Charles
Dickens’
fiction
and
contemporary
reality
SIMILARITIES…
Dickens’
fiction
Common topics
Contemporary
reality
…AND NOT SO MANY DIFFERENCES
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FOREWORD
By the following bringing up to date of the main
problems denounced by Dickens in his fiction one
will definitely notice how two social realities, the
industrial one of the second half of the nineteenth
century and the contemporary one, share many
features.
As the audience can see the two pictures in the first
slide, which portray the English city of London and
the Russian industrial pole of Norilsks, are quite
similar, even if they had been taken with the
distance of 150 years.
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DICKENS FICTION – CURRENT TOPICS
SOCIAL THEMES
• Industrial background: pollution and hygiene
• Capitalists profits and working classes conditions
• Faults of legal system and corruption
• Mechanization of humans: alienation and education
• Monotony of ordinary working life
• Exploitation of children
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EXTRACTS IN EXAM BY CHARLES DICKENS
From Hard Times:
Book I, Chapter 2 – Murdering the innocents
Book I, Chapter 4 – Mr. Bounderby
Book I, Chapter 5 – Coketown
From Oliver Twist:
Chapter 2 – Oliver wants some more
From Bleak House:
Chapter 1 – In Chancery
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Industrial background:
pollution and hygiene
Hard Times, Coketown
•
•
•
The name Coke-town connotes
the city as an exclusively
industrial one.
Factories create polluting
“serpents of smoke” and
produces ashes which cover roofs
and threat hygienical conditions.
Words like “coke”, “smoke”,
“ashes” recall a narrow range of
dark colours, which convey a
black and white picture of a city
subdued to a grey anonymous
sky.
Today
•
•
•
•
Many cities still exist as industrial
poles, seldom deployed far from
residential areas.
The building of nuclear centrals
consists a further environmental
danger, both for humans and
ecosystem.
Pollution, in the form of smog, is
a current issue, especially in
overcrowded urban centers full of
traffic.
Despite of scientific progress
many people still live in unhealthy
conditions.
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Capitalists profits and
working classes conditions
Hard Times, Mr Bounderby
•
•
•
Mr Bounderby defines himself as
a “self-made man” which started
from the bottom and, according
to Puritan principles, made
progress on the social ladder.
His person is exemplar to reflect
on the conflict between
industrialists and the working
class.
Dickens denounces workers’
ambitions were subdued to the
law of laissez-faire which
privileged the free action of
capitalists.
Today
• The working class still submits
to the little percentage of
wealthy businessmen.
• Industrials and capitalists still
has fun at workers’expense.
• Fiscal pressure is a further
obstacle for poorest classes
and their ambitions.
• All those factors make Puritan
social progress more and
more difficult in contemporary
reality.
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Faults of legal system
and corruption
Bleak House & Oliver Twist
• The novel’s core is the longrunning litigation “Jarndyce v
Jarndyce” whose court costs
amounted £60,000 - £70,000.
• Dickens denounces the failure
of Lord High Chancellor in his
High Court of Chancery and the
flaws of judicial system.
• The novel of Oliver Twist is
useful to expose corruption of
charitable institutions.
Today
• Legal procedures still take too
long and unresolved, with
expensive parcels and without
taking legal advantage.
• Legislation still includes many
gap which allow lawyers to
make their interests without
leading to an objective verdict.
• Many humble people still
report the lack of justice.
• Corruption is a current topic,
especially in political and
economic context.
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Mechanization of humans:
Alienation and education
Hard Times,
Murdering the innocents
•
•
•
•
The teacher Mr. Gradgrind is “a man
of facts” who wanted students to be
“filled with facts”, according to
Utilitarian principles.
His method is in line with the
Industrial Revolution: pupils had to
repeat definitions mechanically.
Educational process did not
foreshadow any form of
entertainment, reflecting the
Victorian vision of the world.
The teacher’s commands convey a
claustrophobic, oppressive, suffocating
atmoshpere.
Today
•
•
•
Education seems to follow its
etymological meaning: the word is
derived from the Latin verb educere,
composed by e (=from, out of) and
ducere (=I lead, I conduct).
Indeed for the first stages of
compulsory education teachers give
space to imagination, ambitions and
feelings, promoting curiosity and
making lessons more enjoyable and
less boring.
The learning process has the aim of a
formative effect on the way one thinks,
feels or act.
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Monotony of ordinary working life
Today
Oliver Twist & Hard Times
• Oliver and his companions were
fed with a basin of gruel per
diem, as they daily performed
the operation of polishing bowls.
• The monotonous working of the
pistons of the steam- engine in
the description of Coketown
stands for the “same” repetitive
actions of workers.
• Humans are forced to perform
the same monotonous tasks,
becoming like machines:
mechanized, depersonalized and
alienated.
•
•
•
After the introduction of Fordism
machines gradually replaced
humans in many sectors of
standardized mass production.
However many workers, especially
office-holders, are still subdued to
daily routine.
The ordinary performance of the
same operations during the hectic
Western life often brings to
widespread diseases of
contemporary society like mental
stress, mood swings, panic attacks
and physical disorders.
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Exploitation of children
Oliver Twist
• Child slaves powered the
Industrial Revolution.
• They were exploited in
most industrialized cities,
mines and farms.
• Orphans were banished in
parishes: Oliver is “sold”
for five pounds to anyone
who needed a versatile
apprentice.
• Children suffered the
tortures of starvation.
Today
• Children are still victims of
capitalists’interests.
• Multinational corporations
moves their factories in
developing countries to save
on labour costs.
• Children and women are a
cheap source to keep a high
yield and to hold down
manufacturing costs.
• In the Third World many
children still suffer hunger
pangs.
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OVERALL CONCLUSIONS
As seen in the previous comparative analysis
many themes deduced by Dickens’fiction are
still current topics: from the exploitation of
children for capitalists’interests, to alienation
of men for industrial productivity.
Now one last question: is it worthwhile to
sacrifice majority’s health in return for the
minority’s wellbeing?
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