CHARLES DICKENS
He became a newspaper reporter with the pen name Boz. The protagonists of his autobiographical novels,
Oliver Twist (1838), David Copperfield (1850), Little Dorrit (1857), became the symbols of an exploited
childhood. Dickens was the great novelist of cities, especially London depicted at three different social
levels: the parochial world , the criminal world, the Victorian middle class. Dickens shifted the social
frontiers of the novel. He created: caricatures, weak female characters, Children are often the most
important characters. THEMES: Family, childhood and poverty. It was a didactic aim. He treats: The faults of
the legal system, The horrors of factory employment, Scandals in private schools, The appalling living
conditions in the slums. Dickens’s STYLE is very rich and original. The main stylistic features of his novels
are: objects and people, several details, repetitions, antithetical images and ideas, exaggeration, suspense
at the end. Dickens's Narrative: His novels were influenced by the Bible, fairy tales, fables and nursery
rhymes and by Gothic novels, His plots are well-planned, London was the setting of almost his novels.
HARD TIMES: It is a ‘denunciation novel’ is a powerful accusation of some of the negative effects of the
industrial society. The setting is in the fictional city of Coketown. people living and working in Coketown,
like the protagonist Thomas Gradgrind was an educator, His school tries to turn children into little
machines. THEMES: materialism and Utilitarianism, squalor of the new industrial age, the gap between the
rich and the poor,the Aim to illustrate the dangers.
Dickens was the man who invented the idea of a white Christmas, he was one of the first to describe the
underclass and the poverty stricken in Victorian London. He refined the practice to suggest characters’
traits and their role.
THE DOWN OF THE VICTORIAN AGE
Victoria became queen at the age of eighteen in 1837. She ruled for almost 64 years. Victoria and Albert of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha married in 1840. They had nine children and their family life provided a model of
respectability. In 1832 was The First Reform Act,in 1833 The Factory Act, in 1834 The Poor Law Amendment
Act, in 1846 the Abolition of the Corn Laws, in 1867 The Second Reform Act, in 1872 the Ballot Act.
Workhouses were places where, often in return for board and lodging, employment was provided for the
poor; the orphans; the physically and mentally sick; the disabled; the elderly; unmarried mothers.
Workhouses were designed to separate groups. In 1838 a group of working-class radicals drew up a
People’s Charter demanding: universal male suffrage equal electoral districts voting by secret ballot pay for
Members of Parliament annual elections of Parliament, but The Chartist movement failed.
THE IRISH POTATO FAMINE
Causes:Rise in population in 1845.Dependence on potato crops. Destruction of crops because of bad
weather and unknown plant disease. Was done because Prime Minister Peel abolished the Corn Laws,
which imposed tariffs. Results: 1 million died of disease and starvation. 2 million emigrated by 1851.Decline
of Irish language. New Catholic landlords.Hatred for Britain.
THE GREAT EXHIBITION
What? It showed the increasing power of the middle classes. Why? It was built so other countries could
show off their scientific and technological developments. Who? Everyone from all over the British Empire
gathered there to see the pride of the nations. Inside there were many exhibits from several countries,
including China, America, Canada and many more. In the mid-19th England gained access to five Chinese
ports and the control of Hong Kong. The Victorians were great moralisers they supported personal duty,
hard work, decorum, respectability, chastity. Respectability is a mixture of morality and hypocrisy.
