Charles Dickens Research Paper

In the age of Queen Victoria, otherwise known as the Victorian era, the British people’s long struggle for personal liberty was accomplish and democratic government became fully entrenched (qtd. in The Victorian Age). The Victorian culture could be seen as a “fiercely contested imagined space,” as well as fraught with “contradictory” aspects. This can be under the impression that theories of origin led to despair, and the perception that humans had no free will (qtd. in Victorian Literature and Culture). But along with despair came new beginnings that even we as a people associate with today. The Victorian era was a complex age that, despite its hardships, began new literary and cultural experiences (qtd in The Victorian Era). Charles Dickens,

He rescued his twelve-year-old son Charles from having to work in the factory alongside his mother and siblings, hence the reason why Dickens was able to become a student at a London school between 1824 and 1827 (qtd. in Dickens: A Brief Biography). At the age of fifteen, Dickens held a job as an office boy at an attorney’s building, studying at night when his day at work was over. Dickens held memories of the books he so vicariously read when he was a child as well as scary stories that a teenage servant would tell him, which would later influence many of his novels (qtd. in A Dickensian Childhood). Two of the biggest influences for Dickens’ novels, however, were his father’s imprisonment for debt and his own forced child labor. By the time Dickens was an adult, these memories gave him both a driving ambition to rise out of poverty and a sympathetic understanding of the lives of the poor (qtd. in Charles Dickens:

Dickens’ novels exposed the cruelty, greed, hypocrisy, and violence of the Victorian era, as opposed to the kindness and sympathy for the poor that people in these times eventually felt. For example, A Christmas Carol (1843) is an allegory of how underclass people were formerly treated by those more fortunate than they (qtd. in A Christmas Carol is Not a Secular Tale), and the message is that one shouldn’t overlook those who are in misery or in pain, as he was as a young child. One of Dickens’ later novels, Our Mutual Friend, also became one of the most popular. According to critics of the past, this novel was more than likely the finest point of view of conscious artistry, despite the lack of spontaneity from earlier works by Dickens (qtd. in Harper & Row: Our Mutual Friend). The characters were greatly influenced by events in Dickens’ real life, such as going after a woman whom he had abandoned his wife of more than twenty years for. Here, Dickens articulates the tension men and women held for each other during the Victorian era (qtd. in Dickens's Influence upon Dostoevsky). Great Expectations is arguably Dickens’ greatest novel, telling the story of a young man’s moral development over his lifetime, from a poor childhood to a great life of success in adulthood (qtd. in Charles John Huffam Dickens). Though not an autobiography, this novel was one of those that connected