Charles Dickens, Reflecting the Experience of All Humanity

My essay is a response to the Victorian literary theme we have addressed this semester.

     A quote by Benjamin Disraeli reads, “The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.” Victorian novelist, Charles Dickens exemplified this in its entirety; using his literary gift to highlight the need for social advocacy, Dickens was able to urge readers to act for social justice. In an essay by Arlene Bowers Andrews titled, “Charles Dickens, Social Worker in His Time,” she argues that throughout Dickens’ works, he calls to action compassionate people to work with others to accomplish ends that benefit all. He is able to do this through descriptive, heart-wrenching narratives, helping his audience remember that the poor and oppressed are members of humanity too. Within London during the industrial revolution, many members of the lower and working classes found themselves suffering financial, social, mental, and emotional challenges. Dickens has been able to reflect these hardships in a number of his works including Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People, Little Dorrit, The Uncommercial Traveller, and Oliver Twist. Throughout these texts, Dickens is able to show the divide between the poor and working classes from the rest of society. Due to the countless different situations he exposes his readers to, he has been credited with helping widen the professional lenses of many social workers. Dickens’ authentic narratives have captured social critiques within the Victorian era, inviting readers to become social justice advocates or social workers.

      Before Dickens, there were only numbers and figures to illustrate the quality of life that impoverished men and women were living in London in the 1800s. Due to the industrial revolution, “…a quarter of the entire population of Victorian Britain was living in poverty in the 1800s. Additionally, 40% of the country’s wealth was owned by 5% of the population” (Census-Helper.co.uk). Although these numbers show the great disparity between the rich and the poor in a flat and unbiased way, they are not able to illustrate the poor as being excluded from humanity. Dickens’ numerous descriptive narratives have been able to identify with the poor and working class, along with the consequences of living in perpetual socioeconomic hardship. Dickens reflected these adversities within his works, to show oppressed people needing to be treated as more than just a means to an end. An excerpt taken from his novel, The Uncommercial Traveller, Dickens depicts the lives of the poor accurately.

Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful company…But is one of the worst night sights I know in London, is to be found in the children who prowl about this place; who sleep in the baskets, fight for the offal, dart at any object they think they can lay their thieving hands on… and are perpetually making a blunt pattering on the pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their naked feet. A painful and unnatural result comes of the comparison one is forced to institute between the growth of corruption displayed…in these all uncared for savages. (Dickens 4)

While the narrator is going on a night walk through the streets of London, he recognizes this street as beautiful by day, but by night, inhabited by the pitiable homeless. The poor vagrants described in this passage lack nearly all of the basic essentials of life: food, water, shelter, and clothing. Descriptions like “fighting for offal” or “uncared for savages,” define these displaced people as vulnerable to the poverties of life with the intention of tearing at the heart strings of the reader (Dickens 4). This passage and others like this show “The power of Dickens’ words, transcending time and place…they illustrate the burden and meaning of poverty in ways no statistical data or photographic images of today can” (Andrews 299). Dickens’ real-life narratives are effective at not only raising awareness of the homeless as being regarded as sub-human but also help trigger emotion within readers, helping them act for their well being.

     Another one of Dickens’ contributions to the social justice and the social work profession was his examination of London’s poor and oppressed and their behavior in social situations and relationships. In Andrews’ article, she states that “Fictional narrative can also enable the exploration of thoughts, feelings, and observed actions and expressions that are the essence of social relationships” (297). Dickens’ insight into the social interactions of the poverty-stricken help support the need for social reform so that the poor can live normal lives, with the potential to become contributing members of society. From his collection of short stories titled Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People, Dickens provides numerous accounts of the inability of despondent inmates in the Newgate prison to have normal social relations. He notes:

…A door with thick bars of wood…some twenty women inside” The majority of whom, however, as soon as they were aware of the presence of strangers, retreated to their wards. One side of this yard is railed off at a considerable distance, and formed into a kind of iron cage, about five feet ten inches in height…In one corner of this singular-looking den, was a yellow, haggard, decrepit old woman, in a tattered gown that had once been black…in earnest conversation with a young girl—a prisoner, of course…The old woman was talking in that low, stifled tone of voice which tells so forcibly of mental anguish…the girl was perfectly unmoved. Hardened beyond all hope of redemption, she listened doggedly to her mother’s entreaties…(Dickens 3)

Within Dickens’ description of the old woman talking to her young daughter, the reader learns that the conditions in which they live have altered their mental capabilities, resulting in their eventual inability to interact with one another. Their ability to express their feelings have dwindled, as the prison has suffocated their will to live. The old lady is described as talking with “forcible mental anguish” with the young girl being “perfectly unmoved” (Dickens 3). Dickens has realized a primary goal of social work today, which is to help people regain confidence and hope within their lives despite seemingly hopeless situations. These two women embody the traits of hopelessness and mental hysteria are juxtaposed together behind the bars in order to display the spectrum of outcomes that can occur to the imprisoned. In this excerpt, Dickens advocates for the humane treatment of all persons including those with questionable pasts. The social interaction between these two women and the social environment in which they lived show the ineffectiveness of such a prison system in London in the 1800s—posing yet another challenge for social workers to tackle.

      The inadequate conditions causing the prisoners of Newgate to lose their social and mental capacities was not the only phenomenon Dickens felt compelled to write about. Dickens also considered the effects on social interactions within the lives of the homeless on the streets of London. In another excerpt taken from The Uncommercial Traveller, the narrator states:

Suddenly, a thing in a moment more I should have trodden upon without seeing, rose up at my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness, struck out of it by the bell, the like of which I never heard. We then stood face to face looking at one another, frightened by one another. The creature was like a beetle-browned hair-lipped youth of twenty, and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which it held together one of its hands. It shivered from head to foot, and its teeth chattered, and as it stared at me—persecutor, devil, ghost, whatever it thought of me—it made with its whining mouth as if it were snapping at me, like worried dog. (Dickens 4)

In this instance, a representative of the poor and destitute is described as having incurred a lowered mental capacity, unable to have normal social interactions. The homeless person in this passage is described as “it” and “creature” where the human is given no gender and appears to make unintelligible human speech. Impoverished conditions can make a human revert to primal instincts, with the basic necessities of life being their only concern. A life lived in this way can cause one to lose their humanity and distance themselves from society. Again, through Dickens’ detailed account he has given the foundational narrative for “…budding and experienced social workers alike to ponder the dilemmas of literary characters, gain enlightenment about their own real-world concerns, and realize ways to make meaning from dilemmas”(Andrews 297). It is descriptions such these that have aided social workers and those passionate for social justice in gaining a deeper understanding of the hardships that can alter the poor and homeless and their ability to interact as civilized members of society.

      Dickens’ success in promoting social work throughout his works of literature can be attributed to his own life experiences. He has been able to capture the misfortune so commonly observed by the poor because of what he underwent when he was a young boy. “Dickens lived in England from 1812 to 1870, during the emergence of the Victorian era, where British imperialism and industrialism prevailed, democracy slowly blossomed, and a middle class developed”(Andrews 298). Within his literary works, he frequently attributed unproductive social policies and prejudiced social norms as inflicting devastation upon numerous families and communities. Dickens was able to capture the deprived existence of the poor and working class because he endured the same conditions throughout his childhood. Early in his childhood, his father accrued a substantial debt, causing Dickens and the rest of his family to lose everything. At the age of 12, Dickens’ father was put into a debtor’s prison, forcing him to take a job at a relative’s shoe polish factory, loitering the streets of London in his spare time. During his wanderings, he gathered material for the stories and books he would later write. Many of his works depict these findings along with the unfortunate events he went as a kid. In Dickens’ novel Little Dorrit, he describes a fictional experience similar to his family’s situation. Little Dorrit features a girl named Amy, after being born in a debtor’s prison, Marshalsea, on account of her father, and her experience living there. Despite the numerous adversities Amy faces, she is able to show resiliency and become the first one in her family to be a contributing member of society. He writes:

What her pitiable look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much, or how little of the wretched truth it pleased God to make visible to her; lies hidden with many mysteries. It is enough that she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were, and to be that something, different and laborious, for the sake of the rest…She took the place of the eldest of the three, in all things but precedence; was the head of the fallen family; and bore, in her own heart, its anxieties and shames. (Dickens 143)

The experiences that the fictional character Amy and writer Dickens have shared show how destitute and inadequate living conditions can make it difficult for a family dynamic to persevere. Situations like these have allowed social workers and social justice activists to see the importance of reinstating flawed or broken family dynamics. In Little Dorrit, Amy was able to become independent and fend for herself. In Dickens’s adolescence, he was able to get out of the debtor’s prison and resume his education. When this is not the case, it is important that children have a stable family situation restored. Giving a child the adequate needs for success will be what determines if they become a contributing member of society and retain their self-esteem. The challenges that Amy underwent have helped show social work supporters what a young person requires in an impoverished life to be successful.

     Oliver Twist is another fictional example portraying Dickens’ childhood experience. Oliver, born in a workhouse in the 1830s and shortly orphaned thereafter, spends the first nine years of his life in a poorly run all-boys home. At age ten, he is subjected to hard, physically strenuous labor, brought on from the booming industrial revolution. During his time at the work house, he escapes by becoming a chimney sweep and eventually becoming an apprentice to a local undertaker. An excerpt from this novel depicts the shameful work conditions he has to endure before finding a suitable living and working situation.

Young as he was, however, he had sense enough to make a feint of feeling great regret at going away. It was no very difficult matter for the boy to call tears into his eyes. Hunger and recent ill-usage are great assistants if you want to cry; and Oliver cried very naturally indeed. Mrs. Mann gave him a thousand embraces, and what Oliver wanted a great deal more, a piece of bread and butter, less he should seem too hungry when he got to the workhouse. With the slice of bread in his hand, and the little brown-cloth parish cap on his head, Oliver was then led away by Mr. Bumble from the wretched home where one kind word or look had never lighted the gloom of his infant years. And yet he burst into an agony of childish grief, as the cottage-gate closed after him. Wretched as were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind, they were the only friends he had ever known; and a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world, sank into the child's heart for the first time. (Dickens 43)

Dickens portrays his protagonist as struggling to find hope within the miserable life that he lives. Throughout this novel and Dickens’ other novels, he is able to connect with his readers on a deeper level. In a novel, the reader gets an extended exposure to the characters within the novel, allowing them to remember that the characters are meant to represent people. In this way, Dickens advocates for all humanity, particularly the poor and oppressed. He helps his readers understand that all people need to be regarded as fully human, by advocating for the social justice of all.

     Dickens was a unique writer in the Victorian era, allowing readers to see the grim realities of the poor in the midst of the industrial revolution. Throughout his works he magnifies the conditions the impoverished lived in, what many people were blind to. With his highly descriptive language he mirrors the human experience, helping readers see that all people need to be regarded as fully human. His narratives are used to attract social justice advocates and workers today, for they trigger emotions and help people realize the need to act for a common good. Through his depictions of the impoverished experience he is able to spark motivation within the hearts of his readers, particularly for social workers and social justice supporters to reach their highest potential in regards to selfless service.

Works Cited
Andrews, Arlene Bowers. "Charles Dickens, Social Worker In His Time." Social Work 57.4 (2012): 297-307. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

Census-Helper.co.uk. Census-Helper, 2009. Web. 27 April 2015.

Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit. ElecBook, 2001. Web.

Doss, Latif., and Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2008. Print. Penguin Readers. Level 6.

Jennifer Hickey

1800s and today

text

English

Victorian literature