Michaela Seaton Romero
The Victorian era produced great authors, such as the Brontë sisters, William Thackeray, and George Eliot. However, the most well-known Victorian author is Charles Dickens. Dickens’s work was heavily influenced by the poverty he had experienced.
Charles Dickens was born in 1812, the second of eight children. He had a rather idyllic childhood, and his parents were even able to pay for him to go to private schools. He read constantly, burning through books such as Robinson Crusoe and The Arabian Nights. This time came to an end, however, at the tender age of twelve, when poverty grabbed ahold of his family. His father, who had been living beyond his means, was forced into debtor’s prison. Dickens had to leave school, as he could no longer pay for it. Instead, he worked ten hour days in a shoe blacking factory. He and his older sister worked hard to support their mother and younger siblings, who had moved in with their father in prison, and pay off dad’s debts.
His life in the factory greatly influenced his future works. He is quoted as saying “How I could be so easily cast away at such an age.” This thought can be seen in many of his works, as he shows good people, children especially, who are caught in the grips of poverty and cannot escape. He struggles with the idea those who could have helped, like the upper and middle classes, did nothing even for little children. Dickens became interested in social reform and labor conditions. As stated in the previous essay, factory conditions were poor, resulting in medical problems and death, and no doubt Dickens saw these happen at his work.
The sights young Dickens saw in the factory and around the deplorable conditions the poor lived in heavily influenced his fiction and other works. The view middle and upper class Victorians held was poor folk were all criminals, but Charles Dickens’s books challenged this.
While working and living as a poor person, Dickens loved people who were poor, and he himself was desperately poor. This poverty pushed him to succeed in later life. Dickens knew he was a person, and there was no difference between him and middle class people, except their income. Just because people were poor did not automatically make them criminals.
In Oliver Twist, Dickens confronts the realities of child labor and orphans. Orphanages were rough places, often cold, disease-ridden, and brutal. In one famous scene, Oliver Twist is chosen to ask their caregiver for more food. For this, he is beaten. In Great Expectations Dickens challenges the view people’s social status makes them who they are; rather, people’s characters define their worth. Pip, the main character, is a poor boy whose mind is messed with by a manipulative old woman and her protégée.
A Christmas Carol shows the dire consequences of ignoring poverty and is probably his work that demonstrates poverty’s effects most clearly, especially poverty involving children. Tiny Tim is a crippled child, whose father works for Scrooge. Scrooge is told unless Tiny Tim gets help, he will die soon. Children back then were imprisoned by the poverty they were experiencing, and most would never escape this life.
This could be representing Dickens himself in his earlier years of poverty. In the A Christmas Carol Scrooge ends up helping Tiny Tim and his family, but Dickens knows not all children are so lucky. Both Dickens and Tiny Tim were lucky to escape. Dickens wanted the public to realize the awful life of children stuck in poverty, so, hopefully, they would become enraged and do something to change the conditions.
In A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim’s father works for Scrooge. He struggles to make enough money to feed all of his children and give them a good Christmas. Although he never goes into debtor’s prison, he works for a man who makes his living putting others into debt, so he sees the drastic effects. Dickens’s father went to debtor prison, and he uses his experiences to show why people did not want to go there.
Also in A Christmas Carol, Scrooge encounters two ragged street children. One is Ignorance and the other Want. The spirit tells him although both are dangerous, Ignorance is the more dangerous. On his forehead is written “Doom.” This symbolizes Dickens’s view on poverty: if the middle- and upper-class people never learn about the deplorable conditions poor folk live in, then they will never do anything to change it because they don’t know something is wrong.
Charles Dickens was the most well-known Victorian author, and his books were heavily influenced by the poverty he had experienced. This poverty drove him to succeed in later life and also made him challenge the popular beliefs about the poor in his books. Charles Dickens was heavily influenced by poverty, and in return, poverty is heavily featured in his works.
Bibliography
“Charles Dickens.” Wikipedia. 3 Dec. 2014. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens>.
“Charles Dickens Rolls in Grave Each Time Scroogey Ed Reformers Dismiss the Effects of Poverty.” Teacher Biz. 31 July 2013. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. <https://teacherbiz.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/charles-dickens-rolls-in-grave-each-time-scroogey-ed-reformers-dismiss-the-effects-of-poverty/>.
Warren, Andrea. “Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London.” Teen Reads. The Book Report Network, 14 Dec. 2011. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. <http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/charles-dickens-and-the-street-children-of-london>.
Redeeming Pandora 