Charles Dickens Biography

He is living proof of childhood corruption and portrays himself as his young, mischievous, and perplexed characters Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. He proves that he is a product of the Victorian era as he brings attention to the childhood cruelty, the less fortunate in an English society, and the unwealthy dysfunctional families of the early Victorian time period. Charles Dickens reflects these and other issues as he brings to life the realism of writing. While others were writing about the way things should be, rather than the way things were, Dickens was challenging these ideas, and argued that paupers and criminals were not evil at birth. This was an act of rebellion, for he in fact was showing the Victorian middle class generation how things felt from a different point of view.

The Victorian era reflected more than just a change in the lack of economic development, but it marked on young children that endured the child cruelty and labor, such as Dickens, and many other writers of this time. Dickens, having been a poor boy, worked in a factory where he was treated with no respect, and many, such as him, had to work in cruel and dangerous conditions. This comes out in his writing, as Oliver Twist works in a factory so that he would get a meal, and a place to sleep. Oliver works long days and his meals come in fist size portions, and therefore all of the young children in the factory become thin and are on the verge of going into starvation. "Please, sir, I want some more." (Ch. 2, pg. 12) This quotation is a direct reflection of Oliver's hunger, and a child's opinions of the cruelty that they have endured working in this factory in the Victorian era. Many children, perhaps even Dickens, worked 16 hour days under atrocious conditions. Of course, children of the Victorian time period weren't always being labored; many were verbally and physically abused by their parents, and the upper class workmen of the English society. Dickens shows how parents can be cruel to their children as he does in David Copperfield, how David's step father beats him. Also when he uses such a quotation from David's mother when she says, "Am I a naughty mamma to you, Davy? Am I a nasty, cruel, selfish, bad mamma? Say I am, my child; say 'Yes', dear boy, and Peggotty will love you; and Peggotty's love is a great deal better than mine, Davy. I don't love you at all, do I?" (Ch. 2, p. 28) She is throwing a great deal of guilt on a young boy such as David, as is recognizable as emotional and physiological abuse from a parent to a child. When young Oliver Twist was framed for stealing a man's gloves, it just shows how children were viewed. The wealthy man accused Oliver for stealing, partially because he was clearly homeless, and was at the wrong place at the wrong time. This shows how children were viewed as by the wealthy, and how they were poorly judged and how paupers were treated as if they were evil from birth. Not all judgment was passed just to the unwealthy children, but to all of the less fortunate in the Victorian time period.

"Stay another moment," interposed Rose. . . . "Will you return to this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word can save you? What fascination is it that can take you back, and make you cling to wickedness and misery?" "When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are," replied the girl [Nancy] steadily, "give away your hearts, love will carry you all lengths--even such as you, who have home, friends, other admirers, everything, to fill them. When such as I, who have no certain roof but the coffin-lid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us? Pity us, lady--pity us for having only one feeling of the woman left and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride into a new means of violence and suffering." (Ch. 48, pg. 1226) This is one of the most emotionally heightened conversations in the novel. Nancy embodies all the filth into which poverty can force on otherwise good people. In the Victorian era, poverty became due to many reasons; a population increase, the search of employment, and a depressing state of the shortage of housing. All of these points had a direct impact to why there was the less fortunate in an English society. The nineteenth century saw a huge growth in the population of Great Britain, and this brought the poverty line lower and lower in cities such as London. Dickens, being affected by this, had a great impact on helping the less fortunate in the Victorian time period by bringing to life the realism of the problems that the paupers, criminals, and just plain poor people had. He did this through showing how the wealthy treated the poor with no respect and with cruelty through his characters such as Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Sowerberry in Oliver Twist. Although, Dickens brings attention to how not all upper or middle class people were always cruel to the poor, through his characters in Oliver Twist such as Mr. Sowerberry, who was quite kind to Oliver and was uneasy about being cross with him. Along with poverty being such an issue, there were also the unwealthy dysfunctional families of the Victorian time period.

Charles Dickens grew up in a home where money was never a concern, until his father went bankrupt and he was abandoned by his family which ultimately led to Dickens being a poor orphaned boy. Dickens's dysfunctional family must have led to such families as Oliver Twist's and David Copperfield's, where both children were either abandoned