Charles Dickens
1812-1870
The most popular English novelist
of the Victorian era
Family life
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His father: John, a clerck in the Navy Pay Office
His mother: Elizabeth Barrow
Financially comfortable and then destitute
1824: his parents were sent to prison for debts
Dickens’s early years
• Family imprisoned for debts
• Young Charles forced to work in Warren’s shoe factory:
traumatic experience which influenced his novels a lot
• Mostly self-educated – erratic schooling (regular
schooling until 1824)
• In 1827 he took a job as a legal clerck: he soon
developed a contempt for lawyers and law institutions
• When he was a young men he entered serious
journalism (as a reporter in courts and in Parliament) →
this enabled him to meet a wide range of people and to
understand the feelings and the reactions of the readers
Dickens's early years
His first works were short articles (Sketches by Boz = his
pen name) describing London people and scene,
published in 1836: immense success and popularity
Then he published The Pickweak Papers (1st novel)
relating the comic adventures of a group of people
travelling on the English road. Published from 1836 to
1837 it made Dickens very famous in Britain and also in
America
Dickens’s works
- A dozen major novels
- A large number of short stories (including
a number of Christmas-themed stories)
- A handful of plays
- Several non-fiction books
- Dickens's novels were initially serialised in
weekly and monthly magazines (different
installments), then reprinted in standard
book formats.
Themes of Dickens's novels
Dickens was deeply conscious of social
injustice, political incompetence, and of
the poverty and suffering of the masses.
He had a very critical attitude towards
contemporary society.
For example his novel Oliver Twist deals
with the sufferings of an orphan brought up
in the workhouse who runs away to
London and joins a gang of thieves made
up of children.
Oliver Twist is set in London, the vast and crowded
city where different classes and social groups
live alongside each other and yet do not
communicate.
Dickens created unforgettable characters,
especially vagabonds, orphans, criminals. He
portrays a vivid picture of Victorian England. His
characters belong mainly to the lower and
middle classes.
Dickens is a great master of the English language.
He succeeded in mixing social criticism with the
pathetic and the comic. He is also very good in
creating dialogues. The main strength of
Dickens's style is his humour.
Oliver Twist
An early example of the social novel, the book
calls the public's attention to various
contemporary evils, including the Poor Law, child
labour and the recruitment of children as
criminals.
Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of his times by
surrounding the novel's serious themes with
sarcasm and dark humour.
The novel may have been inspired by Dikens' own
early youth as a child labourer contributed to the
story's development.
Oliver is taken to the workhouse (p. 272)
Guided analysis (1)
1.
Oliver’s origins: he is a foundling, his parents are unknown
2.
Now Oliver is nine years old and he is too old to stay at the orphanage,
so he must go to the workhouse where he will have to work for a living.
The question “Will she go with me?” would suggest that Oliver is sorry at
leaving Mrs Mann. In fact it is quite the opposite, since his only desire is
to escape from Mrs Mann’s dreadful house. To the child Mr Bumble
represents the power of the institutions and he is awed by him; however
he lies to him because, after seeing Mrs Mann menacing him with her fist
in the background he fears her reaction.
Oliver’s sufferings : the phrases that make us guess Oliver’s sufferings in
Mrs Mann’s house are
3.
4.
•
lines 25-26 the outerhands
•
lines 32-35 Oliver was aboutcountenance
Oliver is taken to the workhouse (p. 272)
Guided analysis (2)
4) focus on the characters:


Words and phrases that point out Mrs Mann's hypocrisy and
shrewdness: “inflaming her left eye with the corner of her apron”
(ll.3-4) - “You, Mr Bumble!” (l. 13) - “Why, you're quite a literary
character sir!” (l. 18) - “Mrs Mann, who had got behind the beadle's
chair, and was shaking her fist” (ll. 33-34) - “Mrs Mann give him a
piece of bread and butter, lest he should seem too hungry when he
got to the workhouse” (ll. 43-45).
Mr Bumble's presumptuousness: “The beadle drew himself up with
great pride and said “I invented it” (l. 12) - “Well, well, said the
beadle, evidently gratified with the compliment, perhaps I may be,
perhaps I may be, Mrs Mann” (ll. 19-20) - “I have come out myself
to take him there” (l. 22).
Oliver is taken to the workhouse (p. 272)
Guided analysis (3)
5) Phrases which express Dickens' humour: “his benevolent protectress” (l. 27)
- “Oliver made a bow, which was divided...cocked hat on the table” (ll.29-30)
- “It was no very difficult matter for the boy to call tears into his eyes” - “Mrs
Mann gave him a thousand embraces and, what Oliver wanted a great deal
more, a piece of bread and butter” (ll. 43-44); phrases which express
Dickens' sentimentality: “Hunger and recent ill-usage are great assistants if
you want to cry” (ll. 41-42) - “he burst into an agony of childish grief” (l. 48) “Wretched as were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind,
they were only friends he had ever known” (ll. 49-50).
Dickens' intention in writing this passage: by illustrating Oliver's miserable
conditions Dickens wants to describe the inhumane treatment orphan
children received at institutions, here represented by such wicked grotesque
characters as Mrs Mann and Mr Bumble. He stresses the hypocrisy and
false concern with the children of the institutions, which under formal
respect of procedures hid the inner cruelty of those who should have taken
care of them.
Oliver is taken to the workhouse (p. 272)
Guided analysis (4)
The passage is highly effective; in fact we have a well balanced interplay
between Dickens' moral seriousness and the humorous treatment of the
situation.