Charles Dickens as a social commentator in Victorian England

Final Year Project Report


Project Title: Charles Dickens as a social commentator in Victorian England.

Student Name: Adil Cahit Ansaroglu

Student ID: 10075496

Supervisor: Dr. Michael J. Griffin

Course: Bachelor of Arts

Academic Year: 2013/14


Submitted in part requirement for final year project
to University of Limerick





CHARLES DICKENS












Table of Contents

Abstract
Author's Declaration
Acknowledgements

Introduction Page: 1

Chapter One. Hard Times Page: 8

Chapter Two. Little Dorrit Page: 16

Chapter Three. Oliver Twist Page: 26

Conclusion Page: 33

Bibliography Page: 36






ABSTRACT

This project involves discovering how Charles Dickens acted as a sociologist during his time in Victorian England. The goal is to show that Charles Dickens was not only a novelist but also a reformer and social commentator of his time. I will be supporting my thesis with the leading sociologists of the time such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. I will be examining the poor working conditions of the workers, the state of the prisons, the workhouses and the difference between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Upon examination of these events, it is evident that Charles Dickens attempted to make it clear that he was supporting the rise of socialism in England. Through this examination it will also come to light why Charles Dickens is not only being studied in English Literature but also in Sociology. This research highlights the importance of the sociology of literature and how these two disciplines were in some instances, inextricably linked.











DECLARATION







This Final Year Project is presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a B.A. in Arts


It is entirely my own work and has not been submitted to any other University or higher education institution, or for any other academic award in this University. Where use has been made of the work of other people it has been fully acknowledged and fully referenced.



Name: Adil Cahit Ansaroglu

Signature:

Date:











ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS








I would like to sincerely thank my supervisor Dr. Michael J. Griffin for all his help, support and patience throughout this project. I would also like to thank all the lecturing staff of the University of Limerick for the past four years of guidance.

I wish to express my special thanks to British Library staff for their help and advice on resourcing materials for the works of Charles Dickens.



I would especially like to thank my parents and family for their love, encouragement and support during difficult times.

And finally to Donna; for her tremendous support in the final phases of this project.









Introduction













The purpose of this research project is to show the reader how Charles Dickens acted as a sociologist and aspired to reflect the inequalities of the society he was living in during Victorian England. I chose this topic because I believe that Charles Dickens was influenced by the social class distinction that was present in England during this time and also by the supreme effect of capitalism on the working class. "Both Dickens's life and his writing have long been seen as emblematic of at least two early phases of capitalism: industrial capitalism, which caught him up in its cogs at a youthful age, when he went to work at the blacking factory; and the emerging bureaucratic, managerial or administered form of capitalism, which serves as a backdrop for late novels such as Bleak House and Little Dorrit" (Clayton 148). For the purpose of this project, I aim to focus my attention on Dickens's famous novels Hard Times, Oliver Twist and Little Dorrit. In addition, I will also refer to leading sociologists of the time such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This research project will also examine the social injustices that Dickens noted and condemned during his time. "Dickens wrote 14 novels as well as many shorter works. His novels not only have exciting and memorable plots, but they are also angry exposures of social and moral injustices. Dickens took a marked interest in the social problems of his time, and he attacked injustice wherever he found it" (Clamon 2). The project will also examine the effects of the rapid change that industrialism brought into English society. I will examine the differences between the working class and upper class distinction that Marx, Engels and Dickens recorded. The role of sociology will be important here as similar to Dickens, Engels also recorded these injustices while he was observing the slums of Manchester. In doing this project, I am aiming to make a clear connection between Dickens' works and leading sociologists of the time.
11Before I go into detail about Victorian period, it is important to briefly outline the life of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England in 1812. Dickens's father had a poor financial record and when Dickens was aged 12 his father was sent to prison for his debts along with his mother. He described the life at the prison in his novel Little Dorrit. Young Dickens was very vulnerable when his family was at the prison and he was put to work at Blacking Factory. This experience affected his whole life and his own literary works. In his own autobiography, he expressed his feelings as "no words" he continued "can express the secret agony of my soul…My whole nature was so penetrated with the grief and humiliation of such considerations, that even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget in my dreams that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and wander desolately back to that time of my life" (Dunn 21). He portrayed his experiences in the Blacking factory in his novel Oliver Twist and the theme of alienation was further explored in Hard Times, Great Expectations and David Copperfield. The theme of alienation, poor conditions of working class and inequality were the most common themes in his works during Victorian England.
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2121The Victorian period is the name given to the reign of Queen Victoria, between 1837 and 1901 and it is known as a time of change and reformation. The reason these changes occurred was due to the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution took place between 1750 and 1850. Beginning in the United Kingdom, it then spreading to Europe and eventually to the whole world. "In the early twentieth century, most work was on the industrial changes which led to the 'great staples' of Victorian Britain, coal, cotton, iron and steel, and shipbuilding. These gave Britain pre-eminence in the international economy in the late nineteenth century - and problems in the inter-war years" (O'Brien and Quinault 55). With the fast industrial change in England, Middle-class Victorian society was better fed, better educated and housed through the middle of the century. Along with the problems that will be discussed afterwards, this success was largely due to the development of factories, new production system, roads, railroads, engines, and the use of coal and textile mills. The development of railroads made it possible for Victorians to travel to other parts of the England and the world. This is turn helped revolutionize their sense of the world and even their understanding of time. The developments in steam power and iron production accelerated the growth of employment in this area. The steam engine, the use of iron in industrial production, and the foundation of new textile mills meant more and more people became involved in industry. Soon after, more and more people suffered at the hands of an unfair class system resulting in crippling poverty. Industrialism also gave birth to a class of manufacturers who gained so much as a direct result of the working class. These new social and economic relationships are very important in discussing the social, economical and cultural contexts of the Victorian novel.
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3333The working class emerged from the industrial revolution and became a central issue of the period. Marx defines class as a being members of which live in similar conditions without entering into manifold relations with one another. Division of labour as middle or working classes categorized classes in Victorian England. Division of labor created inequalities within English society as the controlling class took more control over the working class. Marx said that: "The division of labor created hierarchical divisions within the working class and provided means for the capitalists to maintain control and preserve their class position" (Wheatley and Jessop 124). However it is worth noting the explanation for class difference here. In his book, Formations of Modern Social Thought, Ken Morrison explains the class difference as: "The term class is used to refer to a historical principle of development in which all societies divide themselves into two unequal groups, one of whom own the means of production as their private property, while the other class provides their physical labor in order to obtain their economic livelihoods" (Morrison 390). According to Marx, labourers are alienated from their work because they are not in control of the production process. They were only concerned about their wages and their will to survive despite the terrible work and living conditions. These concepts impacted the social and the spiritual conditions of Victorian people and differentiated the working class from the middle class. Karl Marx described this differentiation as Alienation. In simple terms, alienation can be explained as a feeling of being outside of the society, a life that is estranged and it is a feeling that life has become worthless. In this sense the working class in Victorian England was alienated from the other types of classes, as there was no room for imagination. This can be seen in the first lines of Dickens' novel Hard Times where a wealthy business men Thomas Grandgrind talks about the facts:
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Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir! (Dickens, Hard Times 1).
In this sense, "Dickens" Judith Newton explains, "has been significant for traditional Marxist criticism in that his texts deal explicitly with social issues" (Newton 452). Going further, Marx wrote about Dickens and his fellow novelists that:
The present splendid brotherhood of fiction-writers in England, whose graphic and eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together (Marx, Collected works: Marx and Engels, 1874-83 663).
44In this sense Marx supports the works of Dickens, as he was one of the novelists that tried to support social reform in Victorian England.
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Friedrich Engels was another German sociologist along with Karl Marx that defended the rise of socialism. His most notable work The Condition of the Working Class in England was published in 1845 based on his observations and research on the working class of Manchester. One of the most notable observations he had on Manchester was the poor working conditions of the working class. Engels shows the city of Manchester through the eyes of a factory worker. Just as the industrialized city of Coketown in Charles Dickens's novel Hard Times, Manchester suffers many of the same problems such as overwhelming pollution, terrible living conditions and the manipulation of the people who were slowly turned into working slaves. Engels notes this as:
Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world. If any one wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air - and such air! - he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither (Engels 89).
55Similar to Engels, Dickens was also painting a similar image of England in his novels Hard Times and Oliver Twist. Charles Dickens' Hard Times focused on industrial poverty. Social commentators like Marx and Engels, was aiming to educate the public about the poverty and they had to use literary works as literary works in that time was reaching more audience than social publishing's. Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England was a social study enriched by literary devices that made it accessible to a broader audience. When Engels was surveying the streets of England, he stated that:
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They crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is the tacit one, that each keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to delay the opposing streams of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellant and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together, within a limited space…The dissolution of mankind into monads, of which each one has a separate principle, the world of atoms, is here carried out to its utmost extreme (Engels 24).
This was exactly what Dickens was describing in his novels. The power of industrialism, the form of a new city, and most notably how individuals were being alienated in the crowd and feel they no longer know each other.
Jeremy Bentham's philosophy of Utilitarianism had an immense effect on Dickens' novels. It is important to look at what the term Utilitarianism actually means. In his own book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation Bentham describes this as:
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do as well as to determine what we shall do (Bentham 225).
66Along with this idea of pleasure and pain Bentham introduced what he called the principle of utility. This principle can be summarized as what he calls that "every action should be judged right or wrong according to how far it tends to promote or damage the happiness of the community" (Bentham 29). The effects of the Industrial Revolution in England led to a call for social reform. Utilitarianism seemed to suit many members of the social class. This philosophy spread within the English community so fast because it appealed to those who had benefited financially from the Industrial Revolution; Namely, the middle and upper class. This idea soon became a lifestyle and utilitarian thinkers started to measure the value of lives and actions according to their usefulness. In Industrial terms the bourgeoisie started to control the proletariat. Dickens strongly believed that this system was promoting injustice and encouraged the rich to take advantage of the poor. Dickens, however, was not criticising Bentham, he was more concerned about how this philosophy was abused.
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When Charles Dickens parodied utilitarian educational philosophies in Hard Times he was not attacking Bentham or Mill; he was challenging the cruder directness of popular utilitarianism. Dickens, who openly stated he hoped to stimulate social reform through his fiction, condemned reformers who banned imaginative vision from the social sciences (Otis 445).
Dickens drew the attention of the reading public to the deprivation of the lower classes in England. Most of his novels contain his social commentary on society in Victorian England. The social consequences of industrialisation and urbanisation are perhaps most clearly depicted in Hard Times. As a social commentator, he described the slums of Manchester similar what Engels did in his book. In Little Dorrit, Dickens criticizes the modern world's corrupt social and political institutions. He presents a much more realistic and depressing picture of Victorian England and finally Dickens explores many social themes in Oliver Twist, but he mainly focused on three specific areas: the abuses of the new Poor Law system, the evils of the criminal world in London and the victimisation of children.
I am going to analyse these three novels in detail, focusing on Charles Dickens as a social commentator for Victorian England.
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CHAPTER 1 – HARD TIMES
The Significance of the character names



Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times is a Victorian Novel and it was published in weekly parts in Household Words in 1854. The novel is a fictitious glimpse into the lives of various classes that live in Coketown during the Industrial Revolution. The concept for this book was based on the idea of Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism can be discussed as "an action is morally correct, or "right", when, among the people it affects, it produces the greatest amount of good for the greatest number" (Brandt 308). It is in fact Utilitarianism which more or less ruins the majority of the main characters' lives. Dickens also made his point about the Utilitarian philosophy of the day which allowed individuals to be enslaved to the machines which were later called "Hands". "Hard Times itself provides the necessary clues plainly enough. But they do not point to Utilitarianism as an ambitious philosophical theory of enlightened and emancipated thinking or of comprehensive social welfare and reform" (Gross and Pearson 159). Dickens was primarily concerned with the nature of the society. He created his characters in a way that their roles were seen as both agents and victims which reflects the disparity of Victorian English society. There are many aspects of Hard Times that manage to capture what life was like for all social classes during Victorian England. Dickens protests against the class distinction through his depiction of individual characters. He shows the horrific ways in which people were being treated by the system. Dickens' main purpose when writing Hard Times was "…to create widespread public awareness of the evils he thought must necessarily flow from the application of utilitarian ideas in educational, social, industrial, economic and political life" (Murray 48). This paper will focus on Dickens' attack on social injustice and his attempt to outline his own ideas of the conflict between 'humanity and 'system' in the novel Hard Times.
88In Hard Times Dickens wrote about the ficticious industrial town 'Coketown'. He called it Coketown because coke was another name for coal. Coal is black, dirty and caused smog and this was the fuel of choice for new cities in the era. "It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage" (Dickens 65). The authors of the Romantic era had focused and emphasized the importance of nature. Dickens' Hard Times depicts Coketown in another light, the exact the opposite of what Romantic authors had focused on. He indirectly incorporates the importance of nature by purely focusing on the grim picture of the Coketown. "Coketown substantiates the common image of an industrial town of this period. Many Victorian authors were heavily influenced by Romanticism where the industrial town was seen as purely unnatural" (Tischer 10). In the novel Dickens shows Coketown unlike an ordinary town but a town that is filled with full of work. He explains Coketown as: "You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful" (Dickens 65). He further explains how the work was blended with people's life: "The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction" (Dickens 66). Dickens paints a grim picture of Coketown as it symbolises his theory of utilitarianism. Coketown is a town built on 'fact', meaning a place where there is no imagination and everything is 'utilitarian'. Dickens completes the picture of the Coketown with the following: "The M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn't state in figures, or show to be purchasable in the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen" (Dickens 66).
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99During this period the north of the England faced a substantial influx of inhabitants due to migration. "Between 1871 and 1881, for example, net inward migration accounted for almost 9 percent of the 26 percent growth in population. The surplus in the younger age group may have been due to the attraction of employment in the cotton mills from 1838" (Bailey 104). Many factory mills were processing cotton at the time employing the vast majority of people and this changed their way of life. Dickens believed that people in the towns were being treated unfairly and they were forced to work long hours. "The men, women and children must submit to a rigid time-table laid down by a management avid that every minute should be worked to the full. Experience narrowed. The surroundings of the work and the work itself were the same day in day out" (Craig 17). Dickens was very critical of this exploitation and the fact that businessmen were getting richer and richer where the poor were working harder and harder to increase the profit. "His larger theme is concerned with the absence of fancy, and of wonder, in a world cajoled by a materialist and financial ethic. 'Now, what I want is, Facts.' The words of the schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind open the book and, indeed, become an apt epigraph for its story of heartlessness and unimaginative greed" (Ackroyd 110). By educating children in this way nothing would change in the future. If the children were allowed to see the more colouful side of life such as a trip to the circus, they might be able to see the injustice of their lives and want to change things. This might slow the rate of production as they dream of a better life. They may hope to be more than a factory or mill worker. When Gradgrind's daughter Louisa is caught looking at the circus, Dickens describes it as 'starved imagination keeping life to herself somehow'. This annoys Gradgrind as he has brought his children up based on fact and nothing else.
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1010The novel begins with the image of a classroom. From here, the character Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy parliament member, to whom the school belongs, is introduced. Thomas Gradgrind is one of the most significant characters in the novel. Dickens portrays the image of Thomas Grandgrind as: "The speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely ware-house-room for the hard facts stored inside" (Dickens 47). The selection of names by Dickens in Hard Times are very interesting. "Of unmistakebly deliberate intent is Dickens' selection of names that describe his chracters. Usually such names are whimsical in origin, but several have been traced to sources in actual life" (Gordon 7). The name Gradgrind was created meaningfully by Dickens. As a verb "grind" means "oppress, harass with exactions, drudge" as well as meaning "crush." It could mean that he was "grinding" the students down with his unending ream of facts and logic. He was determined to surpress any creativity. Mr. Gradgrind's beliefs on education parelled his beliefs about life itself. Everything must be based on fact. "Eminently practical, Mr Gradgrind is the "man of facts" who embodies the message of Hard Times" (Methuen 43). As there are no room for fantasies or feelings in his view, he cannot grasp the student's reasons for looking for more. He does not accept that with a mind of facts alone, one may as well be a machine. "'Facts' in an utilitarian age also meant the vogue for statistics and figures which was even then being used to abstract and anatomise the suffering of the urban poor" (Ackroyd 366).
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1111In this part of the novel it can be seen that Dickens is not only protesting the education system of the time, but also striving for individualism. "The stress on schooling is certainly no evasion. This linking of classroom and mill turns out to be one of Dickens's most telling ways of composing his sense of English civilization into a coherent' many-sided image. Both school and town were owned, or at least controlled, by the same men, the masters, some of whom were fanatically eager to try out on the populace the theoretical social systems which they had drawn up on strict Utilitarian principles" (Craig 20). A person is not a class or a machine, but rather an individual with thoughts and feelings belonging to no one else but that person. "Dickens dealt little with the life of the upper classes; he delineated, in the main, the lives of the lower and the lower middle classes. In his treatment of education, for example, the great English public schools are barely mentioned" (Manning 4). The facts mentioned at the beginning of the novel reflect the teaching system in schools for educating the poor during the Victorian time in England.
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After the introduction of Mr. Gradgrind, Dickens introduces a group of people at the bottom of the social class. This group of people know only fantasy, they are the circus people and they know nothing about facts as outlined by Mr. Gradgrind. Girl number 20 introduces herself as Sissy Jupe. "'Sissy is not a name' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Don't call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia'" (Dickens 49). Cecilia was the originated feminine form of the Roman family name Caecilius, which was derived from Latin caecus which means "blind". Dickens might be suggesting here that by calling her Cecilia, Mr. Gradgrind is alluding to the fact that she is blinded by her imagination and deivating from reality. Sissy Jupe is a warm and loving individual as introduced by Dickens and she cannot accept the facts alone but yearns to use her imagination. "Sissy Jupe's free imagination contrasts with minds and hearts deformed by a lack of human sympathy, attributed a lack of imagination" (Wise 88). After Sissy Jupe's father leaves her, she is adopted by the Gradgrind family to provide her with shelter and a better education. Although Mr. Gradgrind fears Sissy's imagination will influence his children, it turns out that she will be the one that will give joy to Mr. Grandgrind's life. According to Butt and Tillotson Mr. Gradgrind "is redeemable, and the course of the novel will show that he will be redeemed by Sissy. He fails to educate her head, but she succeeds in educating his heart" (Butt and Tillotson 209).
1212Josiah Bounderby is introduced as a wealthy factory owner, and a supposed "self-made man". In the novel, he declares himself as "Josiah Bounderby of Coketown" (Dickens 60, 61). Josiah's dictionary meaning comes up as "the fire of the Lord", Bounderby, on the other hand formed from the verb "Bounder" meaning a person who bounds or leaps ahead. Dickens portrays Bounderby as a person who starts from the lower working class and imagines him as a person who makes his way up in the world to the upper class. In the novel, Josiah Bounderby speaks about himself as: "Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown" (Dickens 60). As Dickens later portrays in the novel, Bounderby turns out to be a different character. "Dickens's use of utterance as a reflection of character is one notable manifestation of the generic principle in his writing. For him, observable reality is, for all its vivid and multifarious particularity, symbolic of deeper realities of mood and spirit. Thus the description of Josiah Bounderby's appearance is at one with his style of speaking: both are emanations of a character typified as 'a man perfectly devoid of sentiment', 'the Bully of humility' (Short and Leech 138). Bounderby is represented as a moral monster with no redeeming qualities. Thomas Gradgrind's daughter Louisa is represented in the text as being bound to men all the time and having no right way of speaking, like her mother. She isn't allowed her own independence as a child and into adulthood Louisa is continually tied to a man. This was either her father, her brother or later in the novel to her husband Josiah Bounderby, a man she was forced to wed. Through Louisa's character, Dickens portrayed the social structure of the time and the role of women: "When his daughter Louisa speaks to him about life, he points out mechanically that her life is 'governed by the laws which govern lives in the aggregate" (Marlow 56).
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To represent the working class of the society Dickens uses the character Stephen Blackpool.
1313One of the purposes of Hard Times is to suggest that the sufferings of working-class people are many and cruel and that they are victimised almost beyond endurance by the corrupt institutions of Victorian society. Since Stephen is his typical working man, Dickens must expose him to a life of almost unrelieved misery (Murray 79).
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Stephen is an important character in the novel and Dickens once again thought carefully about his name. 'Stephen' is the name that was regarded by many as the first martyr and his surname 'Blackpool' suggests the dirt and darkness of the Industrial Revolution. Stephen Blackpool's death is an example of 'lives being ruined' by the harsh society in which Hard Times is set. "Stephen Blackpool is no opponent of industry; instead he departs the "muddle" of earthly existence in a saintly expiration" (Keen 160). Tom Gradgrind, Louisa's brother was also raised the same way as Louisa. He ends up becoming a gambler and this leads him to robbing Bounderby's bank to pay off his debts. He was sent abroad to avoid being sent to prison and after spending many years abroad, he dies on the way back to England. Tom Gradgrind is a direct representation of his father's schooling, Utilitarianism and the society Dickens presents.
1414In conclusion Hard Times shows Dickens' use of place very effectively in understanding this period of England. His characters reflect the reality of what ordinary people went through during this era. "The point for Hard Times is that people had become less a law unto themselves, the stuff of their lives less variegated, and it is this sense of lives clamped under a grid that haunts Dickens throughout his work, whether he is writing about imprisonment itself or about the more impalpable sorts of bondage that are the theme of Hard Times" (Craig 17). The description of a grim Coketown symbolises the industrial towns of England in the nineteenth century. It's descriptions include the exploitation of people and the rise of capitalism. In Hard Times, Dickens tries convey message that people were not cogs to a machine. They were humans and they were capable of thinking, loving, imagining and striving for a better life. "People are infinitely greater than the machines they devise and the money they strive for. These are mere means and should not be set up as ends" (Methuen 57). The boring schoolroom highlights Dickens's criticism of an education system based on facts alone. The school was a dreary institution where children's imaginations were ignored and their spirits were broken. Descriptions of the circus gave the readers a glimpse of the life where people were joyful and took pleasure in their work. "Hard Times is the Dickens novel that's asks most clearly to be read not as a mere fictional world but as a commentary on a contemporary crisis" (Jordan 67). Dickens hoped that his novel would help change the evils prevailing in the society of his day. He believed that by educating children to think for themselves, changes could occur.
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CHAPTER 2 – LITTLE DORRIT
Dickens and the critique of prison culture



1616Charles Dickens used his own personal experiences and views to create the setting in his novels; this can be seen in his following works: Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, and Bleak House. Dickens strongly believed that many were to blame for the awful living conditions of the masses. He effectively expressed this in Little Dorrit. "Having been written between the years of 1857 and 1858, Dickens first considered naming Little Dorrit as Nobody's Fault. According to Dickens this name was clearly mocking the system as he strongly believed that the injustice, self-interestedness and incompetency that was happening in his own country was everybody's fault, he was mainly accusing the upper class for this" (Urgan 1033). The original conception of 'Nobody' then can be related to the social criticism in the novel. The role of the setting in each book is to create the mood and support the characters. In Dickens' novels the setting helps the reader better understand the period of time and the problems the people of England faced with the political and social structure in place. It also gives an insight into the lives of the people through intricate detail. Dickens describes this period of time in England in great detail and the dismal tone is felt throughout. In his book Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels Joseph Hillis Miller states this as: "Little Dorrit is without doubt Dickens' darkest novel. No other of his novels has such a sombre unity of tone" (Miller 227). Much of the setting in Little Dorrit is based on Dickens's personal experiences growing up and the novel reflects his beliefs and views on society. The main setting in Little Dorrit comes from the time Dickens' father spent in the Marshalsea prison. The theme of imprisonment, both physical and psychological, is carried throughout Little Dorrit. K. J. Fielding has observed that this is: "very much a novel of the past, of memory, and deeply concerned with how to treat a determined dwelling on past wrongs and seeking for past happiness" (Fielding 59). It can be then argued that the novel examines the social and psychological prisons that confine men and women. This paper will focus the dominant theme in Little Dorrit which is prison and imprisonment. It will also focus on the theme of bureaucracy, the power relationships between men and women and how these issues are reflected from Dickens' own view of the society.
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The Theme of Prison and Imprisonment
The theme of imprisonment is very effectively presented to the readers in Little Dorrit. Dicken's characters explore the physical and spiritual realities of being imprisoned. The first encounter with a prison is in concrete form. The book opens with a prison scene in Marseilles, France in which Rigaud and Cavaletto share a cell.
A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had the knowledge of the brightness outside; and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one of the spice islands of the Indian ocean (Dickens 3).
The beginning of the quote is quite striking in the sense that it is not just the men that are denied freedom, even the air and light trapped. "Little Dorrit suggests that the 'free' world is also dominated by the prison. Those who are not literally imprisoned cannot escape the prison because they devote their energies to wrong purposes" (Alber 63). It can then be argued that society itself is the main prison of the novel. Society regulates itself with its own unwritten codes and it has its own social norms, which define the classes and gender roles. When Arthur Clennam arrives to London, he is given this idea of the 'sameness' of society by the traveller as follows:
1717"'Nothing changed,' said the traveller, stopping to look round. 'Dark and miserable as ever. A light in my mother's window, which seems never to have been extinguished since I came home twice a year from school, and dragged my box over this pavement. Well, well, well!'" (Dickens 31).
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Towards the end of the description of the prison, it can be argued that Dickens is no longer describing the prison in Marseilles but also a general idea of the prison itself. Since this quote is from the beginning of the novel, it can be said that Dickens is trying to put the image of the prison into the reader's mind from the very start. In the first book of Little Dorrit Dickens focuses on the Marshalsea prison in London. Starting from the beginning of chapter six, Dickens describes the prison as gloomy and the darkest place to be.
It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid houses standing back to back, so that there were no back rooms; environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top. Itself a close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within it a much closer and more confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against the revenue laws, and defaulters to excise or customs who had incurred fines which they were unable to pay, were supposed to be incarcerated behind an iron-plated door closing up a second prison, consisting of a strong cell or two, and a blind alley some yard and a half wide, which formed the mysterious termination of the very limited skittle-ground in which Marshalsea debtors bowled down to their troubles. (Dickens 89).
1818This quote is also important as the Marshalsea prison did not have tight security and it was portrayed as a prison that was easy to escape from. As outlined in the novel Amy Dorrit was able to get in and out of the prison freely and the families inside of the prison were able to live without tight security. The setting of the prison was also described by utilitarian thinker Jeremy Bentham. He designed the ideal prison as the "panopticon". A panopticon is a circular building with an observation tower. The prison guards were able to watch the prisoners from this tower without them being aware of it. The prisoners did not know if there was a guard in the tower but subconsciously they thought they were being watched all the time. Similar to Bentham's example, in Little Dorrit it can be argued that although there was no watch tower in the middle for the inmates, they felt they were being watched all the time and hence they went about daily life activities without causing too many problems.
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Michel Foucault, the French philosopher, was also inspired by this example and he further suggested that "panopticon" could be used in institutions such as hospitals or schools. In his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Foucault reaffirms Bentham's "panopticon" example as:
The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence...the soul is the effect and instrument of political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body (Foucault 39).
From Foucault's view it can be said that the prisoners are not only physically but also mentally imprisoned and this idea of imprisonment gives them the feeling that they are under constant surveillance. Gilbert K. Chesterton also reaffirms Foucault's idea in his book by stating:
1919 …the main business of the story of Little Dorrit is to describe the victory of circumstances over a soul. The circumstances are the financial ruin and long imprisonment of Edward Dorrit; the soul is Edward Dorrit himself. Let it be granted that the circumstances are exceptional and oppressive, are denounced as exceptional and oppressive, are finally exploded and overthrown; still, they are circumstances (Chesterton 183).
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In his book, Professor Mark Seltzer takes the panopticon example further by stating that it is the author that creates this kind of atmosphere in the book. He argues that: "the most powerful tactic of supervision achieved by the traditional realist novel inheres in its dominant technique of narration-the style of 'omniscient narration' that grants the narrative voice an unlimited authority over the novel's 'world,' a world thoroughly known and thoroughly mastered by the panoptic 'eye' of the narration" (Seltzer 54). It can then be argued that Dickens could be referring the idea of panopticon by his description of the prison and the imprisonment in Little Dorrit. He gives the reader clues that the characters in the novel are actually not independent at all. In his book, I.D. McGowan summarizes this.
In Little Dorrit he offers an analysis of a complex modern society in a state of change, illustrating not just its diversity but, through the parallels and coincidences, the interrelatedness of its parts, so that characters are not seen as totally independent or acting in isolation; their actions are modified by forces beyond their own control, of which they may be even unaware, and they in their turn may have unforeseeable impact on the lives of others. (McGowan 58).
The idea of 'panopticon' is also effectively illustrated with this quote from I.D. McGowan and shows how it controls the lives of the people in the novel.
The Theme of Bureaucracy
2020 Another theme that is effectively presented in Little Dorrit is the subject of bureaucracy. This nightmarish government bureaucracy was called the Circumlocution Office. It was a government department run entirely it seems by incompetent people. Circumlocution Office is the most amusing section of the book as it makes a direct connection with the English government and the bureaucracy they were dictating to the public. Dickens describes the Circumlocution Office as:
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The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong, without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault-full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office (Dickens 104).
Arthur Clennam's investigation of William Dorrit's imprisonment in Little Dorrit leads him to find the records that are located at the circumlocution office. Clennam's requests were were processed very slowly and often rejected by the Barnacle family who were not willing to negotiate. They tried to do everything in their power to turn his requests down. Later in the book when Clennam is in the Marshalsea after paying Mr. Dorrit's debts, once again the Circumlocution Office shuts him down, preventing him— by its bureaucratic "efficiency"—from finding out who his creditors are. We see another similar scene in the book when Mr. Clennam attempts to assist a local inventor, Mr. Doyce, whose inventions are locked up in the endless paperwork of the Circumlocution office awaiting patents. Dickens makes a direct relation with the time he was living in to reflect how the government office was run. Today the machinery of government and business is almost the same, the outcome of government that is not based on justice but on the wealth and connection of the upper class. Murray effectively described the theme of bureaucracy:
2121Corruption is also symbolized in Little Dorrit through Dickens' satirical description of the Circumlocution Office, a fort of bureaucracy that appears to exist in order to ensure that governmental work will never get done. It is a vast, pointless place, an enclave of nepotism and arrogance, where Arthur Clennam, among others can find neither help nor clarity. The Circumlocution Office shows the depth of Dickens disdain for politicians and their institutions (Murray 129).
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This quote shows that Circumlocution Office is not there to help people. Rather than helping the people of the country, it makes it harder to get things done for them. By describing it as a 'fort' and 'enclave' we are led to believe it is not within our reach. Furthermore, I.D. McGowan reaffirms the political faith of Dickens with the following quote:
Dickens had little or no faith to the political system in his own country. He attacks this system where 'Nobody' was found responsible and that the bureaucracy was in the way of getting the work done. Little wonder that in October 1855 having just written Chapter 10, he could comment: 'I have no present political faith or hope – not a grain'. By this stage in the writing, he had realised that his criticisms would be best expressed not by pinning all the responsibility on one man…but by ranging widely within his society to illustrate a decayed system (McGowan 52).
Dickens satirically mirrors the idea of Circumlocution Office, not how to fix the problems but how not to fix them. "Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT" (Dickens 104). In short the Circumlocution Office is a place of endless troubles, confusion and problems. There were forms that needed to be filled in to request permission to fill in more forms. It gives us an indication of how England was governed at this time.

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The Theme of Power Relationships: Men and Women
Charles Dickens does not only focus the theme of bureaucracy and imprisonment in Little Dorrit but he also effectively describes the power relationships between men and women. In the novel, Dickens focuses on Victorian woman and what her natural limitations were to be. He also outlined her domestic and moral attitudes and what part she should play in society. To be able to understand this in detail, the role of Victorian women both inside and outside the house needs to be explored. The woman of the "elite class" enjoyed all the amenities and favours that one could think of. The high-class women did very little or almost no home chores. The ladies did not do things themselves but told others what to do. They were expected to stay at home and raise their children. This idea was also described on my previous analysis of Dickens' novel Hard Times where "high class" women were seen as low class citizens and their duty was to stay at home. On the other hand the women of lower class worked in the factories, industries, laundries or various other jobs to support themselves. The women were effectively bound to the men and were told what to do. "…the Victorian female mediatrix as a negotiator between not only the separate spheres, but between the collapse of women into the maternal and the political subject position that conventionally belongs to the masculine identity" (Thompson 74). Dickens believed that men should be more humble in order for their relationships to work. He also strongly believed that a man should be more devoted to his family and less concerned about how his masculinity may be perceived.
2323 Dickens reflected the relationships in Little Dorrit in a different way to the period of time in question, to start with, the relationship between Amy Dorrit and her father. Dickens depicted this in a special way. After her mother passed away, Amy Dorrit focused all her attention on her father and his needs. In a way, Dickens rejects the notion that young women should be raised to pursue their happiness at finishing school. But he does replace it with another notion: "the angel in the home." For Dickens, Amy Dorrit is the ideal type of woman. Dickens separates Amy Dorrit from Mrs. Clennam who seems to have driven her husband to China due to her own selfish behaviour. She is not like Miss. Wade who seems to hate all men and finally she is not like Flora F. who has given up on life altogether and has no ambition. Taking care of her father was almost as important as taking care of herself and Dickens portrays this with the following:
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She filled his glass, put all the little matters on the table ready to his hand, and then sat beside him while he ate his supper. Evidently in observance of their nightly custom, she put some bread before herself, and touched his glass with her lips (Dickens 79).
Dickens' image of Little Dorrit illustrates a typical Victorian woman to the reader as she both takes care of her father in the prison as well as working outside the prison. The identity that was given to Amy Dorrit is quite powerful as she acts as a mother and wife to her father as well as being a sibling to her elder sister. For these qualities, she is the ideal Victorian woman for Dickens. On the other hand Little Dorrit's relationship with Arthur is similar to her relationship with her father. Her relationship with Arthur allows Amy Dorrit to maintain her own identity and even use him in particular instances especially when helping her father. In the final chapters of the novel Dickens makes it clear that Clennam acts as a second father whom Amy Dorrit marries after the death of her father. It feels like Dickens sees Amy Dorrit and Arthur Clennam's relationship as similar to that of of Amy Dorrit and her father Edward Dorrit.
2424 In conclusion, Little Dorrit is a powerful, but an underestimated work by Dickens. It focuses more on bureaucracy than the class difference within the society. Little Dorrit has all the ingredients that would be expected in a Dickens story: interesting characters, unexpected plot twists, wealth and poverty. Dickens effectively portrays social class dynamics through the individual characters of the book, especially the life in the prison. He also demonstrates bureaucracy to the reader with his imaginative Circumlocution Office that is very significant in the book. The power relationship between men and women demonstrate Dickens' own beliefs, which were contrary to the general view of the Victorian society.
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CHAPTER 3 – OLIVER TWIST
The social condition of the working class children and workhouses in Oliver Twist


Oliver Twist, a work of Charles Dickens, is based on the social conditions of the Victorian period. The novel presents the conditions of life at the time, and the characters portray the nature of the people in living through it. The novel attempts to confront some of the issues of the time, including poverty and working class children. It also looks at the class system and the way women were treated unjustly, which was extremely common in Victorian England. Dickens puts an important emphasis on working class children as these children were disregarded by the society. "With Oliver Twist, Dickens illustrates the little acknowledged product of orphaned, working class children in Victorian England. Often these children, as Dickens indicates in Oliver Twist, were not addressed by their given names, but rather nouns akin to their employment or socioeconomic status" (Malkovich 230). It then can be argued that it is the socioeconomic status of the individual that set the standard of his social status within the society.
2626Similar to his preceding novels, Dickens has used fictional characters to reflect his views on the events that arose at the time of his writing. By using this method, he effectively draws parallels to the dark side of the Victorian era. In 1834, the British Parliament passed a New Poor Law that consisted of providing a workhouse for unemployed people. The conditions at the workhouses were inhumane according to Dickens; it was a place where nobody would want to remain if he or she could find work. A lot of orphans were sent to these workhouses and they were treated unfairly. The conditions at the workhouses were so harsh in fact that in his book Ruth Richardson states: "Harsh punishments for 'refractory' behaviour were instituted, including the withdrawal of food. The system was under the centralized control of the Poor Law Commission. The new workhouses were effectively a sort of prison system to punish the poverty" (Richardson 25). This meant that this New Law actually worsened the condition of the working class in England. This paper will focus the social conditions of the working class and the conditions of the working class children of Victorian England paying particular attention to the conditions of the workhouses.
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The novel starts with the birth of Oliver Twist. Right from the start of the book, Dickens portrays how worthless a human life can be to some. He shows how doctors and nurses are uninterested in dealing with working class parents by stating:
The surgeon had been sitting with his face turned towards the fire: giving the palms of his hands a warm and a rub alternately… and the nurse, hastily depositing in her pocket a green glass bottle, the contents of which she had been tasting in a corner with evident satisfaction (Dickens 2).
This behaviour by the public service exacerbated the ill-treatment of the authorities towards those who stay in the parishes. This was the same for Oliver Twist. The social conditions of the parishes were so bad that the basic requirements for human beings such as being food and clothing were disregarded. Moreover, the institutions were so full and stretched to capacity that they tried to offload excess children.
2727Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities, whether there was no female then domiciled in 'the house' who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist, the consolation and nourishment of which he stood in need…Upon this, the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Oliver should be 'farmed,' or, in other words, that he should be dispatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing (Dickens 5).
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As this quote shows, the parishes were not keen to keep the younger and weaker children. Finding alternatives would cost less as they did not have to pay for their food or their clothing. Dickens shows how children were starved, neglected and mistreated. He also shows the reader that many of these children died from the poor conditions of the workhouses. This is evident in the novel when Dickens states:
For at the very moment when the child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known in this (Dickens 15).
With this quote Dickens portrays that the children died from starvation or, if they were lucky enough to survive, then they had to endure the harsh weather conditions. "Children were often mistreated and subjected to the poorest of working and living conditions. In point of fact Victorian Era was characterized by the use of children to help develop the economy" (Pakditawan 1). Furthermore in the novel, Dickens shows how the children were being treated. For example he describes Mr Bumble's treatment towards Oliver as:
2828Not having a very clearly defined notion of what a live board was, Oliver was rather astounded by this intelligence, and was not quite certain whether he ought to laugh or cry. He had no time to think about the matter, however; for Mr. Bumble gave him a tap on the head, with his cane, to wake him up: and another on the back to make him lively (Dickens 12).
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However this was only one example of the harsh conditions that the children had to endure. Other examples of blatant disregard for these poor children can be seen in the novel by an elderly female character called Mrs Mann. Mrs Mann was abusing her responsibilities by spending money intended for the children's meals on herself. She tried to give them as little food as possible so most of the time these children were hungry or even without proper clothing:
Little Oliver's early years were hard. He and the other children at the workhouse had little to eat. Mrs. Mann, the woman in charge, was mean to the children. She hit them often…and liked doing it! And she took the children's food money to spend on herself! So little Oliver went hungry most of the time (Dickens 9).
The children of the poor were expected to work from an early age. Since there was no social welfare state, the people in charge of these children had to freedom to do as they please. There was no protection for the children and these children ended up being exploited, often doing dangerous and demanding work. Children worked in factories and mills. Some children were doing work in coalmines and some were trying to sell anything they could find on the streets. One of the most dangerous jobs of all was chimney sweeping. Many children died in the chimneys by suffocating or falling to their deaths. In the novel, Dickens portrays this through the eyes of Mr. Gamfield, the chimney sweeper:
2929That's a cause they damped the straw afore they lit it in the chimbley to make 'em come down again,' said Gamfield; 'that's all smoke, and no blaze; vereas smoke ain't o' no use at all in making a boy come down, for it only sinds him to sleep, and that's wot he likes. Boys is wery obstinit, and wery lazy, Gen'l'men, and there's nothink like a good hot blaze to make 'em come down vith a run. It's humane too, gen'l'men, acause, even if they've stuck in the chimbley, roasting their feet makes 'em struggle to hextricate theirselves (Dickens 19).
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Dickens also had a similar life to the workhouse children. He had to work long hours to get his wages and make his living. "Though he was born into the middle class, when he was twelve, his father was sent to debtors' prison and Dickens became part of the lower classes, working long hours in a factory and taking care of himself. He was so poor that he knew he could end up on the streets with other destitute children" (Warren). In his own biography, Dickens describes his own self-suffering from a psychological breakdown when his father was sent to prison.
It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age…No device, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no support, from any one that I can call to mind, so help me God…I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond (Schlicke 93).
The conditions of the workhouses were particularly bad. There was no room for people to move freely and it resembled a prison. The conditions in the workhouses were harsh and degrading, the poor were being punished because they were poor. The poor people did not want to go to workhouses. In fact most people would have preferred stay out in the cold or face starvation in freedom rather than going into the workhouses. In his book Childhood Transformed Eric Hopkins explains the workhouses:
3030The workhouse is an inconvenient building, with small windows, low rooms and dark staircases. It is surrounded by a high wall, that gives it the appearance of a prison, and prevents free circulation of air. There are 8 or 10 beds in each room, chiefly of flocks, and consequently retentive of all scents and very productive of vermin. The passages are in great want of whitewashing. No regular account is kept of births and deaths, but when smallpox, measles or malignant fevers make their appearance in the house, the mortality is great. Of 131 inmates in the house, 60 are children (Hopkins 164).
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It is clearly seen why people did not want to go these places. Once there, it was almost impossible to leave, as there was often no way out. Since there was no welfare state in Victorian England, the unemployed and those who migrated from their farms into urban areas had very little choice. Dickens shows how strictly the workhouses were managed. In the novel Oliver Twist when all children are facing the starvation, Oliver asks his famous question: "Please, sir, I want some more" (Dickens 13). This was an innocent request from Oliver, a hungry young boy, destined to a life of hard labour. Dickens further displays this in the novel:
They established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll of Sundays (Dickens 30).
3131This cruelty to the poor people where the workhouses tried to limit every possible food source from them was just one method of oppression. This was only one of the shocking social effects of poverty and how the poor were affected by the growing demands of an industrialized nation. Poor Law Commission was abolished in England in 1847 after a number of events had been exposed. The most notable one was Andover workhouse scandal which was: "Inmates had resorted to scavenging for decaying meat from the bones that they had been set to grind up for the fertilizer" (Levinson 612).
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In conclusion, during this period, England faced significant social challenges. England shifted from being an agricultural state to an industrialized nation. New standards of living brought social inequality into society. In the novel Oliver Twist, Dickens reflects these from the very beginning as he had experienced these issues when he was a young boy. He understood and felt the same as those who lived in the workhouses and outside in the slums. He portrayed these images in Oliver Twist as well as further displaying these in Hard Times and Little Dorrit. Dickens describes the poverty, the social injustices and inequality in Victorian England so clearly that they are brought into light critically rather than be seen as normal.











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Conclusion










In conclusion, this project aimed to show the reader how Charles Dickens was supporting social reforms in his novels. Similar to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, he was genuinely concerned about the injustice and inequalities between the rich and poor. This injustice, Dickens was subjected to on a daily basis as he wrote about what he saw around him. I have attempted to show that Dickens was trying to describe the social problems through the eyes of his characters. In his novels Hard Times and Little Dorrit some characters exacerbate the ideal that facts are more important than the imagination of human beings.
3333I found some similarities between Marx's Communist Manifesto and Dickens' Hard Times. Published in 1848 and 1854, Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto and Charles Dickens' Hard Times both comment on how the working class laboured for long hours and received minimum wages, whereas the bourgeoisie grew significantly wealthy through the labour of the working class. Hard Times is a novel based around the imbalance between the rich and the poor and The Communist Manifesto is a short publication, which was written to bring about social change. Both writings offer a sharp critique of the class inequality brought about by capitalism at the peak of the Industrial Revolution. For example, in Hard Times the working lives of Stephen Blackpool and his wife can be summarized with the following quote from Marx's The Communist Manifesto. "Owing to the use of extensive machinery and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character and, consequently all charm for the workman" (Marx and Engels 88). Furthermore the marriage of Louisa and Josiah Bounderby can also be linked to the Marx's book: "The bourgeoisie has torn away form the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation" (Marx and Engels 2). In this sense, it can certainly be said that Dickens was rebellious in Hard Times.
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Dickens wrote Little Dorrit as a way to reflect on his own family's experiences in a debtors' prison. He hoped to convey the bureaucracy of the time within the government departments and people's relationship with money. However, the traces of social reform from Dickens were also visible in this novel. For example in his book Charles Dickens, Updated Edition Harold Bloom considers Little Dorrit more powerful than Marx's Das Kapital. He states: "Little Dorrit is more seditious book than Das Kapital. All over Europe, men and women are in prison for pamphlets and speeches which are to Little Dorrit as red pepper to dynamite" (Bloom 65). In Little Dorrit Dickens displays the very essence of the society. As well as writing about his own family's days in Marshalsea prison he critiques the society. Lionel Trilling is an important figure when analyzing Dickens' novels. In his essay, he goes on to say about Little Dorrit: "Many of the particular social conditions to which it refers have passed into history" he furthermore continues: "At no point, perhaps, do the particular abuses and absurdities upon which Dickens directed his terrible cold anger represent the problems of social life as we now conceive them" (Trilling 148). He also takes a quote from Bernard Shaw in the same journal and clearly writes that this is the book that converted Charles Dickens to socialism. He states this as: "Bernard Shaw said of Little Dorrit that it converted him to socialism" (Trilling 578).
Dickens' revolt continues in the third novel I examined Oliver Twist. Once again, similar to Marx and Engels, Dickens shows the exploitation of the working class right from birth. He states: "And what an excellent example of the power of dress young Oliver Twist was… a parish child – the orphan of a workhouse – the humble, half-starved drudge – to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none." (Dickens 10). However Dickens strongly believed that social reform would ultimately save the working class despite the Poor Law amendement and other factors that denounced the working class. This can be seen right from the start of th3434e book where he states: "I wished to show, in Little Oliver, the principle of Good surviving through every adverse circumstance, and triumphing at last" (Miller 36). Dickens highlighted his own childhood memories of misery and suffering through the characterisation of an orphan boy's experince in London. In the novel, Dickens calls public attention to dwell upon various contemporary social issues, such as The Poor Law, workhouses, class differences, child labour and the recruitment of children for criminal work. I can make a clear connection between Oliver Twist and Charles Dickens's other novel Tale of Two Cities, a novel that opens with a vivid description of the period of time in which Dickens lived and wrote:
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IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, and it was the winter of despair (Dickens 2).
Through my analysis of Oliver Twist, I endeavoured to show that it is a novel that highlights in many ways the essence of Victorian society.
On completion of this research project, I can clearly support my argument that Charles Dickens was a supporter of the rise of socialism and he was admired for his critique of Victorian England. This was evident in his many works of fiction, notably Hard Times, Little Dorrit and Oliver Twist. He was not only a novelist but also a respected social reformer.



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