This Blog Is written as part of the Assignments given at the The Department of English , MKBU
Name: Ghanshyam Katariya
Paper 104: Literature of the Victorians
Subject Code: 22395
Topic Name: Charles Dickens as the social critic of Victorian
Society
Batch: M.A. Sem-1 (2022-24)
Roll No: 8
Enrolment No: 4069206420220017
Email Address: gkatariya67@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt. S. B. Gardi, Department of English, MKBU
Author’s Introduction
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the son of John and Elizabeth Dickens. John Dickens was a clerk in the Naval Pay Office. He had a poor head for finances, and in 1824 found himself imprisoned for debt. His wife and children, with the exception of Charles, who was put to work at Warren's Blacking Factory, joined him in the Marshalsea Prison. When the family finances were put at least partly to rights and his father was released, the twelve-year-old Dickens, already scarred psychologically by the experience, was further wounded by his mother's insistence that he continue to work at the factory. His father, however, rescued him from that fate, and between 1824 and 1827 Dickens was a day pupil at a school in London. At fifteen, he found employment as an office boy at an attorney's, while he studied shorthand at night. His brief stint at the Blacking Factory haunted him all of his life — he spoke of it only to his wife and to his closest friend, John Forster — but the dark secret became a source both of creative energy and of the preoccupation with the themes of alienation and betrayal which would emerge, most notably, in David Copperfield and in Great Expectations.
In 1829 he became a free-lance reporter at Doctor's Commons Courts, and in 1830 he met and fell in love with Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a banker. By 1832 he had become a very successful shorthand reporter of Parliamentary debates in the House of Commons, and began work as a reporter for a newspaper.
In 1834, still a newspaper reporter, he adopted the soon to be famous pseudonym "Boz." His impecunious father was once again arrested for debt, and Charles, much to his chagrin, was forced to come to his aid. Later in his life both of his parents (and his brothers) were frequently after him for money. In 1835 he met and became engaged to Catherine Hogarth.
The first series of Sketches by Boz was published in 1836, and that same year Dickens was hired to write short texts to accompany a series of humorous sporting illustrations by Robert Seymour, a popular artist. Seymour committed suicide after the second number, however, and under these peculiar circumstances Dickens altered the initial conception of ‘The Pickwick Papers’ , which became a novel. The Pickwick Papers continued in monthly parts through November 1837, and, to everyone's surprise, it became an enormous popular success. Dickens proceeded to marry Catherine Hogarth on April 2, 1836, and during the same year he became editor of Bentley's Miscellany, published (in December) the second series of Sketches by Boz, and met John Forster, who would become his closest friend and confidant as well as his first biographer.
After the success of ‘Pickwick Papers’, Dickens embarked on a full-time career as a novelist, producing work of increasing complexity at an incredible rate, although he continued, as well, his journalistic and editorial activities.’ Oliver Twist’ was begun in 1837, and continued in monthly parts until April 1839. It was in 1837, too, that Catherine's younger sister Mary, whom Dickens idolised, died. She appears, in various guises, in Dickens's later fiction. A son, Charles, the first of ten children, was born in the same year.
In 1865, an incident occurred which disturbed Dickens greatly, both psychologically and physically: Dickens and Ellen Ternan, returning from a Paris holiday, were badly shaken up in a railway accident in which a number of people were injured.
During 1869, his readings continued, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, until at last he collapsed, showing symptoms of mild stroke.Dickens's final public readings took place in London in 1870. He suffered another stroke on June 8 at Gad's Hill, after a full day's work on Edwin Drood, and died the next day. He was buried at Westminster Abbey on June 14.
His Major Works are:
‘Great Expectations’
‘Our Mutual Friend’
‘David Copperfield’
‘Bleak House’
‘ Little Dorrit’
‘Oliver Twist’
‘Nicholas Nickleby’
‘Dombey and Son’
‘The Pickwick Papers’
‘The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens’
Charles Dickens as The Social commentator
Dickens was not only the first great urban novelist in England, but also one of the most important social commentators who used fiction effectively to criticise economic, social, and moral abuses in the Victorian era. Dickens showed compassion and empathy towards the vulnerable and disadvantaged segments of English society, and contributed to several important social reforms.
Dickens believed in the ethical and political potential of literature, and the novel in particular, and he treated his fiction as a springboard for debates about moral and social reform. In his novels of social analysis Dickens became an outspoken critic of unjust economic and social conditions. His deeply-felt social commentaries helped raise the collective awareness of the reading public. Dickens contributed significantly to the emergence of public opinion which was gaining an increasing influence on the decisions of the authorities. Indirectly, he contributed to a series of legal reforms, including the abolition of the inhumane imprisonment for debts, purification of the Magistrates’ courts, a better management of criminal prisons, and the restriction of the capital punishment.
Dickens’s ‘Hard Times’ and his commentary on the Victorian time
‘Hard Times’ was serialised from 1 April to 12 August, 1854, the mythical Coketown based in part on Preston, which he had visited in January of that year. Hard Times more than doubled the circulation of ‘Household Words’, but its popularity has not been maintained because it was written as propaganda.
Dickens concern about education
The heartless scientific education of his times did not fit Dickens’ moral vision of an ideal society. Instead of developing the mind of the students and teaching them to think, English education was making them memorise useless facts.
“I want facts sir! What I want is facts, sir!”
the teacher’s voice booms in chapter one. It is a classroom scene where only the voice of the teacher echoes. The one word that comes out of the lesson is ‘facts’ and next ‘reason.’ The voice of the teacher is imperial and authoritative. Dickens is ironic here. He presents the school as a model school in which Bitzer is the best student defining a horse clinically and dispassionately. There is no heart or creativity in education, just dry scientific facts.
Dickens wanted to restructure education and do away with unqualified teachers in schools. He strongly felt the need to provide training to teachers. As such, he introduced Mr. M’Choakumchild, fresh from a training college, accompanied by his wife, about to deliver his first classroom lecture. Though the satire, both in the choice of the name and presentation of character, seems inescapable, M’Choakumchild is after all a representative of a new school ideology.
Through M’Choakumchild, Dickens expressed some of the popular criticism against training schools of the time. Dickens wanted training schools to instruct teachers in teaching methodology and develop their intellect, not just impart pseudo-scholarship.
Coketown and Industrialism
Coketown in Hard Times symbolises the negative effects of industrialization on English towns. Dickens was born in 1812 and was a product of the Industrial Revolution, a revolution that saw the rise of factories in England During this time the growth of iron founding, textile manufacture and steam power increased production by leaps and bounds, bringing with it pollution, social imbalance and individual confusion. Dickens was rather poor, had no proper education. At the age of 12 he worked in Warren’s Blacking Factory attaching labels to bottles which had a traumatic effect on his imagination.
Dickens knew London better than Coketown but he could still bring out the listlessness of the townsfolk in Coketown. He shows the dehumanising aspects of industrialization in urban Victorian society but does not show details of the environment. English factories were destroying the bucolic landscape and the economic power that was arising from them was changing the social order, making some wealthy while leaving others poor. The soot-coated, black and savage Coketown gives the feeling of repetitiveness, monotony and drudgery. Both its streets and inhabitants have lost their uniqueness and they look alike. The repeated use of the word “same” and the phrase “like one another” reveal both the monotony of Coketown and the drudgery of its inhabitants. Everything in the redbrick Coketown is “severely workful” and the idea of sameness extends to the eighteen churches of different “religious persuasions,” the jail, infirmary, town hall, school and cemetery.
Social criticism saw the novel as a “passionate revolt” where there were no villains or heroes, but only oppressors and victims. And the culprit, if there was one, was industry. Socialists saw the machine as a symbol of oppression when controlled by money-making capitalists. Dickens has lost his good humour. His tone becomes quite serious. Cecilia Jupe and Louisa are serious and suffering characters. Though humble and natural, Sissy is predictably bookish. Louisa is tragic. The novel ends in a thematic balance. The novel begins with the childhood of the mind and ends with the childhood of the body. Dickens begins the story with reason and hard facts and ends it with fancy and imagination.
Victorian Utilitarianism
Dickens brought out the negative effects of Victorian utilitarianism through the characters of Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby. The practical utilitarianism of Gradgrind and the egotism of Bounderby destroyed the creative spirit and fellow feeling of the small community. Utilitarianism is a philosophy based on a minimalist view of man that understands human nature in terms of economic relations alone. Though riddled with self-contradictions it was responsible in some measure for reforms in administration, sanitation and education. Utilitarianism, though inspired by the theory of laissez faire , came to represent a streamlined civil service and centralised governance. It was difficult to reconcile the Benthamite idea of general happiness of a political and legal kind with Adam Smith’s self-harmonising economic principle of laissez-faire (minimum intervention from the law). Dickens seemed to be both a victim and chronicler of such a contradictory response to utilitarianism. In Hard Times he treats the theme of education and trade unionism from opposing perspectives.
In Hard Times human relationships are contaminated by economics. The principles of the ‘dismal science’ led to the formation of a selfish and atomistic society. The social commentary of Hard Times is quite clear. Dickens is concerned with the conditions of the urban labourers and the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism. He exposes the exploitation of the working class by unfeeling industrialists and the damaging consequences of propagating factual knowledge (statistics) at the expense of feeling and imagination. However, although Dickens is critical about Utilitarianism, he cannot find a better way of safeguarding social justice than through ethical means.
Conclusion
Dickens’ novel Hard Times (1854) is a great moral fable that not only provides a damning critique of industrial England of the nineteenth century but also an indictment of global laissez faire capitalism of the twenty-first century. At a time when a general sense of dissatisfaction with European capitalism is sweeping across the world from New York to Tokyo, Dickens’ denunciation of the capitalist system that breeds economic imbalance and weakens the social fabric seems more than justified.
Word count= 1847
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Works Cited
Allingham, Philip V. “Charles Dickens's Hard Times for These Times as an Industrial Novel.” The Victorian Web, 18 November 2000, https://victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/hardtimes/pva27.html. Accessed 6 November 2022.
Cody, David. “Dickens: A Brief Biography - David Copperfield.” The Victorian Web, March 2004, https://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/dickensbio1.html. Accessed 6 November 2022.
Moran, Michelle. “Dickens' Hard Times in Our Hard Times ».” The Copperfield Review, 28 April 2012, https://copperfieldreview.com/?p=380. Accessed 6 November 2022.
Peck, John. “Charles Dickens as Social Commentator and Critic.” The Victorian Web, 7 February 2012, https://victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/diniejko.html. Accessed 6 November 2022.
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