CHARLES DICKENS

BIOGRAPHY
Born in Portsmouth in 1812. Unhappy childhood: he had to work in a factory at the
age of 12 (his father went to prison for debts). He became a newspaper reporter
with the pen name Boz. In 1836 Sketches by Boz, articles about London people
and scenes, were published in instalments. Success with autobiographical novels,
Oliver Twist (1838), David Copperfield (1849-50), Little Dorrit (1857). Bleak House
(1853), Hard Times (1854), Great Expectations (1860-61) set against the
background of social issues. Busy editor of magazines.
THE SETTING OF DICKENS’S NOVELS
Dickens was the great novelist of cities, especially London. London is depicted at
three different social levels: the parochial world of the workhouses (its inhabitants
belong to the lower middle class); the criminal world (murderers, pickpockets living
in squalid slums); the Victorian middle class (respectable people believing in human
dignity).
Detailed description of “Seven Dials”, a notorious slum district (its sense of
disorientation and confinement is clearly expressed in Dickens’s novels).
DICKENS’S CHARACTERS
Dickens shifted the social frontiers of the novel: the 18th-century realistic upper
middle-class world was replaced by the one of the lower orders. He depicted
Victorian society in all its variety, its richness and its squalor. He created:
caricatures (he exaggerated and ridiculed peculiar social characteristics of the
middle, lower and lowest classes); weak female characters; He was on the side of
the poor, the outcast, the working class.
DICKENS’S THEMES
Family, childhood and poverty (the subjects to which he returned time and again).
Dickens’s children are either innocent or corrupted by adults. Most of these children
begin in negative circumstances and rise to happy endings which resolve the
contradictions in their life created by the adult world.
DICKENS’S AIM
Dickens tried to get the common intelligence of the country to alleviate social
sufferings. He was a campaigning novelist and his books highlight all the great
Victorian controversies:
 the faults of the legal system (Oliver Twist)
 the horrors of factory employment (David Copperfield, Hard Times)
 scandals in private schools (David Copperfield)
 the miseries of prostitution
 the appalling living conditions in slums (Bleak House)
 corruption in government (Bleak House)
DICKENS’S STYLE
Dickens’s style 🡪 very rich and original. The main stylistic features of his novels
are:
1. long list of objects and people;
2. adjectives used in pairs or in group of three and four;
3. several details, not strictly necessary.
4. repetitions of the same word/s and/or sentence structure.
5. the same concept/s is/are expressed more than once, but with different
words.
6. use of antithetical images in order to underline the characters’ features.
7. exaggeration of the characters’ faults.
8. suspense at the end of the episodes or introduction of a sensational event to
keep the readers’ interest.
HARD TIMES (1854)
It is a “denunciation novel”: a powerful accusation of some of the negative effects of
industrial society.
The setting: Coketown, an imaginary industrialised town.
Characters: people living and working in Coketown, like the protagonist Thomas
Gradgrind, an educator who believes in facts and statistics
Themes:
1. a critic of materialism and Utilitarianism.
2. a denunciation of the ugliness and squalor of the new industrial age.
3. the gap between the rich and the poor.
Aim: to illustrate the dangers of allowing people to become like machines.
THE VICTORIAN AGE (1830-1901)
QUEEN VICTORIA
Victoria became queen at the age of 18; she was graceful and self-assured. Her
reign was the longest in British history. In 1840 she married a German prince,
Albert of Saxe-Coburg. They had nine children and their modest family life provided
a model of respectability. During this time Britain changed dramatically.
THE GROWTH OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
England grew to become the greatest nation on earth 🡪 “The sun never sets on
England”. British Empire included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong,
Singapore, South Africa, Kenya, and India. Great Britain imported raw materials
such as cotton and silk and exported finished goods to countries around the
world. By the mid-1800s, Great Britain was the largest exporter and importer of
goods in the world. It was the primary manufacturer of goods and the wealthiest
country in the world. Because of England’s success, the British felt it was their duty
to bring English values, laws, customs, and religion to the “savage” races
around the world.
AN AGE OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REFORMS
1832: The First Reform Act granted the vote to almost all male members of
middle-class.
1833: The Factory Act regulated child labour in factories.
1834: Poor Law Amendment established a system of workhouses for poor people.
1867: The Second Reform Act gave the vote to skilled working men.
1871: Trade Union Act legalised trades unions.
1884: The Third Reform Act granted the right to vote to all male householders.
THE WOMAN’S QUESTION
Women’s suffrage did not happen until 1918.
POSITIVE ASPECTS OF THE AGE
Industrial revolution: factory system emerged; for the first time in Britain’s history
there were more people who lived in cities than in the countryside.
Technological advances: introduction of steam hammers and locomotives;
building of a network of railways.
Economical progress: Britain became the greatest economical power in the world;
in 1901 the Usa became the leader, but Britain remained the first in manufacturing.
CRYSTAL PALACE
Crystal Palace was built for the Great Exhibition of 1851; it was destroyed by fire
in 1936. It was made of iron and glass, exhibited hydraulic presses, locomotives,
machine tools, power looms, power reapers and steamboat engines. It had a
political purpose: it showed British economic supremacy in the world.
NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF THE AGE
Pollution in towns due to factory activity.
Lack of hygienic conditions: houses were overcrowded, most people lived in
miserable conditions; poor houses shared water supplies.
THE “GREAT STINK”
Epidemics, like cholera, thyphoid, caused a high mortality in towns. They came to
a peak in the Great Stink of 1858. This expression was used to describe the
terrible smell in London, coming from the Thames. The “Miasmas”, exhalations
from decaying matter, poisoned the air.
THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE
The Victorians were great moralisers: they supported: personal duty, hard work,
decorum, respectability, chastity. ‘Victorian’, synonym for prude, stood for extreme
repression; even furniture legs had to be concealed under heavy cloth not to be
“suggestive”. New ideas were discussed and debated by a large part of society.
The middle-class was obsessed with gentility, respectability, decorum.
Respectability: distinguished the middle from the lower class. Decorum meant:
Victorian private lives were dominated by an authoritarian father; Women were
subject to male authority; they were expected to marry and make home a “refuge”
for their husbands.
KEY THINKERS
John Stuart Mill and his ideas based on Bentham’s Utilitarianism.
Karl Marx and his studies about the harm caused by industrialism in man’s life.
Charles Darwin and the theory of natural selection
THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
There was a communion of interests and opinions between the writers and their
readers. The Victorians were avid consumers of literature. They borrowed books
from circulating libraries and read various periodicals. Novels made their first
appearance in instalments on the pages of periodicals. The voice of the
omniscient narrator provided a comment on the plot and erected a rigid barrier
between “right” and “wrong”, light and darkness. The setting chosen by most
Victorian novelists was the town. Victorian writers concentrated on the creation of
characters and achieved a deeper analysis of their inner life.
POETRY
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: the most popular Victorian poet. He wrote narrative
poems.
Robert Browning: he raised the dramatic monologue to new heights making it a
vehicle for a deep psychological study.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: she wrote love sonnets valued for their lyric beauty.