. Miss Havisham’s dream of raising a daughter and shielding her from the cruelties of men does not protect her from
the cruelties of Bentley Drummle. Havisham’s efforts to use Estella as an instrument of revenge on all men
backfires as she realizes her machinations have caused Pip to endure pain.

3. Abel Magwitch dreams of producing a gentleman, but does not realize his schemes have failed.

Redemption

People can change, though some choose not to.

Pip eventually realizes his great expectations, but not in the way he envisions. He sees the error of his ways and
understands that happiness comes through doing good to others, as displayed by his treatment of Provis and Herbert,
not through social status or wealth. His reconciliation with Joe demonstrates his willingness to embrace goodness,
regardless of status.

Miss Havisham realizes the pain she has caused and seeks forgiveness by assisting Pip’s desires to help Herbert. Her
apology is sincere and her repentance true. She symbolically purges her sins by setting herself on fire, an act which
destroys the rottenness of her tomb. She also serves as a lesson for Pip on how not to act. Pip speculates that “in
shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more; that, in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a
thousand natural healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must
and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker” (Chapter 49).

Abel Magwitch attempts to make up for a life of crime by becoming the benefactor of a young boy who helps him on
the marshes. Although he is recaptured and sentenced to die, he does so in peace, with his gentleman beside him.

Ambition and Self-Improvement

The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important than
social advancement, wealth, and class. Dickens establishes the theme and shows Pip learning this lesson, largely by
exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvement—ideas that quickly become both the thematic center of the novel and
the psychological mechanism that encourages much of Pip’s development. At heart, Pip is an idealist; whenever he can
conceive of something that is better than what he already has, he immediately desires to obtain the improvement. When
he sees Satis House, he longs to be a wealthy gentleman; when he thinks of his moral shortcomings, he longs to be
good; when he realizes that he cannot read, he longs to learn how. Pip’s desire for self-improvement is the main source
of the novel’s title: because he believes in the possibility of advancement in life, he has “great expectations” about his
future.

Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectations—moral, social, and educational; these motivate
Pip’s best and his worst behavior throughout the novel. First, Pip desires moral self-improvement. He is extremely hard
on himself when he acts immorally and feels powerful guilt that spurs him to act better in the future. When he leaves for
London, for instance, he torments himself about having behaved so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy. Second, Pip
desires social self-improvement. In love with Estella, he longs to become a member of her social class, and, encouraged
by Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, he entertains fantasies of becoming a gentleman. The working out of this fantasy forms
the basic plot of the novel; it provides Dickens the opportunity to gently satirize the class system of his era and to make
a point about its capricious nature. Significantly, Pip’s life as a gentleman is no more satisfying—and certainly no more
moral—than his previous life as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Third, Pip desires educational improvement. This desire is
deeply connected to his social ambition and longing to marry Estella: a full education is a requirement of being a
gentleman. As long as he is an ignorant country boy, he has no hope of social advancement. Pip understands this fact as
a child, when he learns to read at Mr. Wopsle’s aunt’s school, and as a young man, when he takes lessons from
Matthew Pocket. Ultimately, through the examples of Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch, Pip learns that social and educational
improvement are irrelevant to one’s real worth and that conscience and affection are to be valued above erudition and
social standing.

Social Class

Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging from the most
wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to the middle class
(Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss Havisham). The theme of social class is central to the novel’s plot and to the
ultimate moral theme of the book—Pip’s realization that wealth and class are less important than affection, loyalty, and
inner worth. Pip achieves this realization when he is finally able to understand that, despite the esteem in which he
holds Estella, one’s social status is in no way connected to one’s real character. Drummle, for instance, is an upper-class
lout, while Magwitch, a persecuted convict, has a deep inner worth.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the novel’s treatment of social class is that the class system it
portrays is based on the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England. Dickens generally ignores the nobility
and the hereditary aristocracy in favor of characters whose fortunes have been earned through commerce. Even Miss
Havisham’s family fortune was made through the brewery that is still connected to her manor. In this way, by
connecting the theme of social class to the idea of work and self-advancement, Dickens subtly reinforces the novel’s
overarching theme of ambition and self-improvement.

Crime, Guilt, and Innocence

The theme of crime, guilt, and innocence is explored throughout the novel largely through the characters of the convicts
and the criminal lawyer Jaggers. From the handcuffs Joe mends at the smithy to the gallows at the prison in London, the
imagery of crime and criminal justice pervades the book, becoming an important symbol of Pip’s inner struggle to
reconcile his own inner moral conscience with the institutional justice system. In general, just as social class becomes a
superficial standard of value that Pip must learn to look beyond in finding a better way to live his life, the external
trappings of the criminal justice system (police, courts, jails, etc.) become a superficial standard of morality that Pip
must learn to look beyond to trust his inner conscience. Magwitch, for instance, frightens Pip at first simply because he
is a convict, and Pip feels guilty for helping him because he is afraid of the police. By the end of the book, however, Pip
has discovered Magwitch’s inner nobility, and is able to disregard his external status as a criminal. Prompted by his
conscience, he helps Magwitch to evade the law and the police. As Pip has learned to trust his conscience and to value
Magwitch’s inner character, he has replaced an external standard of value with an internal one.

Sophistication

In Great Expectations, Pip becomes obsessed with a desire to be sophisticated and takes damaging risks in order to do
so. After his first encounter with Estella, Pip becomes acutely self-conscious that “I was a common labouring-boy; that
my hands were coarse, that my boots were thick.” (pg. 59). Once he moves to London, Pip is exposed to a glamourous
urban world “so crowded with people and so brilliantly lighted,” and he quickly begins to “contract expensive habits.”
As a result of spending money on things like a personal servant and fancy clothes, Pip quickly falls into debt, and
damages Herbert’s finances as well as his own. Even more troubling, Pip tries to avoid anyone who might undermine
his reputation as a sophisticated young gentleman. In the end, sophistication is revealed as a shallow and superficial
value because it does not lead to Pip achieving anything, and only makes him lonely and miserable

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly, cold-hearted creditor, continues his stingy, greedy ways on Christmas Eve. He rejects a
Christmas dinner invitation, and all the good tidings of the holiday, from his jolly nephew, Fred; he yells at charity
workers; and he overworks his employee, Bob Cratchit. At night, Scrooge's former partner Jacob Marley, dead for
seven years, visits him in the form of a ghost. Marley's spirit has been wandering since he died as punishment for being
consumed with business and not with people while alive. He has come to warn Scrooge and perhaps save him from the
same fate. He tells him Three Spirits will come to him over the next three nights.

Scrooge falls asleep and wakes up to find the Ghost of Christmas Past, a small, elderly figure. The Ghost shows
Scrooge scenes from the past that trace Scrooge's development from a young boy, lonely but with the potential for
happiness, to a young man with the first traces of greed that would deny love in his life. Scrooge shows newfound
emotion when revisiting these scenes, often crying from identification with his former neglected self.

Scrooge goes to sleep and is awakened by the Ghost of Christmas Present, a giant with a life span of one day. He shows
Scrooge several current scenes of Christmas joy and charity, then shows him the Cratchit household. The Ghost informs
Scrooge that unless the future is changed, the Cratchit's crippled and good-hearted young son, Tiny Tim, will die. He
also shows Scrooge the party at Fred's house. Finally, a ragged boy and girl crawl out from the Ghost's robes. The
Ghost calls them Ignorance and Want and warns Scrooge to beware of Ignorance.

The silent, black-clad Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come replaces the other ghost. He shows Scrooge several scenes of
people discussing someone's death; no one seems pained by the death, and most are happy about it. Scrooge does not
know, however, who the man is. He learns that Tiny Tim has died, but the Cratchits maintain their unity and love.
Scrooge finally discovers that he is the one who has died and whose death has only pleased people. He expresses the
hope that these scenes of the future can be changed, and vows to incorporate the lessons of the past, present, and future
into his adoption of the Christmas spirit.

Scrooge wakes up in his bedroom and learns that the whole adventure took only one night, not three‹it is Christmas
Day. In addition to smiling and being friendly to everyone he sees, he sends a large turkey to the Cratchits, gives a
sizable donation to the charity worker he previously insulted, and has a wonderful time at Fred's party. The next day he
gives Cratchit a raise. Scrooge continues his kindly ways after Christmas, befriending everyone and becoming a second
father to Tiny Tim, who does not die. He never sees the ghosts again, but he keeps the spirit of Christmas alive in his
heart as well as anyone.

Themes

The Christmas spirit

Above all, A Christmas Carol is a celebration of Christmas and the good it inspires. At Christmas time, people forget
their petty quotidian disputes, selfish tendencies, and workaholic schedules in favor of friendship, charity, and
celebration. Several representatives of these virtues stand out in Dickens's cast. Fred is a model of good cheer,
while Fezziwig adds to this the dimensions of being a tremendous friend and generous employer. Tiny Tim's courage
and selflessness in the face of his ill health are also noteworthy, as is the loving nature of the entire Cratchit family.
Scrooge learns the lessons of the Christmas spirit through his visions of Christmases past, present, and future; in each
he sees either the ill effects his miserly nature has wrought or the good tidings that others bring about through their love
and kindness.

Redemption and free will

The greatest pleasure in A Christmas Carol is watching Scrooge's transformation from money-pinching grouch to
generous gentleman. His redemption, a major motif in Christian art, is made possible through free will. While Scrooge
is shown visions of the future, he states (and his statement is borne out in Stave Five) that they are only visions of
things that "May" be, not what "Will" be. He has the power to change the future with his present actions, and Dickens
tries to impart this sense of free will to the reader; if Scrooge can change, then so can anyone.

Critique of Victorian society

Dickens blames the huge class stratification of Victorian England on the selfishness of the rich and, implicitly, on the
Poor Laws that keep down the underclass. Scrooge is the obvious symbol of the greedy Victorian rich, while the
Cratchits represent the working poor. But Dickens goes beyond sentimental portraits and reveals the underbelly of the
city, notably in Stave Four. Even in the scene of the thieving workers divvying up the dead Scrooge's possessions, the
accountability for their actions is put on Scrooge‹had he not been such a miser, they would not have resorted to stealing
from him. When the children of Ignorance and Want crawl out from under the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present,
the ghost sends a message to Scrooge, and the same is given to the Victorian reader: to help out those in Want, and
beware of Ignorance in oneself and others.

Capitalist time and epiphanies

At the beginning of the novella, Scrooge seems aware of only the present tense, the tense of capitalism. The now is the
time to make or lose money, and the past and future exist only to serve the present. Dickens's attention to clocks and
bells reinforces Scrooge's mania with time.

However, Scrooge is redeemed when he learns to integrate the past, present, and future into his worldview. He steps out
of the capitalist obsession with the present tense and into a timeless framework in which qualities like generosity and
love cannot be quantified. His appreciation of the three tenses also comes in one fell swoop, overnight, and suggests
that the epiphany, the sudden revelation of a profound meaning in life, encapsulates all three tenses.

Social Dissatisfaction and the Poor Laws

A Christmas Carol has attracted generations of readers with its clear parable-like structure and compelling ghost story.
It’s a moral tale that has proven timeless, but Dickens also wrote the story with a very present problem in mind, and his
structure was designed to make the real issues of Victorian London stand out and provide greater awareness in the
reading masses. For instance, the two gentlemen that ask for Scrooge’s charity are kindly but unable to inspire
Scrooge’s sympathies. In Scrooge’s easy assurance that the poor not only belong in but actually deserve to live in the
poor house, the story conveys a message about the visibility and effectiveness of charity being swamped by common
misconceptions that the poor house is a functional institution keeping poor people usefully employed. In fact, the poor
house was an institution that did nothing to help the poor. Rather, it was a terrible place that served primarily to keep
the poor out of view of those who were better off. Scrooge’s repetition of his dismissive phrase “Humbug!” is a symbol
of the insensitivity and ignorance of the middle class looking down on and dismissing the poor.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows us not only Scrooge’s miserable future but also the future of his
contemporaries, the traders and bankers that are discussing his funeral lunch and not caring at all that he has died.
Dickens shows us that meanness is often connected to the pursuit of wealth. Further, he shows how such meanness is a
cycle, almost catching. Scrooge, then, transforms a larger fate than his own when he discovers charity.

In fact, A Christmas Carol has had a tangible effect on poverty, at least on a small, individual scale – stories abound of
factory owners and merchants being so affected by readings of A Christmas Carol that they sent their workers gifts and
changed harsh conditions.
DAVID COPPERFIELD

The full title of “David Copperfield” is “The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David
Copperfield the younger of Blunderstone Rookery” but it was never published under this name. “David Copperfield” is
the story of a child carrying the same name and his journey from childhood till he grows old.

A sad childhood is portrayed in the story where the child loses his father at a young age. As a result, his mother marries
again and his step father gives the little child a very hard time. His step father believes that being weak in studies, David
needs full attention. After being frustrated by his father, little David one day bites him. The result is that soon he lands
into a hostel where he also faces a hard time but makes two friends- James Steerforth and Tommy Traddles. When he
returns home during vacations he comes to know that his mother has given birth to a baby boy. Soon both his mother
and the baby boy dies and David is left alone to face the torture of his father. His father now sends David to a factory to
work.

David runs away from London to Dover and now meets his relative, Aunt Betsey Trotwood. He is now renamed as
Trotwood Copperfield and is addressed by the new nickname Trot everywhere. As he grows up many of his loved ones
also leave him alone by kissing death including his Aunt Betsey. At a very young age David faces the pain that people
do not face in their lifetimes. This makes him a mature and well to do individual. But life takes a much harder lesson
after he gets married to Dora Spenlow because she dies facing the pain of her miscarriage early in their marriage. Later
David marries the beautiful and sensible Agnes and lives a beautiful life with her and their three children. He also
names his daughter after his late aunt Betsey to show how much he loved her and how much he still misses her.

Charles Dickens is regarded as one of the best authors of children’s stories and he has proven this again with the simple
yet mature story of “David Copperfield”. Each and every reader can experience the pain that the character of little
David faces when he is a child and also when he attains adulthood. Dickens also gives a beautiful message through his
essay; a person who never gives up cannot fail. David faces a number of hardships in his life but still never gives up.

Similarly, an individual who does not give up under any circumstances is bound to succeed no matter what. The kids
reading such stories get an inspiration and also an understanding of the fact that life can become beautiful if an
individual decides not to surrender under any circumstances.

Themes

Social Class

Social status and class are ubiquitous as issues throughout the novel. In fact, the novel can be viewed in large measure
as a commentary on social status and class-based wealth.

Favoritism and undeserved respect are shown constantly for those of a higher class. For example, in the case
of Steerforth, it is obvious that he is treated much better than David and the other students at Salem House.
Furthermore, he is highly regarded by David and even by Mr. Peggotty and Ham, both of whom are of a lower class,
when in fact Steerforth is the one who should be respecting them for their moral character. He constantly puts down
those below him in status, such as Mr. Mell and Ham once he gets engaged to Little Em'ly.

The striving for social status can also be seen through David's and Dora's courtship and marriage. David's first thought
after hearing of Miss Betsey's financial downfall is shame at being poor, and Dora cries at the thought of David being
poor and of having to do her own housework. David is constantly striving to make money so that he can live and
provide Dora with a life of wealth. Little Em'ly also expresses unhappiness at her low social status and longs to be a
"lady," which is why she runs off with Steerforth in the first place.

The Plight of the Weak

Throughout David Copperfield, the powerful abuse the weak and helpless. Dickens focuses on orphans, women, and
the mentally disabled to show that exploitation—not pity or compassion—is the rule in an industrial society. Dickens
draws on his own experience as a child to describe the inhumanity of child labor and debtors’ prison. His characters
suffer punishment at the hands of forces larger than themselves, even though they are morally good people. The
arbitrary suffering of innocents makes for the most vividly affecting scenes of the novel. David starves and suffers in a
wine-bottling factory as a child. As his guardian, Mr. Murdstone can exploit David as factory labor because the boy is
too small and dependent on him to disobey. Likewise, the boys at Salem House have no recourse against the cruel Mr.
Creakle. In both situations, children deprived of the care of their natural parents suffer at the hands of their own
supposed protectors.
The weak in David Copperfield never escape the domination of the powerful by challenging the powerful directly.
Instead, the weak must ally themselves with equally powerful characters. David, for example, doesn’t stand up to Mr.
Murdstone and challenge his authority. Instead, he flees to the wealthy Miss Betsey, whose financial stability affords
her the power to shelter David from Mr. Murdstone. David’s escape proves neither self-reliance nor his own inner
virtue, but rather the significance of family ties and family money in human relationships.

Wealth and Class

Throughout the novel, Dickens criticizes his society’s view of wealth and class as measures of a person’s value.
Dickens uses Steerforth, who is wealthy, powerful, and noble, to show that these traits are more likely to corrupt than
improve a person’s character. Steerforth is treacherous and self-absorbed. On the other hand, Mr. Peggotty and Ham,
both poor, are generous, sympathetic characters. Many people in Dickens’s time believed that poverty was a symptom
of moral degeneracy and that people who were poor deserved to suffer because of inherent deficiencies. Dickens, on the
other hand, sympathizes with the poor and implies that their woes result from society’s unfairness, not their own
failings.

Dickens does not go so far as to suggest that all poor people are absolutely noble and that all rich people are utterly evil.
Poor people frequently swindle David when he is young, even though he too is poor and helpless. Doctor Strong and
Agnes, both wealthy, middle-class citizens, nonetheless are morally upstanding. Dickens does not paint a black-and-
white moral picture but shows that wealth and class are are unreliable indicators of character and morality. Dickens
invites us to judge his characters based on their individual deeds and qualities, not on the hand that the cruel world deals
them.

True Happiness

Many times throughout the novel, the search for true happiness takes prominence. The narrator notes in particular the
innocent joy David had as a child before his mother married Mr. Murdstone. The plot in general focuses on David's
search for true happiness, and it is up to the reader to judge whether or not he has succeeded.

All of the characters find or try to find their own routes to happiness. Some, such as David and the Peggottys, find true
happiness through their families and spouses. Others, such as the Micawbers and Uriah, believe that money will bring
them great happiness, although the Micawbers are also happy just remaining with one another. Still others, such as
Dora, find happiness in simple, frivolous pleasures. Dickens appears to question whether any of these characters can
ever find true happiness, for each of these methods of reaching happiness has its pros and cons.

Good vs. Evil

Dickens makes the symbols of good and evil very easy to distinguish in the novel, although one must note that these
concepts are more complex than they might seem, not least because they are embodied as fairly complex characters.
The theme of good versus evil is prevalent especially as a symbolic battle for David's soul between Agnes
Wickfield and Steerforth. Agnes represents David's "good angel," as he calls her. She is his voice of reason and is the
person who is able to calm him and give him the advice that he needs. Steerforth, in contrast, is his "bad angel," as
Agnes says. He is the one who feeds David's desire for upper-class, shallow wealth and leads him to do things like get
very drunk and embarrass himself in public.

Uriah also is very commonly a symbol of evil. He is eventually defeated by Agnes, Miss Betsey, Mr. Micawber,
and Traddles, all of whom are symbols of good. Yet, there are times when the evil wins out, namely in the case of
David's mother Clara and the Murdstones. The evil duo overpower her and contribute to her death.

The "Undisciplined Heart"

David's "undisciplined heart" is his tendency to fall victim to passion. He falls very quickly and very strongly for girls.
This is especially the case regarding Dora, with whom he falls in love even before he has had the chance to say one
word to her. He learns that she does not like to work around the house and is unwilling to learn about keeping a house,
but he still decides to marry her.

Minor examples of David's undisciplined heart include his feelings for Miss Shepherd, a brief crush on a person he
barely knew, and his impractical crush on another woman much older than he. It is not until the very end of the novel
that he learns to control or understand his undisciplined heart, and it is then that he finally realizes that Agnes is the
person whom he truly loves maturely.
Children and Their Treatment

Dickens apparently is fascinated with children, and this novel examines in detail how children are treated. The narrator
mentions near the beginning of the novel how impressive it is that children can remember so many details so clearly,
and he claims that he is proud to have such a childlike memory himself.

Furthermore, the simpler, more childlike characters are among the sweetest in the novel. For example, Tommy Traddles
is very simple and sweet in demeanor, and he goes on to be a successful lawyer, engaged to a beautiful, generous
woman. Dora Spenlow may not know how to do household chores, but her devotion to David is extremely touching and
admirable, and it wins David's heart. Finally, Mr. Dick, very simple-minded, is perhaps the best-liked character in the
novel.

Childlike simplicity and innocence thus are valued in the moral world of the novel. When Dickens writes scenes that
show cruelty to children, he most likely is demonstrating an evil to raise readers’ passions against such cruelty.

Female Empowerment

The novel explores feminine power to some degree, seeming to favor strong, powerful women, such as Peggotty and
Miss Betsey. In contrast, women who do not hold much power or who simply exist in their marriages, such as Clara
Copperfield, do not fare very well. Miss Betsey, an admired character throughout the novel, fights against her husband
and manages to acquire a divorce, a feat that was not simple for women at the time (although he continues to bother her
for money some time afterward). Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, however, are a good example of a married couple in which
each spouse holds almost an equal amount of power, and they are a very happy couple, even though they are broke.
Thus, Dickens seems to be a proponent of feminine power in the sense of basic equality in institutions such as marriage.

Equality in Marriage

In the world of the novel, marriages succeed to the extent that husband and wife attain equality in their relationship.
Dickens holds up the Strongs’ marriage as an example to show that marriages can only be happy if neither spouse is
subjugated to the other. Indeed, neither of the Strongs views the other as inferior. Conversely, Dickens criticizes
characters who attempt to invoke a sense of superiority over their spouses. Mr. Murdstone’s attempts to improve
David’s mother’s character, for example, only crush her spirit. Mr. Murdstone forces Clara into submission in the name
of improving her, which leaves her meek and voiceless. In contrast, although Doctor Strong does attempt to improve
Annie’s character, he does so not out of a desire to show his moral superiority but rather out of love and respect for
Annie. Doctor Strong is gentle and soothing with his wife, rather than abrasive and imperious like Mr. Murdstone.
Though Doctor Strong’s marriage is based at least partially on an ideal of equality, he still assumes that his wife, as a
woman, depends upon him and needs him for moral guidance. Dickens, we see, does not challenge his society’s
constrictive views about the roles of women. However, by depicting a marriage in which a man and wife share some
balance of power, Dickens does point toward an age of empowered women.

The Role of the Father

The role of the father figure is one of the first issues that comes up in the novel, for David is born six months after his
father dies. Dickens is apparently suggesting that a father figure is essential for happiness and developing a good
character. Still, not all fathers or father figures fit the norm or are even beneficial. Peggotty seems to be David's father
figure growing up, for he describes her as large and "hard." Thus, he has a disciplinary figure along with his warm,
loving mother to give him a balanced childhood. Little Em'ly and Ham have Mr. Peggotty, and both turn out to be very
good people, especially Ham. Little Em'ly is simply seduced by Steerforth, who, as it turns out, never had a father
figure and even admits that he regrets that and wishes that he could have had a father figure so that he could be a better
person. Uriah has no father mentioned either, and he is one of the most evil characters in the novel.

HARD TIMES

Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant in the industrial city of Coketown, England, devotes his life to a
philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to this
philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits. He founds a school and charitably takes
in one of the students, the kindly and imaginative Sissy Jupe, after the disappearance of her father, a circus entertainer.

As the Gradgrind children grow older, Tom becomes a dissipated, self-interested hedonist, and Louisa struggles with
deep inner confusion, feeling as though she is missing something important in her life. Eventually Louisa marries
Gradgrind’s friend Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy factory owner and banker more than twice her age. Bounderby
continually trumpets his role as a self-made man who was abandoned in the gutter by his mother as an infant. Tom is
apprenticed at the Bounderby bank, and Sissy remains at the Gradgrind home to care for the younger children.

In the meantime, an impoverished “Hand”—Dickens’s term for the lowest laborers in Coketown’s factories—named
Stephen Blackpool struggles with his love for Rachael, another poor factory worker. He is unable to marry her because
he is already married to a horrible, drunken woman who disappears for months and even years at a time. Stephen visits
Bounderby to ask about a divorce but learns that only the wealthy can obtain them. Outside Bounderby’s home, he
meets Mrs. Pegler, a strange old woman with an inexplicable devotion to Bounderby.

James Harthouse, a wealthy young sophisticate from London, arrives in Coketown to begin a political career as a
disciple of Gradgrind, who is now a Member of Parliament. He immediately takes an interest in Louisa and decides to
try to seduce her. With the unspoken aid of Mrs. Sparsit, a former aristocrat who has fallen on hard times and now
works for Bounderby, he sets about trying to corrupt Louisa.

The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union spokesman named Slackbridge, try to form a union. Only Stephen refuses to
join because he feels that a union strike would only increase tensions between employers and employees. He is cast out
by the other Hands and fired by Bounderby when he refuses to spy on them. Louisa, impressed with Stephen’s integrity,
visits him before he leaves Coketown and helps him with some money. Tom accompanies her and tells Stephen that if
he waits outside the bank for several consecutive nights, help will come to him. Stephen does so, but no help arrives.
Eventually he packs up and leaves Coketown, hoping to find agricultural work in the country. Not long after that, the
bank is robbed, and the lone suspect is Stephen, the vanished Hand who was seen loitering outside the bank for several
nights just before disappearing from the city.

Mrs. Sparsit witnesses Harthouse declaring his love for Louisa, and Louisa agrees to meet him in Coketown later that
night. However, Louisa instead flees to her father’s house, where she miserably confides to Gradgrind that her
upbringing has left her married to a man she does not love, disconnected from her feelings, deeply unhappy, and
possibly in love with Harthouse. She collapses to the floor, and Gradgrind, struck dumb with self-reproach, begins to
realize the imperfections in his philosophy of rational self-interest.

Sissy, who loves Louisa deeply, visits Harthouse and convinces him to leave Coketown forever. Bounderby, furious
that his wife has left him, redoubles his efforts to capture Stephen. When Stephen tries to return to clear his good name,
he falls into a mining pit called Old Hell Shaft. Rachael and Louisa discover him, but he dies soon after an emotional
farewell to Rachael. Gradgrind and Louisa realize that Tom is really responsible for robbing the bank, and they arrange
to sneak him out of England with the help of the circus performers with whom Sissy spent her early childhood. They
are nearly successful, but are stopped by Bitzer, a young man who went to Gradgrind’s school and who embodies all
the qualities of the detached rationalism that Gradgrind once espoused, but who now sees its limits. Sleary, the lisping
circus proprietor, arranges for Tom to slip out of Bitzer’s grasp, and the young robber escapes from England after all.

Mrs. Sparsit, anxious to help Bounderby find the robbers, drags Mrs. Pegler—a known associate of Stephen Blackpool
—in to see Bounderby, thinking Mrs. Pegler is a potential witness. Bounderby recoils, and it is revealed that Mrs.
Pegler is really his loving mother, whom he has forbidden to visit him: Bounderby is not a self-made man after all.
Angrily, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit and sends her away to her hostile relatives. Five years later, he will die alone in
the streets of Coketown. Gradgrind gives up his philosophy of fact and devotes his political power to helping the poor.
Tom realizes the error of his ways but dies without ever seeing his family again. While Sissy marries and has a large
and loving family, Louisa never again marries and never has children. Nevertheless, Louisa is loved by Sissy’s family
and learns at last how to feel sympathy for her fellow human beings.

Themes

The Mechanization of Human Beings

Hard Times suggests that nineteenth-century England’s overzealous adoption of industrialization threatens to turn
human beings into machines by thwarting the development of their emotions and imaginations. This suggestion comes
forth largely through the actions of Gradgrind and his follower, Bounderby: as the former educates the young children
of his family and his school in the ways of fact, the latter treats the workers in his factory as emotionless objects that are
easily exploited for his own self-interest. In Chapter 5 of the first book, the narrator draws a parallel between the factory
Hands and the Gradgrind children—both lead monotonous, uniform existences, untouched by pleasure. Consequently,
their fantasies and feelings are dulled, and they become almost mechanical themselves.

The mechanizing effects of industrialization are compounded by Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy of rational self-interest.
Mr. Gradgrind believes that human nature can be measured, quantified, and governed entirely by rational rules. Indeed,
his school attempts to turn children into little machines that behave according to such rules. Dickens’s primary goal
in Hard Times is to illustrate the dangers of allowing humans to become like machines, suggesting that without
compassion and imagination, life would be unbearable. Indeed, Louisa feels precisely this suffering when she returns to
her father’s house and tells him that something has been missing in her life, so much so that she finds herself in an
unhappy marriage and may be in love with someone else. While she does not actually behave in a dishonorable way,
since she stops her interaction with Harthouse before she has a socially ruinous affair with him, Louisa realizes that her
life is unbearable and that she must do something drastic for her own survival. Appealing to her father with the utmost
honesty, Louisa is able to make him realize and admit that his philosophies on life and methods of child rearing are to
blame for Louisa’s detachment from others.

The Opposition Between Fact and Fancy

While Mr. Gradgrind insists that his children should always stick to the facts, Hard Times not only suggests that fancy
is as important as fact, but it continually calls into question the difference between fact and fancy. Dickens suggests that
what constitutes so-called fact is a matter of perspective or opinion. For example, Bounderby believes that factory
employees are lazy good-for-nothings who expect to be fed “from a golden spoon.” The Hands, in contrast, see
themselves as hardworking and as unfairly exploited by their employers. These sets of facts cannot be reconciled
because they depend upon perspective. While Bounderby declares that “[w]hat is called Taste is only another name for
Fact,” Dickens implies that fact is a question of taste or personal belief. As a novelist, Dickens is naturally interested in
illustrating that fiction cannot be excluded from a fact-filled, mechanical society. Gradgrind’s children, however, grow
up in an environment where all flights of fancy are discouraged, and they end up with serious social dysfunctions as a
result. Tom becomes a hedonist who has little regard for others, while Louisa remains unable to connect with others
even though she has the desire to do so. On the other hand, Sissy, who grew up with the circus, constantly indulges in
the fancy forbidden to the Gradgrinds, and lovingly raises Louisa and Tom’s sister in a way more complete than the
upbringing of either of the older siblings. Just as fiction cannot be excluded from fact, fact is also necessary for a
balanced life. If Gradgrind had not adopted her, Sissy would have no guidance, and her future might be precarious. As a
result, the youngest Gradgrind daughter, raised both by the factual Gradgrind and the fanciful Sissy, represents the best
of both worlds.

The Importance of Femininity

During the Victorian era, women were commonly associated with supposedly feminine traits like compassion, moral
purity, and emotional sensitivity. Hard Times suggests that because they possess these traits, women can counteract the
mechanizing effects of industrialization. For instance, when Stephen feels depressed about the monotony of his life as a
factory worker, Rachael’s gentle fortitude inspires him to keep going. He sums up her virtues by referring to her as his
guiding angel. Similarly, Sissy introduces love into the Gradgrind household, ultimately teaching Louisa how to
recognize her emotions. Indeed, Dickens suggests that Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy of self-interest and calculating
rationality has prevented Louisa from developing her natural feminine traits. Perhaps Mrs. Gradgrind’s inability to
exercise her femininity allows Gradgrind to overemphasize the importance of fact in the rearing of his children. On his
part, Bounderby ensures that his rigidity will remain untouched since he marries the cold, emotionless product of Mr.
and Mrs. Gradgrind’s marriage. Through the various female characters in the novel, Dickens suggests that feminine
compassion is necessary to restore social harmony.

Industrialism and Its Evils

Hand in hand with the glorification of data and numbers and facts in the schoolhouse is the treatment of the workers in
the factories of Coketown as nothing more than machines, which produce so much per day and are not thought of as
having feelings or families or dreams. Dickens depicts this situation as a result of the industrialization of England; now
that towns like Coketown are focused on producing more and more, more dirty factories are built, more smoke pollutes
the air and water, and the factory owners only see their workers as part of the machines that bring them profit. In fact,
the workers are only called "Hands", an indication of how objectified they are by the owners. Similarly, Mr.
Gradgrind's children were brought up to be "minds". None of them are people or "hearts".

As the book progresses, it portrays how industrialism creates conditions in which owners treat workers as machines and
workers respond by unionizing to resist and fight back against the owners. In the meantime, those in Parliament (like
Mr. Gradgrind, who winds up elected to office) work for the benefit of the country but not its people. In short,
industrialization creates an environment in which people cease to treat either others or themselves as people. Even the
unions, the groups of factory workers who fight against the injustices of the factory owners, are not shown in a good
light. Stephen Blackpool, a poor worker at Bounderby's factory, is rejected by his fellow workers for his refusal to join
the union because of a promise made to the sweet, good woman he loves, Rachael. His factory union then treats him as
an outcast.

The remedy to industrialism and its evils in the novel is found in Sissy Jupe, the little girl who was brought up among
circus performers and fairy tales. Letting loose the imagination of children lets loose their hearts as well, and, as Sissy
does, they can combat and undo what a Gradgrind education produces.
OLIVER TWIST

Oliver Twist is the story of a young orphan, Oliver, and his attempts to stay good in a society that refuses to help.
Oliver is born in a workhouse, to a mother not known to anyone in the town. She dies right after giving birth to him,
and he is sent to the parochial orphanage, where he and the other orphans are treated terribly and fed very little. When
he turns nine, he is sent to the workhouse, where again he and the others are treated badly and practically starved. The
other boys, unable to stand their hunger any longer, decide to draw straws to choose who will have to go up and ask for
more food. Oliver loses. On the appointed day, after finishing his first serving of gruel, he goes up and asks for
more. Mr. Bumble, the beadle, and the board are outraged, and decide they must get rid of Oliver, apprenticing him to
the parochial undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. It is not great there either, and after an attack on his mother’s memory,
Oliver runs away.

Oliver walks towards London. When he is close, he is so weak he can barely continue, and he meets another boy
named Jack Dawkins, or the artful Dodger. The Dodger tells Oliver he can come with him to a place where a gentleman
will give him a place to sleep and food, for no rent. Oliver follows, and the Dodger takes him to an apartment in
London where he meets Fagin, the aforementioned gentleman, and Oliver is offered a place to stay. Oliver eventually
learns that Fagin’s boys are all pickpockets and thieves, but not until he is wrongfully accused of their crime of stealing
an old gentleman’s handkerchief. He is arrested, but the bookseller comes just in time to the court and says that he saw
that Oliver did not do it. The gentleman whose handkerchief was taken, Mr. Brownlow, feels bad for Oliver, and takes
him in.

Oliver is very happy with Mr. Brownlow, but Fagin and his co-conspirators are not happy to have lost Oliver, who may
give away their hiding place. So one day, when Mr. Brownlow entrusts Oliver to return some books to the bookseller
for him, Nancy spots Oliver, and kidnaps him, taking him back to Fagin.

Oliver is forced to go on a house-breaking excursion with the intimidating Bill Sikes. At gun point Oliver enters the
house, with the plan to wake those within, but before he can, he is shot by one of the servants. Sikes and his partner
escape, leaving Oliver in a ditch. The next morning Oliver makes it back to the house, where the kind owner, Mrs.
Maylie, and her beautiful niece Rose, decide to protect him from the police and nurse him back to health.

Oliver slowly recovers, and is extremely happy and grateful to be with such kind and generous people, who in turn are
ecstatic to find that Oliver is such a good-natured boy. When he is well enough, they take him to see Mr. Brownlow, but
they find his house empty—he has moved to the West Indies. Meanwhile, Fagin and his mysterious partner Monks have
not given up on finding Oliver, and one day Oliver wakens from a nightmare to find them staring at him through his
window. He raises the alarm, but they escape.

Nancy, overhearing Fagin and Monks, decides that she must go to Rose Maylie to tell her what she knows. She does so,
telling Rose that Monks is Oliver’s half-brother, who has been trying to destroy Oliver so that he can keep his whole
inheritance, but that she will not betray Fagin or Sikes. Rose tells Mr. Brownlow, who tells Oliver’s other caretakers,
and they decide that they must meet Nancy again to find out how to find Monks.

They meet her on London Bridge at a prearranged time, but Fagin has become suspicious, and has sent his new
boy, Noah Claypole, to spy on Nancy. Nancy tells Rose and Mr. Brownlow how to find Monks, but still refuses to
betray Fagin and Sikes, or to go with them. Noah reports everything to Fagin, who tells Sikes, knowing full well that
Sikes will kill Nancy. He does. Mr. Brownlow has in the mean time found Monks, who finally admits everything that
he has done, and the true case of Oliver’s birth.

Sikes is on the run, but all of London is in an uproar, and he eventually hangs himself accidentally in falling off a roof,
while trying to escape from the mob surrounding him. Fagin is arrested and tried, and, after a visit from Oliver, is
executed. Oliver, Mr. Brownlow, and the Maylies end up living in peace and comfort in a small village in the English
countryside.

Themes

Good versus Evil

The theme of good versus evil—and the eventual triumph of the former—is prominent in Oliver Twist. This theme can
be seen in Dickens’s juxtaposition of Oliver Twist and his friends in contrast to Fagin and the thieves. Villains like
Sikes, Fagin, and Monks have few—if any—positive or redeemable qualities. They are only seen committing acts of
crime, abuse, and subterfuge. Though they thrive for a time by profiting from the weak and the helpless, the evil
characters all meet just fates. Sikes and Fagin die for their crimes, and Monks’s greed and profligacy lead him to a
pitiful demise. On the other hand, the good characters are, for the most part, depicted as pure, wholesome, virtuous,
and innocent. Chief amongst this group are Oliver and Rose. Both characters are depicted in a wholly positive light and
given only admirable traits. Both are kind-hearted, open in expressing gratitude and affection, helpful and
compassionate to those in need, sensitive, and morally upright. Oliver is treated unfairly for most of his life and is
subject to abuse and mischaracterization, but he is eventually vindicated. Oliver’s innocence and earnestness lead him
to two groups of generous patrons: the Brownlow and Maylie households. Those characters are depicted as laudable
by the narrator, in large part for their care of Oliver. 

However, the characters of Nancy and Charley complicate the easy divide between good versus evil characters. Nancy
is morally ambiguous; she is hesitant to leave her life of crime but well-intentioned when it comes to Oliver, and
Charley initially works as a thief but reforms and goes on to earn an honest living. In the final analysis, the novel
emphatically supports the idea that good triumphs over evil.

Children in Poverty

Oliver Twist presents a sobering portrait of the life of poverty in Victorian London. In his preface, Dickens asserts that
he will not romanticize the circumstances in which his degraded criminals exist. He seeks to depict poverty “in its
unattractive and repulsive truth” to force Victorian readers to reckon with the “depraved and miserable” reality, because
“a lesson of purest good may be drawn from the vilest evil.” 

While Dickens portrays certain impoverished adults, the children born into poverty seem to be his chief concern.
Dickens focuses his attention on the corrupt system of the parochial workhouses, the abuse of orphans, and the overall
suffering caused by the Poor Laws. Oliver, as an orphan, is a ward of the parish, and he is starved, beaten, and insulted.
Those who hold power in the parochial system are greedy and self-centered, keeping money for themselves while
feeding the children as little as possible. When they reach an appropriate age, children can be apprenticed and perhaps
find a trade that will allow them to make a living. However, they may be apprenticed into a dangerous profession, such
as chimney sweeping, which could land them in an early grave. Oliver’s friend Dick bids him goodbye, remarking that
he hopes to die so he can go to heaven and join “kind faces that I never see when I am awake.” Here, Dickens indicts
his society, in which poor children would rather die young than be forced to

Institutional cruelty

The cruelty of institutions and bureaucracies toward the unfortunate is perhaps the preeminent theme of Oliver Twist,
and essentially what makes it a social novel. Dickens wrote the book largely in response to the Poor Law Amendment
Act of 1834, which represented the government's both passive and active cruelty to the poor and helpless. Although
institutions show both passive and active cruelty in Oliver Twist, active cruelty is more prevalent, a move that serves to
exaggerate and thus satirize this cruelty and make it seem intentional.

The cruelty of these institutions, however, is not separated from the cruelty of individuals. Although the parochial board
that decides Oliver’s future carelessly and without sympathy is largely anonymous, the man in the white jacket
generally voices the specific cruel sentiments, so that they are not presented as having come from nowhere, or just from
laws, but from the individuals in power. Similarly, Mr. Bumble is often directly involved in the institutional unkindness
that Oliver faces. This cruelty is not nameless or faceless, it is just so prevalent that not all the perpetrators can be
named.

Mob mentality

The horrifying power of mob mentality is also an important theme in Oliver Twist, and one that is closely related to that
of institutional cruelty. Institutional cruelty can be seen to be an example of a specific kind of mob mentality—not
literally, but a mob in which individuals are not held accountable for their actions, and so can be as heartless as they
like, with the blank face of the bureaucracy to cover them.

Similarly, the mobs in Oliver Twist all take on lives of their owns, so that the individuals within them can display their
cruelest character. We see mobs act against Oliver, the most striking example of which is when he is accused of
stealing Mr. Brownlow’s handkerchief. We also see mobs act against the antagonists in the novel. Bill Sikes becomes a
victim of a mob, and although we know that he is guilty, as opposed to Oliver, there is still an eerie similarly between
Sikes’s mob and Oliver’s, that reminds us how easily such a mob can turn against anyone, whether or not that someone
is truly guilty. Thus even when the mob is on the side of justice, and is "correct", Dickens illuminates the danger of the
mentality.

The importance of upbringing

Proper upbringing, posited as essential throughout the novel, is illuminated best in the scene where Nancy and Rose
first meet. In this scene, Dickens juxtaposes the prostitute Nancy to the angelic and utterly perfect Rose. Nancy’s
potential for goodness is clear, made so by her very presence there among other things, but from youth she has been
surrounded by liars and thieves, and although she transcends their ranks morally, she cannot escape from them, nor
become the person she could have had she had any of the advantages that Rose did. Rose, too, comes from a rather
ignominious background, but from an early age she was raised by the kind and loving Mrs. Maylie, who also offered
her all the resources she could desire - and so she became an example of the "perfect" female.

Oliver manages to rise above his upbringing. Surrounded by selfish, ignorant and cruel people for most of his
childhood, given no love, care, or tenderness, he still manages to maintain his kind disposition, and never gives into the
low morals of those around him. He is, however, meant to be the exception that proves the rule. The fact that his happy
ending is so very miraculous proves how important it is to be loved and cared for in childhood.

The powerlessness of children

Dickens is deeply interested in the plight of the powerless in Oliver Twist, and children are the primary symbol of this.
Oliver is continually reliant on and overpowered by others—Mr. Bumble, Fagin and Sikes, the mobs and people in the
street, even Nancy. Although he works hard to survive, it is only because he is taken in by wealthy and powerful adults
that he is able to escape the immoral and dangerous world into which he is born.

This powerlessness is not just represented in Oliver being physically overtaken or forced into things, but in his constant
failure to communicate with adults. Until he meets Mr. Brownlow, the adults who have total control of Oliver in his life
seem to fail completely to understand him. This is exemplified in the court room scene, where Oliver loses his ability to
speak, and so is given a name arbitrarily, but there are countless examples of adults either ignoring or misunderstanding
what seem to be clear and direct statements. This powerlessness, however, is not insurmountable, as once Oliver has
kind and intelligent people who are willing to listen to him he gains agency.

The powerlessness of women

Like children, women, too, are presented as at the mercy of the more powerful in society. This is especially exemplified
in Nancy, who ends up giving her life in her attempt to act against the men who hold power over her. When Nancy is
put in charge of taking Oliver to Sikes, she tells him that she would help him if she could, but she doesn’t have the
power. This ends up not being completely true—she does help Oliver in going to Rose, but even then Rose must turn to
Mr. Brownlow and Mr. Losberne to accomplish anything. It is telling to consider that Nancy must give her life for just
this small show of agency.

The limits of justice

Justice and its various forms are very important in Oliver Twist. By the end of the novel, almost all of the characters
have faced justice, in one way or another. Mr. and Mrs. Bumble are in a workhouse, Oliver, Rose, and all of the good
characters live happily and comfortably, and Sikes and Fagin have both been hanged. Yet, Dickens does not seem
completely comfortable with the way that justice has been meted out. Although the good characters clearly deserve the
happiness they get, and the bad characters certainly have done plenty to deserve their own ends, the novel seems
ambivalent about the methods and degree of justice involved.

The reader is already wary of the justice system because of how close Oliver comes to becoming an innocent victim of
it. Thus, although Fagin’s guilt is clear, the court room is mobbed in such a way as to make the justice system seem to
blend with the mob mentality of the audience. This brings up the question of who has the right to deliver justice, as well
as whether any system mired in bureaucracy and relying on human purity should have such extreme power as that of
life and death.

City versus countryside

In Oliver Twist, the city and the countryside each take on symbolic meaning, and stand in clear dichotomy. The city is
corrupt, dirty, and seedy, while the country is pure, clean, and healthy. It is in the city that Oliver is forced into
immorality, while it is in the country that Oliver is able to recover his health, to get an education, to find peace and
happiness, and to live morally. Repeatedly Dickens describes the seediest parts of London using wholly negative
language, while in scenes of the country, even the poor are presented as clean and pleasant to be around.

This dichotomy is likely related to the danger of the mob mentality that is so prevalent in the novel. In the city, where
everyone is so close together, it seems to always be the immoral contingent that wins out and drowns out the few moral
voices - just as in a mob the voice of reason is always overwhelmed. In the country, conversely, the people are not a
mob, but a community.
The Law

The novel is an exposition of the effect on the poor of British laws in the 19th Century, as industrialisation accelerated.
The reasoning behind the Poor Laws was good-intentioned – the creation of workhouses as a way of dealing with the
homeless: giving them food and shelter. The reality, however, was the confinement of paupers in places where they
were starved and mistreated with no training or education or any hope for a way out of the trap they were in, intended
partly as an answer to the growing crime rate. But the Poor Laws had ironically resulted in soaring rates of lawlessness.

On the level of the law as it applied to individuals, we see, in the treatment of Oliver when he is suspected of theft, that
individuals of his supposed class had no chance, It was only through the intervention of a middle-class gentleman that
Oliver was spared from being flung into prison.

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY

When Nicholas Nickleby was nineteen years old, his father died, bankrupt. A short time after their bereavement,
Nicholas, his sister Kate, and their mother set out for London. While there, they hope that the late Mr. Nickleby’s
brother, Ralph, might be willing to do something for them. Ralph Nickleby, a miserly moneylender, grudgingly allows
his sister-in-law and Kate to move into empty lodgings he owns, and he secures a position for Nicholas as assistant to
Wackford Squeers, who operates a boys’ boarding school in Yorkshire.

Nicholas, leaving his mother and sister in Ralph’s care, travels to the school and finds it a terrible place where the boys
are starved and mistreated almost beyond human imagination. Nicholas is forced to endure the situation, for his uncle
had warned him that any help given to his sister and mother depends upon his remaining where he had been placed. A
crisis arises, however, when Wackford Squeers unjustly and unmercifully beats an older boy named Smike. Nicholas
intervenes, wresting the whip from Squeers and beating the schoolmaster with it instead. Immediately afterward, Smike
and Nicholas leave the school and start walking toward London.

In London, meanwhile, Ralph Nickleby tries to use Kate to attract young Lord Verisopht into borrowing money at high
rates. He also finds work for Kate in a dressmaking establishment, where there is a great deal of labor and almost no
pay. Kate does not mind the work, but she is deeply distressed at the leers she has to endure when invited to her uncle’s
home to dine with Lord Verisopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk. Not long afterward, the dressmaker goes bankrupt, and Kate
becomes a companion to a wealthy but selfish and neurotic woman.

When Nicholas arrives in London, he seeks out Newman Noggs, his uncle’s clerk, who had promised to help him if it
were ever in his power. Newman Noggs helps Nicholas clear himself of the false charges of being a thief that had been
brought against him by Squeers and Ralph Nickleby.

With some notion of becoming sailors, Nicholas and Smike decide to go to Bristol. On the way, they meet Vincent
Crummles, a theatrical producer, whose troupe they join. Both Smike and Nicholas are successful as actors. In addition,
Nicholas adapts plays for the company to produce. After some weeks, however, Nicholas receives a letter from
Newman Noggs warning him that his presence is urgently required in London. Nicholas leaves hurriedly and arrives in
London late that night. Not wishing to disturb his family, Nicholas stays at an inn, where he encounters Sir Mulberry
Hawk and Lord Verisopht and overhears them speaking in derogatory terms of Kate. Nicholas remonstrates with them
and demands to know their names. In the altercation, Sir Mulberry’s horse bolts and the baronet is thrown from his
carriage and severely injured.

Newman asks Nicholas to return because Kate, exposed to the insulting attentions of Sir Mulberry and Lord Verisopht,
is increasingly miserable. Both Mrs. Nickleby and the woman to whom Kate is a companion fail to see past the men’s
titles and are flattered at the acquaintance, and Kate is forced to be often in their company. For Sir Mulberry it is a point
of honor to seduce her.

After Nicholas accidentally learns of the situation, he removes his mother and sister to new and friendlier lodgings, and
all intercourse with Ralph Nickleby ceases. However, the future seems quite bleak, for Nicholas is long unsuccessful
finding work in London. At an employment agency to which he applies, he becomes acquainted with a kindly
gentleman, one of the philanthropic Cheeryble brothers. Hearing that the young man is destitute and believing him to be
deserving, the brothers give Nicholas a job in their countinghouse at a decent salary and make a cottage available to him
for himself, Kate,...

Money

Ralph Nickleby is a prototype for Ebeneezer Scrooge, the covetous miser of A Christmas Carol. Having himself lived
the life of a poor child forced to work in a shoe blackening company at a young age, Dickens was fascinated by the
power and influence of money, with its potential to push bad men to the point of irretrievable corruption and evil. The
nineteenth century was a period obsessed with money and ways to make it, as capitalism hit its stride. Investment
opportunities existed throughout the burgeoning British Empire—both legitimate and not. Dickens’s novel appealed to
a wide public, fascinated with the amassing of wealth that bought status and power. And, regardless of their own
financial status, they could join in approbation of his avaricious villains and their rapacious manner of swindling their
fellow citizens. Money concerns lie at the heart of almost every problem in Nicholas Nickleby, from the break-up of the
Mantalinis to Kate’s vulnerability to Sir Mulberry Hawk. Daughters and unwanted children are particularly at risk when
a family cannot provide for them, and avaricious people like Ralph profit from the innocence of others. Dickens seems
to be saying that families

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

 Dickens’s novel Nicholas Nickleby ends happily, with the siblings’ marriages. Why does Edgar change the ending
to show a second Smike?
 How did the fact that, in nineteenth-century Britain, married women could not own property affect their life
choices?
 Does Nicholas’s fractious personality detract from his character? Explain your point of view.
 What is the role of money in this play?

must overcome the obstacle of poverty in order for the society to be a moral one.

School Reform

Dickens, a reformist who targeted many of the social inequities of Victorian England, originally intended his serially
published novel The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby(1838-1839) to attract attention to the abuses being
committed in schools for cast-off children in the Yorkshire area. He had gathered information about the problem by
interviewing several Yorkshire schools, in the guise of someone wanting to board his children at one of them. He was
appalled by the conditions of the children and of the license taken by their schoolmasters. Dickens said that Squeers and
Dotheboys Hall were, as Dickens reported in his 1848 Preface, “faint and feeble pictures of an existing reality,
purposely subdued and kept down lest they should be deemed impossible.” With no government funding, the schools
relied on collecting school fees from the neglecting parents themselves and on contributions from the few benefactors
who might have some interest in the well-being of unwanted children, many of whom were illegitimate or physically
deformed. It was a cottage industry that attracted the worst sort, those willing to line their pockets by skimming the
tuition of unfortunate and unsponsored children. Ten years after its original publication in monthly serial form, Dickens
took credit for reducing the number of Yorkshire schools in the Preface to the 1848 edition of The Life and Adventures
of Nicholas Nickleby.

Some sort of education was needed for poor children, so Dickens also worked toward establishing a public
school system for this purpose. His efforts were gratified with the establishment in 1844 of the Ragged School Union, a
program for running schools for poor children in London and other crowded cities. Dickens later praised this program
in several issues of his weekly news magazine, Household Words.

The Change of Heart

The change of heart is a common theme in the novels of Charles Dickens. In fact, the moment of climax usually
involves the complete transformation of a formerly wicked character who has had a sudden epiphany about his own evil
actions. The stages of this transformation are symbolically outlined in his work A Christmas Carol. Ebeneezer Scrooge
undergoes three realizations: 1) that he has lost his connection to other people, 2) that he is causing suffering to others,
and 3) that his heart will be assessed after his death. In A Christmas Carol, the three stages are marshalled in by the
Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. His connections to his deceased sister and to his fiancée remind him of
the power of love, seeing the suffering he has caused the Marley family reminds him of his mistakes, and seeing his
own gravestone causes him to reflect upon his day of reckoning. With these three crucial stages accomplished, Scrooge
experiences a transformation from an embittered and selfish miser to a paragon of generosity and kindness. In The Life
and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, written five years before A Christmas Carol, Ralph Nickleby undergoes the same
three realizations, although his transformation is temporary and aborted by suicide. First, Ralph Nickleby feels an echo
of human connection when he looks into Kate’s eyes and sees her resemblance to his dead brother. This connection
allows him to see the pain he has caused her through exposing her to Hawk’s unwelcome advances. He gets a second
dose of guilt when he learns that Smike is the son he had sent away years ago; this knowledge puts a new face on his
abuse of Smike as a means to punish his nephew Nicholas. With these two realizations, Ralph can no longer distance
himself from the suffering he has caused to others. In a soliloquy, Ralph weighs his life decisions in the scales of
judgment and finds himself wanting. He muses about the man he might have become, had he raised Smike himself, and
then realizes that the boy has been taught to hate his very name instead. Because he feels condemned by the hatred of
his son, he cannot imagine redemption, and so he kills himself.
Edgar retains the first two aspects of the change of heart in his adaptation of the Dickens novel, although he leaves out
Dickens’s episode of Ralph taking a walk through a cemetery, which reminds him of a man who committed suicide.
This episode contains the seeds of the graveyard scene conducted by the Ghost of Christmas Future in A Christmas
Carol. In the original Dickens story, Ralph, calling on the Devil for help, commits suicide as a final act of violence
against Nicholas and his friends, as a way to “spurn their mercy and compassion.” Edgar’s version is closer to the
redemptive change of heart that would become the hallmark of Dickens’s novels. In Edgar’s play, Ralph experiences
his judgment day as he envisions the father he might have become and realizes that he has caused his son to hate his
very name. Despairing of redemption, even though the angelic brothers Cheeryble are trying to contact him, Ralph
mutters, “Cast out. And homeless. Me,” and hangs himself. In Edgar’s adaptation, the audience is painfully aware of the
change of heart that Ralph is unable to experience.

STYLE

Filmic Staging

Edgar perfected several forms of theatrical presentation that resemble filmic methods, such as the “zoom lens” effect,
scenic cuts, and superimposed scenes. Through a combination of stage arrangement, lighting, and
juxtaposition, Nicholas Nickleby simulates film, as when separate episodes are displayed simultaneously, indicating that
actions are occurring in separate parts of London at the same time. Often, these juxtapositions underscore a thematic
connection as well. For example, in one scene Noggs overhears Ralph plotting with Arthur Gride to split Madeline’s
inheritance in return for arranging her to marry Gride, while Mr. Charles and Mr. Ned Cheeryble arrange for Nicholas
to help extract the same girl from poverty. In this case, the benevolence of the Cheerbyles, who seek to give their
money away, is contrasted with Ralph’s grasping for money that he obtains through the most nefarious means. A shift
in lighting and sound transfers attention from one group to the other, while keeping both situations in the mind and eye
of the audience. The contrast becomes more intense and obvious because of this juxtaposition. In another scene,
Nicholas and Smike practice their lines from Romeo and Juliet while Ralph ruthlessly withdraws his investment from
two businessmen, ruining their business, and Mrs. Nickleby informs Kate that she must dine with her uncle that night.
Smike’s line, “My poverty and not my will consents,” referring to the starving apothecary’s decision to sell poison to
Romeo, takes on added significance when applied to Kate’s necessity to follow her uncle’s command to dine with him,
again, out of destitution. David Edgar termed this kind of double entendre “referential irony,” which is a form of
dramatic irony in that the audience understands more than the characters do, such that words expressed innocently take
on a secondary importance. Any double entendre refers to a second meaning, but in Edgar’s juxtapositions, the second
context involves a deeper meaning expressly because of its application to that other context, which is enhanced by the
interweaving effect of the two story lines.

The Influence of Epic Theater

Following Bertold Brecht’s concept of “epic theater,” theater designed to disrupt the spell of theatrical illusion and turn
the spectator into a judge who retains the sense of watching a dramatic performance, Edgar draws attention to the
play as a play. One of these methods is self-referential narration, in which an actor steps out of character to deliver an
aside to the audience, commenting on the action. This happens frequently in Nicholas Nickleby. Various characters step
“out front” to present summary narration, an effect that reminds the audience that the original source of the work was a
novel, since the narration comprises segments of Dickens’s own writing. In addition, some of the characters, especially
Nicholas himself, speak of themselves in the third person, again drawing attention to the artificial construct of the play.
The purpose of such disruption for Brecht was to awaken the audience to the social ills portrayed by the play by
discouraging the passivity of watching for entertainment, generating instead a kind of “complex seeing” so that, while
following the action of the plot, the viewer also judges how and why the playwright is presenting this spectacle. David
Edgar acknowledged the influence that Brechtian theater has had on his works, calling Brecht’s legacy “part of the air
we breathe.” Before undertaking Nicholas Nickleby, Edgar had written a number of “agitprop” plays, social reformist
plays that were produced in small theaters. But, recognizing the limitations of agitprop, he decided to stage theatrical
“spectacles” that would more aptly portray the workings of society itself and then present complex social issues to a
wider audience. Nicholas Nickleby portrays a number of important social themes. In an interview with theater critic
Elizabeth Swain, Edgar identifies some of them, calling the play a “show which is highly ambivalent about riches,
highly antagonistic towards moneymaking, in favor of schoolboys against schoolmasters, in favor of employees against
employers, in many respects, in favor of actors against directors, in favor of women against men, and servants against
masters.” Many of these themes appear in the Dickens original, yet Edgar wants to cast some doubt on Dickens’s
moralizing. Edgar uses the art of “disillusion” to problematize the hopefulness of Dickens’s story. Edgar explains, “One
of the absolute reasons that we wanted to preserve the distance between the adaptation and the original work is to say,
actually we think Dickens is being a bit optimistic.” By using Brechtian theatrical methods, disrupting the viewer’s
engagement in the plot so that the themes are portrayed in bold relief, Nickleby becomes both entertainment and
instruction. Unlike Brecht, however, whose works attracted only a small coterie of Brecht fans, Edgar sought and found
a larger audience, which he accomplished by producing an epic play, a spectacle consisting of over one hundred and
thirty parts, with hundreds of costumes and wigs, a lavish and costly production. Edgar considered this break from
Brechtian tradition worth it, discovering that his work could be “popular and serious and social at the same time.”
HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Industrial Revolution

During what is commonly termed the “Industrial Revolution,” England witnessed the explosion of capitalism in the
economy of the British Empire. Adam Smith had published his Wealth of Nations in 1776, but it took nearly a hundred
years for what he called the “invisible hand” of individuals pursuing their own self-interest for their accumulating
wealth to have an appreciable effect on the British economy and thus on the everyday lives of individual Britons. By the
time Dickens was writing, mills, factories, and workshops had sprung into being in every major city, attracting menial
laborers from the agricultural environs to the cities, where they hoped to earn a better livelihood. As Dickens
chronicled, for the majority of workers, such hopes went most dismally unmet. It was the factory owners and managers
who profited from Smith’s capitalist ideas, while the average working man, woman, and child suffered in ways they
could not have suffered on the farm. Social reformists such as Dickens promoted schools and workhouses to aid
workers in bettering their lives, while the parliament attempted to legislate humanitarian conditions. Gradually,
conditions improved, and women gained a measure of autonomy when they were able to earn wages as an alternative to
marrying.

Women in Victorian England

The women’s suffrage movement, attempting to gain the right to vote for women, had its beginnings in the Victorian
era, specifically after 1867. However, the prevalent image of the “Home Goddess” (Dickens’s term) prevailed; the
“Home Goddess” was the dainty woman of the house, who through compliant sweetness managed the household and
did not interfere with her husband’s world. This image coexisted with the predominant ideology that women were
intellectually inferior to men. They were valued not for their intellect but for their efficiency in the “separate sphere” of
the household and for maintaining decorum under any circumstance. Thus Kate Nickleby cannot assertively confront
Sir Mulberry Hawk for accosting her but must plead with her uncle to protect her, and she serves as an idealized mother
figure and angelic supporter for both Smike and her brother Nicholas. Women had few political or economic rights: a
woman could not vote or initiate a divorce or get a formal education; and property and children belonged to the
husband. It would not be until after World War I, when women were needed to fill the gap left by men fighting and
dying in the trenches, that they would win the vote (1918), and another ten years would pass before they achieved full
Class and Privilege

Nicholas Nickleby, like most of Charles Dickens’s novels, is explicitly concerned with the human costs of the class
system. Nicholas and Kate suffer a tremendous loss of privilege when they lose their father’s fortune and sink from the
genteel class status of their birth to a sort of purgatory class of the educated poor who must find paying work. They are
no longer in charge of their own destinies, but must rely on the kindness of their one relative, Ralph, or on the kindness
of strangers to procure work.

Both siblings are forced to do work that is beneath their accustomed class status—work that requires none of their
talents or education, but rather hard physical labor and a willingness to abandon all ethical qualms in return for a
paycheck. Ralph, in procuring these jobs for the siblings, makes it clear that this is the level appropriate to their new,
lower-class status. Nicholas must work for the brutal and dishonest Squeers, helping him brutalize and rob boys even
more unfortunate than Nicholas himself. Kate must labor twelve hours per day in the millinery shop of Madame
Mantalini, whose husband makes obscene remarks to her, and where she is subjected to the ridicule of the upper-class
ladies who patronize the shop.

Exploitation

Nicholas Nickleby is, at heart, a story of exploitation. Kate and Nicholas are unaccustomed to being used in this way for
someone else’s own advantage, having grown to adulthood in a privileged middle-class family. But with the financial
ruin of their father, everything changes. Nicholas is thrust into Dotheboys Hall, where miserable, abandoned boys are
mistreated and used by the unscrupulous Squeers. Kate is forced to work long hours for low pay and endure the lewd
advances of adult men, all for the benefit of the owners of the establishments where she works. Only the most powerful
persons, those who depend on no one for money, such as Ralph and the Cheeryble brothers, escape being exploited
themselves. These hard lessons are learned by Nicholas and Kate as they come of age and realize that, with very few
exceptions, people will exploit others who have less power. Ralph lives by this rule, and although the siblings defeat
him in various ways by the end, Ralph seems to have actually won by imbuing them with this worldview.

Coming of Age

Nicholas Nickleby is a coming-of-age story of Nicholas and his sister, Kate. In a coming-of age story, also called a
bildungsroman, a young protagonist undergoes several challenges that help strengthen his character and move him
along the path to maturity. Nicholas starts out the novel as a handsome and intelligent young man with no experience of
life other than a privileged childhood in a pastoral locale. He is all untried potential. This seems to be precisely what his
uncle, Ralph Nickleby, hates about him. Ralph sets out to ruin Nicholas by getting hired at Dotheboys Hall, where he
will work long hours at miserable tasks, and moreover he will be exposed to people possessing exactly the type of
selfishness Ralph believes all people possess.

Nicholas rises nobly to each task set before him, and copes honorably with all of the dishonorable situations into which
he is thrown. After the book’s first section, in which Nicholas obediently does what he is told to do by his uncle and by
his employer, the sadistic schoolmaster Squeers, he shows his first sign of adult maturity by stopping Squeers from
abusing a boy entrusted to his care. A true romantic hero, instead of attempting to reason with Squeers or threaten him
with legal consequences, Nicholas takes actions he knows will get results: He yells, ‘‘Stop!’’ after which he beats
Squeers with a stick and then departs, taking the abused boy Smike along with him.

After this episode, Nicholas shows his increasing maturity when he admits that his uncle is untrustworthy and may be in
fact dangerous to his sister and mother, whom he has left in Ralph’s care. Nicholas is also now cautious about whom he
chooses as an employer, rejecting a job with an impossibly demanding member of Parliament and quitting the
Crummles’ theater when he senses that Kate may be in danger. His coming of age is complete when he is no longer
shocked at how low people will stoop to get what they want.

Kate Nickleby presents a second, parallel coming-of-age story in the novel. She too must come to accept the fact of
human evil in the form of her uncle, Ralph, as he sets her up with unendurable work, installs her and her mother in
unsafe lodgings, and, worst of all, compromises her reputation (and with it her chance to make a good marriage), all for
his own financial gain. Kate, a second romantic hero, proves herself to be honorable and good, refusing to be
compromised by either her own poverty or by the grasping and selfish people around her.

political equality.

Social Reform

The nineteenth century saw a series of legislation aimed at ameliorating social problems resulting from the Industrial
Revolution and its accompanying migration of low-wage workers to the cities. The Poor Law of 1834 canceled the
government dole for the poor and relegated them to separate workhouses for men, women, and children. The intention
was to force poor people to become independent and for the father of a family to provide for

THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

Little Nell Trent lives alone with her aged grandfather, who runs an old curiosity shop. The grandfather, Little Nell’s
mother’s father, has two obsessions. One is keeping Little Nell away from her brother, Fred, a drunken profligate. The
other is a burning desire to gamble. Hoping to provide a fortune for the little girl, the old man gambles away every
penny he can get. Not content with using the income of the curiosity shop, the old man borrows money recklessly.

One of the old man’s creditors is an ugly, misshapen, cruel dwarf named Quilp. The husband of a pretty but browbeaten
young woman, Quilp plots to ruin the old man and someday marry Little Nell, who is only fourteen years old. Having
discovered the old man’s passion for gambling by forcing his wife to spy on Little Nell, Quilp is soon able to take over
the old curiosity shop by due process of law. Little Nell and her grandfather leave during the night and start an aimless
journey from London to western England.

Almost penniless, the old man and the little girl find many friends on their way. For a time, they travel with a Punch-
and-Judy troupe, until the girl becomes alarmed at the habits of the men connected with the show and persuades her
grandfather to leave them. She and the old man are next befriended by Mrs. Jarley, owner of a waxworks, but the
grandfather’s passion for gambling causes them to leave their benefactor. At last a schoolmaster, on his way to fill a
new post, takes them under his wing.

Under the schoolmaster’s guidance, the girl and her grandfather are established in a little town as caretakers of a church.
Their duties are very light because the church has a regular sexton as well. Meanwhile, the only friend Little Nell and
her grandfather had left behind in London is a poor boy named Kit Nubbles. He is attempting to find them but is
hampered by the enmity of Quilp and by the fact that he has to help support his widowed mother and two other
children. In addition, Quilp, who has an unreasonable hatred for anyone honest, is trying to find Little Nell to wed her
to one of her brother’s worthless companions. This worthless companion, Dick Swiveller, is a clerk in the office of
Quilp’s unscrupulous lawyer, Sampson Brass.

After Little Nell and her grandfather had disappeared, a strange, Single Gentleman appeared to rent an apartment from
Sampson Brass. It turns out that he also is hunting for Little Nell and her grandfather. Since he is obviously a man of
wealth, no one can be certain of the stranger’s motives. The Single Gentleman soon proves to Kit and Kit’s honest
employer that he wants to aid the two runaways, and Kit tries to help the stranger locate Little Nell and her grandfather.
When they try to follow the elusive trail of the old man and the girl, they reach a dead end. Their search carries them as
far as the woman who runs the waxworks. Afterward, apparently, the two had vanished from the face of the earth.

Quilp is angered that anyone might be willing to help Little Nell and prevent his plans for her marriage; he then tries to
circumvent the Single Gentleman’s efforts. To do so, he plots with Sampson Brass and his sister, Sally, to make it
appear that Kit has stolen some money. During one of the boy’s visits to the stranger’s room, Brass places a five-pound
note in the boy’s hat. When the money is discovered a few minutes later, Kit is accused of stealing it. Despite his
protestations of innocence and the belief of the Single Gentleman and Kit’s employer that the boy has been unjustly
accused, he is found guilty and sentenced to be transported to the colonies.

Dick Swiveller, not a complete rogue, discovers through a little girl he befriends, a girl kept virtually as a slave by the
Brasses, that Kit has been falsely accused. With his aid, the Single...

THEMES

Family

The main theme of the novel is that of family and affection and lengths one would go through for their loved ones. At
the center of it is the young Nell who lives with and takes care of her old grandfather, who in turn is determined to
make Nell have a pleasant and rich life, as opposed to her parents. Things don't go the way he planned, and Nell's
grandfather suffers a breakdown after being tricked by the evil Quilp and had his hopes for better Nell's future crushed.
Nevertheless, Nell stays at his side until the end and protects her grandfather at the cost of her own life. It is a story of
sacrifice and love for family and loved ones.

Greed

The novel is concerned with greed as one of the central themes as well. Daniel Quilp is at the center of this theme as the
novel's main antagonist. Despite his grotesque appearance, he is charming and manipulative and enjoys seeing others
suffer. He tricks Nell's father to the extent of making him lose everything, even his sanity, and takes over his shop.
Quilp belittles and uses others with greed being his main motivator.

SOCIAL REFORM IN DICKENS’ NOVELS.

At war with the workhouse

From the pages of novels such as Oliver Twist, Dickens savaged the injustices meted out to the impoverished – and at
the top of his hit-list was the infamous New Poor Law“Please, Sir, I want some more.” Charles Dickens’ portrayal of
Oliver Twist approaching the master and asking him, timorously, for a second helping of gruel is surely one of the most
famous scenes in all of 19th-century literature.When Dickens wrote these words in the 1830s, huge celebrity and vast
fortune still lay in the future. Instead the author was thinking of the here and now – in particular, the plight of the most
impoverished Britons. Dickens was determined to savage the terrible injustices he saw unfolding around him, and did
that so effectively that he soon secured a reputation as a spokesman for the poor. Dickens’ righteous anger, voiced so
elegantly in his second novel, didn’t spring from nowhere; it was brought bubbling to the surface by the New Poor Law.
Passed in 1834, at a time of expanding poverty, this legislation curtailed the provision of outdoor relief, giving those
who fell on hard times the starkest of choices: to enter the workhouse, where they would be provided with food and
shelter but subjected to a harsh regime, or to take their chances outside without assistance. Via a series of articles,
Dickens launched a scathing attack on the cruelties inflicted by this system through the story of a child systematically
mistreated in the workhouse simply for being orphaned and unwanted. The articles evolved into a serialised novel that
even captured the attention of Queen Victoria. One journalist claimed that Oliver Twist had made such an impression
that promoters of the New Poor Law had to go “about lecturing for the purpose of counteracting the effect”.

Dickens’ writing also contained vivid descriptions of urban slum life, which exposed affluent Britons to the poverty that
existed in their midst. Readers of Oliver Twist were shocked to discover that Jacob’s Island, a south London
neighbourhood crammed with houses “so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem to be too tainted even for the dirt
and squalor”, actually existed!
At the same time, Dickens sought to humanise the poor, to elicit the sympathy of readers. Few could fail to be moved
by the plight of the Cratchit family in A Christmas Carol, struggling to survive on meagre wages, yet still full of
warmth and affection.Dickens warned readers of the consequences of poverty. He was fearful of the potential for
revolution (the devastation of which he dramatised in A Tale of Two Cities) and of an upsurge in crime.

Government intervention was essential, he contended. Dickens campaigned for the provision of state schooling to
prevent crime, and for the establishment of reformatories to save juvenile offenders. “Woe, woe! Can the state devise
no better sentence for its little children?” he wrote, when he heard that two boys had been whipped for stealing a loaf of
bread. “Will it never sentence them to be taught?”Dickens had less sympathy for adult offenders. Once criminal
propensities had been formed, he argued, they should be “crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of the way”. Not
everyone agreed with this uncompromising stance. As early as 1851, even the poor were questioning Dickens’ support
for their cause. “Mr Dickens was a favourite,” an itinerant street seller told the social investigator Henry Mayhew, “but
he has gone down sadly in the scale.”

Writing in the shadow of death,

Dickens was in the thick of an intense debate about the punishment of Britain’s criminals

No sorrow, no salutary terror, no abhorrence, no seriousness, nothing but ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness and
flaunting vice in 50 other shapes.” When, in July 1840, Dickens attended the public execution of François Courvoisier
for the murder of Lord William Russell, the reaction of the crowd that gathered to gawp at the spectacle left the author
both shocked and appalled.The punishment of criminals was transformed during Dickens’s lifetime. His condemnation
of capital punishment for minor offences in Barnaby Rudge (1841) was published at the end of the dismantlement of the
notorious ‘Bloody Code’. By the 1840s, the capital sanction remained for just a handful of serious offences, and in
practice only murderers were hanged.

But as Dickens discovered when he, along with some 30,000 others, gathered outside Newgate Prison to watch
Courvoisier hang, the relative rarity of a public execution only increased its appeal.

Despite the “particular detestation” that he felt towards Courvoisier, Dickens concluded an editorial letter penned for
the Daily News with a plea for the “total aboli- tion of the Punishment of Death, as a general principle, for the
advantage of society, [and] for the prevention of crime”.Just three years later, Dickens had changed his mind. His letters
to The Times on the execution of the murderers Frederick and Maria Manning pressed for the privatisation of hanging,
rather than its total abolition. While his new position attracted the ire of campaigners, Dickens was not out of step with
his contemporaries, many of whom had retreated from a position of complete abolition in the hope of achieving a
change in the law.

Suffering in silence

Dickens also become embroiled in a controversy over prison discipline that erupted in the late 1830s. The desire to
exert greater control over prisoners through the elimination of contact between them led to the emergence of two rival
systems: silence and separation. In late 1842, Dickens published his account of a visit to Eastern Penitentiary in
Philadelphia, where the purest form of separate confinement was practised. Inmates were locked in solitary cells,
sometimes for years, with their Bibles and work, the slow march of time punctuated only by occasional visits from
moral agents. “I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong,” he wrote. Solitary confinement was a mental torture
which led to insanity.Dickens was among the crowd at the hanging of François Courvoisier in 1840 (depicted here in a
contemporary newspaper) and was appalled by his fellow spectators’ behaviour. (Photo by Bridgman)

Dickens’ travelogue American Notes (1842) appeared in the months before the opening of Pentonville Prison, which
shared Eastern Penitentiary’s faith in solitary confinement and religious instruction. Dickens’ opposition to such
practices remained undimmed. An intensive focus on the soul of the individual, he observed, encouraged a “strange,
absorbing selfish- ness – a spiritual egotism and vanity”. Prisoners were either deceiving themselves, or hoodwinking
chaplains.

Dickens’ critique reached a climax in the final instalment of his serialised novel David Copperfield, when the hero pays
a visit to a thinly disguised Pentonville and encounters Uriah Heep, performing the role of the penitent prisoner. The
“rattling fun of the caricature told powerfully on the British public”, prison reformer Walter Clay later wrote, hastening
the demise of the obsession with solitary confinement.
Industrialised misery

Dickens reserved some of his most scathing attacks for capitalists who put profits over people

By the 1830s, northern England had become home to a new, industrial landscape. Factories dominated the skylines of
towns that were rapidly expanding with the influx of new workers. Long hours, dangerous working conditions and the
unregulated employment of women and children created anxiety among social elites.

In 1838, Dickens signalled his support for legislation restricting the labour of women and adolescents to 10 hours a day.
After visiting several factories in Manchester, which “disgusted and astonished me beyond all measure”, he wrote of his
intention to “strike the heaviest blow in my power” against the factory system. One of his next novels, The Old
Curiosity Shop (serialised from 1840), included a frightening account of an industrial town through which Nell and her
grandfather were forced to travel.

Dickens wrote of his intention to “strike the heaviest blow in my power” against the factory system

However, Dickens’ tour of America in 1842 fostered ambivalence. Seduced by scenes of well-dressed and prosperous
female factory workers, who had pianos in their boarding houses and subscriptions to a circulating library, he praised
the factories he encountered in Lowell, Massachusetts in his American Notes. Subsequent public speeches also
expressed pride in the achievements and potential of British industry.Metal is processed with a steam-hammer, in an
1842 engraving. In his novel The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens painted a grim picture of the impact of industrialisation
on workers’ lives. (Photo by Mary Evans)

When Dickens finally produced an ‘industrial novel’ – Hard Times – in 1854, he attacked the cultures of industrialism
rather than factory work per se. Coketown – its ugliness and monotony, and the lack of individuality of its inhabitants –
was the product of crude utilitarianism and laissez-fair capitalism, philosophies embodied in the novel’s two villains.
The factory owner Mr Bounderby is a despicable self-made man who views his workers solely as commodities, or
‘hands’. For the local businessman Mr Gradgrind, there is nothing of value in life but facts and figures.

Dickens also expressed little sympathy for the striking workers – like other middle-class writers, he feared their
revolutionary potential. They did not, he suggested, need better wages, but more fulsome lives. They needed, in other
words, to have some fun.

Getting serious with the fun police

The author vigorously opposed the new social elite that turned up its nose at traditional, working-class
entertainments

Dickens revealed his tremendous love of entertainment in his first popular serial, Sketches by Boz, which contained
vignettes of the various amusements available in London for those in search of fun. But Dickens was living through an
age of significant change in the leisure world, occasioned by the shift from an agrarian to an urban and indus- trial
society. This transformation limited the spaces and opportunities for traditional entertainments – thanks, in large part, to
the new, respectable social elite’s conviction that popular amusements were vulgar and debasing.

This George Cruikshank illustration for Dickens’ Sketches by Boz shows actors in a ‘private theatre’. The writer argued
that the march of industrialisation had made popular entertainments more important than ever. (Photo by The Print
Collector/Getty Images)

In 1836, Dickens attacked the Sabbatarian movement – which aimed to dramatically restrict the availability of leisure
on Sundays to enforce religious observance – with his pamphlet Sunday Under Three Heads. Four years later, The Old
Curiosity Shop captured the plight of itinerant showmen – Punch and Judy men, stilt walkers, conjurors, freaks and
waxworks proprietors – who, with precarious incomes and under the threat of suppression, were fighting for survival.
“Many’s the hard day’s walking in rain and mud,” explained Short, the Punchman, “and with never a penny earned.”

Yet, as Sleary, the circus proprietor, explained to Gradgrind and Bounderby in Hard Times, “People must be amuthed…
they can’t be alwayth a working, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a learning. Make the betht of uth; not the wurtht.” The
monotony of factory life and industrial culture, Dickens argued, made popular entertainment more essential than ever.
Amusement provided an outlet for the imagination, the suppression of which would be destructive to humanity.

Heap of nonsense
Quality mattered too. As old forms of entertainment declined, new ones emerged to fill the gap, but Dickens was critical
of their content.

He attacked those who wanted to restrict leisure on Sunday in favour of religious observance

Articles published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round during the 1850s and 1860s described
the theatrical entertainments frequented by the labouring classes as “an incongruous heap of nonsense”. New showmen
exploited the people’s need for entertain- ment, offering them nothing that was uplifting or educative. At the same time,
alternative “rational recreations” left the people unsatisfied. “There is a range of imagination in most of us, which no
amount of steam-engines will satisfy; and which The-great-exhibition-of-the-works-of-industry-of-all-nations, itself,
will probably leave unappeased.” In short, society was singularly failing to provide the masses with the quality of
entertainment that their imaginations demanded – and deserved.

THE CHILD AS A VICTIM OF SOCIETY. One kind of character developed by Dickens was that of the victim of
society - usually a child. The possibilities of childhood for romance or pathos had been suggested by Shakespeare, by
Fielding, and by Blake; but none of these had brought children into the very centre of the action or had made them
highly individual. In his second novel Dickens centered his story in a child, Oliver Twist, and from that time onwards
children were expected and necessary characters in his novels. Little Nell, Florence Dombey, David Copperfield, stand
out in divine innocence and goodness, in contrast to the evil creatures whose persecution they suffered for a time. And
further, they represent in a most effective manner the compliant of the individual against society. For with Dickens the
private cruelty which his evil-minded characters inflict is almost always connected with social wrong.

A WRITER OF HUMANITARIAN NOVEL. The name of Charles Dickens is preeminently associated with the
humanitarian novel. After the publication of Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens became a sort of
professor* of humanitarianism, and he held this position for nearly thirty years. He turned the light of his knowledge
upon a great variety of English scene and character, but especially upon work- houses, debtors’ prisons, pawnbrokers’
shops, hovels of the poor, law offices, dark streets, and dark alleys, the London haunts and hiding-places of vice, crime,
and pain. His theme was always the downtrodden and the oppressed; he was their advocate; for them each of his novels
after Pickwick Papers is a lawyer’s brief. He did not believe it’s possible for the lower and criminal classes to raise
themselves by elective franchise to a higher moral and intellectual plane. To him parliament was dreariest place in the
world; so he sought to arouse the conscience of the British public. He accordingly attended meetings of philanthropic
societies, visited jails and prisons, holding long conversations with the keepers and went on addressing the ever-
increasing audience of his novels. Through him spoke the heart and conscience of Britain which had found no
responsive voice in Sir Walter Scott.

HIS AIM, TO ROUSE THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. Pickwick Papers had been attempt at pure humour; it was a
series of entertaining episodes loosely strung together. In the novels that followed Pickwick Papers, Dickens took on the
role of the crusader. His aim was to wring the conscience of society by playing upon its feelings and presenting scenes
of wretchedness and misery that could be shown as the result of social indifference and callousness.

ATTACK ON INDUSTRIAL EVILS. In Hard Times(1854), Dickens attacks the industrial evils of his day. Coketown
represents all industrial towns, while the Gradgrinds and the Bounderbys serve as the inhuman representatives of the
system of enlightened self interest that had only theory to recommend it.

ATTACK ON THE CIVIL SERVICE. The target in Little Dorrit (1857) is the unreformed Civil Service with its
nepotism and its injustice. Here the dice are loaded against the circumlocution* offices and the human Barnacles who
make the system work but whose selfishness and indifference destroy the soul in the society they serve.

ENTITLED TO THE GRATITUDE OF POSTERITY. Apart from his supreme value as an entertainer in fiction,
Dickens earned the gratitude of posterity for awakening the social conscience. In an age marred by callousness and
complacency Dickens never lost faith in fundamental human goodness. Although he cold see with clear eyes the
stronger impersonal evil created by society, he continued to believe in the kindly fatherhood of God and in the
triumphant power of love. Organisation, whether political or charitable or religious, he rejected; the law killed; and
systems, no matter how efficient, were no substitute for the warm human relationships that were based on man’s
responsibility for his fellows. In his ideal of spontaneous benevolence flowing from some inexhaustible fountain of
human goodness Dickens saw the great solvent of the grief and misery that poisoned life around him.