Charles Dickens Essay

Though Dickens’ beliefs may not have been traditional in his time or the modern era of today, he proved to be morally strong and stood out as a passionate social reformer. Dickens' views on society were established at a young age. Beginning at age 12, Dickens was forced to work at a shoe-blacking factory due to his father’s imprisonment in

During the 1800s, Charles Dickens was one of the most acclaimed writers of his time. He did not just write books but he was a journalist, and play write. Many of his experiences and people in his life influenced his books. Because of this he was known as not just a writer but a writer for “the people”. He wrote about the workhouse, poverty, disabilities, social class, and so much more that effected his era.

Charles Dickens is one of the most renowned British writers with well-known and widespread work. Dickens was born in England in 1812 and died in 1870. During this time, Victorian England experienced an Industrial Revolution, which impacted his life tremendously. New factories and industrial machinery changed many lives of the lower class citizens. The family grew up impoverished and struggled to maintain a good lifestyle. The family’s financial situation was strained as John Dickens, Charles’s father, spent money that the family didn’t have. These societal factors were influential in Charles Dickens’s life, and the same themes present themselves in his works. When an author creates a work, frequently themes of their life events are incorporated into the theme of the book, consciously or unconsciously. Victorian Age industrial-influenced strife was a common theme in Dickens’s life and presented itself throughout Dickens’s books.

Charles John Huffam Dickens, known commonly as Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth England to his parents, John and Elizabeth. Aside from his parents, Charles had seven other siblings. By 1822, the family was located in a poor area of London called Camden-Town. Charles father was constantly in debts, so in 1824 he was put in the Marshalsea debtor's prison when Charles was just 12. Charles was soon taken out of school and forced to polish shoes to support the family. This is where Charles first experienced poverty and vigorous labor, possibly contributing to some of the themes in the novel Tale of Two Cities. After his father was released from prison, Charles went on to study shorthand. Soon after, he worked as a newspaper

Throughout Dickens journey through life, the poor laws of Great Britain were closely intertwined. The first major impact that his childhood experiences had on him was his exposure to the factory system. The Industrial Revolution created large urban areas with a central factory that employed most of the area’s people. The factory was full of lower-class people in unsanitary conditions. In the days of Dickens’ factory experience the old poor laws were in effect. This helped Dickens’ situation greatly. His father lived in a fairly nice and sanitary prison, and was given time to find the money he owed. The old poor law system of giving aid to the poor helped to save the Dickens family. When Dickens grew up and was a parliamentary reporter, the new poor laws were about to be passed. Dickens realized that the new poor laws would bring doom to many families. The new poor laws did not help the poor but worsened their condition in order to drive them to work.

depict the ups and downs of a young child on a quest to become not

Charles Dickens, a man of good humor, once said: “If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers” (Charles Dickens quote). Throughout his novels Dickens wove humor and wit, as well as including messages of poverty and charity that remain relevant to modern society. These themes came from childhood experiences such as, his father’s sentence to Marshalea debtor's prison, consequently forcing Charles into the role of the head of his household. Making the very fast and unexpected transition from childhood to adulthood impacted his writing and is where he derived inspiration for novels such as, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, and Great Expectations.

Dickens was born into a middle-class family in England. John, Dicken’s father, had a steady job working as a clerk in the Navy Post Office. But, John was never a good steward of his money. When Dickens was ten years old, he and his family moved to different places in London, until they finally settled down at one place when he was twelve years old. These movings especially took a lot of money from them. One time, the debt mounted so high for his family, that Dickens couldn’t attend school for a month. Dicken’s cousin heard about the struggle in the family and decides to offer to hire Charles to work at the blacking factory. His family gladly accepted the offer. He has torn away from school, and forced to work six days a week, and walk three miles there and back to the factory. Dickens expressed his sadness and humiliation through his novels, but one of most famous quotes is: “No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into the companionship of common men and boys. The deep remembrance of the sense I had of being utterly neglected and hopeless.” Unfortunately, working in the factory didn’t help at all for the family. Dicken’s father is sent to jail for failing to pay his debt. In an attempt to bail John out, the family is stripped of all they have. Finally, the family is forced to move into prison with their father, except for Dickens and fanny, his sister. Finally, Dickens is

After he finally got out of the factory he went to work at the news paper and it was there he wrote and published his first novella. Even after Dickens wrote enough books to support himself his wife and his ten children he kept writing. Dickens would often write about a high class child who by some tern of fate were put into a very lower class environment to allow his higher class readers to put themselves into the shoes of the protagonist and think, what if this was me. Dickens often portrayed paupers as kind or at least just flawed and rich people as cruel but not evil at heart or on occasion kind and fatherly. Charles Dickens did not just write books to make the rich understand about the poor and the conditions they were living in, he advocated for education and helped the poor in any way he could even if all he could do was speak out for the conditions that they lived in and create sympathy through his books. Although he was an outstanding advocate for things such as feeding the poor and educating the poor he was rather lax in his family life and didn’t spend as much time with his family seeking rather to write and do business than spend time with his family which caused him and his wife to separate, Of course Dickens did not get a divorce as this would be a social faux pas and he would be looked down upon for it. Even if Dickens is a less than stellar father, he made an impact on the way the the high classes would look at the poor for

At the age of twelve Dickens was required to leave school to work ten-hour days in a warehouse where he would help earn enough money to aid in the early release of his father. The exhausting and usually cruel working environment left a permanent mark on his spirit. Consequently this life changing event would become an undeniable influence for his fiction and essays, becoming the substance

Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times critiques the use of extreme utilitarianism as an acceptable means to governing a society in which citizens are able to lead happy, productive, flourishing lives. “Just the facts,”19th century English utilitarianism argued, are all one needs to flourish. Those answers that we can arrive at by way of mathematical, logical reasoning are all needed to live a full human life. Hard Times shows however that a “just the facts” philosophy creates a community inhospitable to the needs of one another, a society nearly void of human compassion, and one lacking in morality. Underlying the novel’s argument is the Aristotelian concept that the primary purpose of government is to

To begin with the most recurring theme in his novels, abandonment. The loss of a parent's or both is a common theme in many of Dickens’ novels, and is directly relating to Dickens’ childhood. Charles Dickens’ was abandoned after his father’s imprisonment and left to his own resources. What seemed like the worst time of his life, influenced the rest of his work. Arguably, if Dickens had not had such a terrible childhood hsi would have never grown to be such a world-famous author (Kellman and Magill). Another recurring theme in Dickens’ novels is crime and imprisonment. Again, the influence for this factor of his novels can be his childhood and his father’s imprisonment. Another influence for the crime in his novels is his time working as a court reporter. Seeing crime day in and day out could have affected how he viewed the work and influenced the rest of his personal thoughts and writings (Kellman and Magill). One of the worldly influences of Dickens’ works is living in England. During Charles’ lifetime England was not the happiest place in the world. In addition to that, the rain and dreary weather of England can cause any person to feel sad at times. Living in England gave Dickens a darker view of the world around him, which set a ton for many of his novels (Biography.com Editors). Another worldly thing that was happening around him was the Industrial

In a biography journal about Dickens, a passage states that “His early life is a current element in most of his novels. The bitter experiences of his childhood helped him to empathize his topics. The main problems Dickens mentioned in Oliver Twist were the deplorable conditions of children in the Victorian

Born in eighteen twelve, during the nineteenth century, Victorian England society was based upon three social classes: low class, middle class, or upper class. When he was twelve years old, he found himself working full time at a factory to help provide for his family. Professor David Cody informs, “twelve-year-old Dickens, scarred psychologically by the experience, was further wounded by his mother’s insistence that he continue to work at the factory” (Cody, 1). Dickens uses Pip to show the reader the role of social class in Victorian England and its effects through finances, education, and friendships on human life.

of one man Pip. From the time he was seven years old until he was in