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Charles Dickens Workhouses And The Poor Law Of 1834

158 Words1 Pages
The union workhouses and the Poor Law of 1834 did a great job of keeping the poor exactly where they were. Either way they decided to live it did not seem to be a good solution due to workhouses being a not progressive solution to end poverty. Dickens lived very close to a workhouse, so it would not be unusual for him to have an visual representation of the poor (Richardson 1). Dickens understood the standard of poverty and what people of poverty were subjected to. So it can be said that poverty was truly everywhere around Dickens. Although poverty was not just around Dickens, for it was apart of his life as well. This time not in a visual way, but more of a financial way. Dickens's father was imprisoned due to not being able to pay off money
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In the nineteenth century, Dickens was writing a forgettable epic works. "Dickens beliefs and attitudes were typical of the age in which he lived” (Slater 301). The circumstances and financial difficulties caused Dickens’s father to be imprisoned briefly for debt. Dickens himself was put to work for a few months at a shoe-blacking warehouse. Memories of this painful period in his life were to influence much of his later writing, which is characterized by empathy, oppressed, and a keen examination of class distinctions.

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Fred (Scrooge’s nephew) said, “His wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it”. Fred notices that Scrooge doesn't give to the world, and that makes his riches useless. If the upper class has so much money to give but chooses to disregard the poor, nothing in this world will change. That is why poverty was such a big deal to Dickens because it is a worldly problem that could be better if people who can give, weren’t so selfish.

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Charles Dickens argues in his writing A Christmas Carol that the poor was being treated cruelly and the rich does not care for the poor. Pg 34 “We should make some slight provisions for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at this present time”. This statement shows that the poor and destitute were not provided with anything and they suffered a lot. ”If they would rather die they better do it, and decrease the surplus population”.

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The play, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, explores the theme of poverty through its portrayal of the heterogeneity

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Up until the mid-19th century, attitudes towards poverty was dominated by elitist views. Just like the elitist themselves, people in poverty were expected to solely take care of themselves. Social or economic factors were not seen as one of the issues that caused poverty; however, it was rather seen as something people were born with- like a defect they were birth with. They believed poverty was caused by the bad habits of the poor; for instance, their preference for gambling and drinking or through their own simple laziness (The British Library, 2018). This is because many Victorians didn’t understand poverty entirely.

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On face value, poverty may appear to be referring to a lack of money, but in this quote, it actually symbolizes Bartleby’s lack of friends. Therefore, it highlights the importance of friendship, a theme which becomes apparent through examining Bartleby’s life.

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Humble beginnings. Scrooge truly started from the bottom. He was not born into wealth and started without a dime. He was born to poor farmers and started working as a young boy to earn money. A true Dickensian existence he lived as he and his family were poor.

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Dickens used careful context in that quote, he capitalized “Poor” as if it were a proper noun. He brought attention to what was important, and what was important was certainly the poor. E. Scrooge then replied “Nothing!” but the man thought he only wished to be anonymous. “…I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.”

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In fact, Charles dickens also once lived in the same desperate poverty state as the Cratchit Family. “Despite his parents’ best efforts, the family remained poor... He felt abandoned and betrayed by the adults who were supposed to take care of him”(Biography.com Editors). “The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, for example, was intended to end relief to any able-bodied person and make the remaining charity as minimal as possible to deter all but the most desperate from requesting such aid”(Geva Theatre Center, Rochester NY). This shows that even Charles Dickens felt neglected because he was very poor and in debt, having no support from the wealthy or other people.

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Even though Bob had a very low wage, he and his family were happy. I think that Dickens was trying to encourage all of the people who lived in poverty to try and do their best to be happy. A cultural relationship that influenced the story was family. Many of the main families

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Both these characters were poor at the beginning of the Great Expectations, but Dickens made sure to differentiate what level of poverty each was at. These different levels of poverty are what got the publics’ attention. Making up 85% of the population during the Victorian Era, these people lived in slums and had to resort to stealing to survive. Dickens is very adamant about this topic because he himself had to overcome poverty in his youth. So, he writes about it in the hope that the higher class becomes more

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Money Worries in Dickens. Any great Victorian novel that wished to explore social issues could not escape the great theme of monetary connections, influences, corruptions and debts. For Dickens, heralded as ‘the master of the social novel’, money worries reappear again and again in his novels, in the form of the destitute orphan, the man languishing in debtors prison, the aristocrat carelessly paying a gold coin for inadvertently killing a child, and so forth. In Great Expectations and Bleak House, money is at the heart of the questions the novels grapples with; for instance, if money can make Pip a gentleman, or why Richard is so hopelessly attached to the promise of fortune from the Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit. The novels also express

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Workhouses then serve as a symbol of the fixed hypocritical values of both the English system and the middle-classes as the former set in motion a number of reforms to improve the marginalised side of society (which failed), and the later thought that poor people were born with inherent negative qualities and that their destiny was far from improvement and dignity; instead, they were intended to a more immoral, criminal world. On the other hand, middle-classes possessed more virtuous values and then, deserved a more promising and comfortable conditions of life. Then, the hypocrisy behind workhouses can be found in its authorities: Mr Bumble and Mrs Mann. Such was the suffering experienced by Oliver during his early years that he decides to escape from that horrible world and rather decides to leave his future in destiny’s hand. He had to choose: the workhouse conditions or

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