Charles Dickens the Nineteenth Century

Charles Dickens

The nineteenth century was the grand age of the English novel. This period was mainly of the middle-class, who rose in power and significance and the literary form of art boomed at this period as there was a steady increase in the reading population and there were developments in publishing. At that time, the novel was the medium that gave them the picture of a life the middle-class people wanted to know about. With Charles Dickens (1812-70), writing and melodrama are collected into the novel to give it new life and a new and significant place in middle-class entertainment. Dickens learned from his conditions and opinion mixing the unusual savor for the peculiar, the bright and the impressive in metropolitan life and in human character with a devoted eye for the changes in the Industrial Revolution brought into England during his lifetime, a keen awareness of his own lower-middle-class origin and the miserable conditions of his own childhood, which included his father's detention for debt and his own employment at a blacking factory, and a sappy caring outlook towards human problems.

Though he started as a comic journalist, he soon found out his talents as a novelist, which facilitated him to impart to his enchanted readers stories set in his time or recent past in which the liveliness of the characters, the excited taste of their physical environment, the movement from comedy to tragedy and from sympathy to terror, and the absolute high spirits with which he portrayed weird, villains, unfortunates, hypocrites, social climbers, nouveaux riches, criminals, innocents, bureaucrats, exhibitionists, self-deceivers, roisterers, and confidence men, human peculiarities of all kinds each with its own physical and moral eccentricity and each involved in a rich outline of interacting lives played out against social background whose views and sounds and smells were depicted with a bright individuality, in which all this is given with an almost wild abundance. In this paper, we will talk about life of Dickens, his works and his participation in social activities. (the Victorian Novel: Charles Dickens World)

Life of Charles Dickens:

Charles Dickens was born on 7th February 1812 to John and Elizabeth Dickens. His father John Dickens worked as a clerk at the Navy pay office in Portsmouth. He later worked in Chatham and Charles the second of seven children went to the local school. John Dickens found it hard to afford for his growing family with his scanty income. In 1822 the family shifted to Camden Town in London. John Dickens unpaid sum had become so huge that all the household goods were sold. As he was not able to convince his creditors, he was arrested and sent to Marshalsea Prison. Charles found work at Warren's Blacking Factory at the age of twelve and he was paid six shillings a week for covering shoe black bottles. Six months after John was sent to prison, one of his relatives died leaving behind a large sum of money. John used this money to pay off his debts and he left the prison. Some money he used for educating Charles in a nearby private school, Wellington House Academy. Charles was only an average student and at the age of fifteen he left school and got work as an office boy in a firm of solicitors. Charles hated the job but he took pleasure in walking the streets in the evening watching the people of London. (Charles Dickens: (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk)

Charles Dickens was firm on becoming a reporter. He bought a copy of Gurney's Brachgraphy and qualified himself in shorthand. In 1828, at the age of sixteen, Dickens got a job as a court reporter. Afterwards he joined the Mirror of Parliament, a newspaper that reported the daily events of Parliament. Dickens regarded most politicians to be pretentious who appeared to waste most of the time speaking sentences which had no meaning in them. But he was amazed with some MPs who really showed interest in making Britain a better place to live. Dickens was engrossed in the topic of social reform and began giving articles to the major newspaper, the True Sun. Contrasting to other major newspapers like the Poor Man's Guardian and the Gauntlet, the True Sun did pay the 4d. Stamp duty. In spite of levying heavy tax on newspapers, the True Sun sold around 30,000 copies a day. In his editorial, Dickens used his significant knowledge of the proceedings in the House of Commons to help support the basis of parliamentary reform. Charles Dickens was happy when Parliament finally agreed to pass the 1832 Reform Act. The new improved House of Commons passed a sequence of new procedures including a decrease in newspaper tax from 4d to 1d.

Consequently, the movement of the True Sun increased to over 60,000. In 1833 Dickens had his first story printed in the Monthly Magazine. Under the pen name of 'Boz' Dickens also started supplying short stories to the "Morning Chronicle" and the Evening Chronicle. The stories so admired, that they were published as a book named Sketches by Boz in the year 1836. The publisher, William Hall, further asked Dickens to write the Pickwick Papers in twenty monthly installments. This was followed by Oliver Twist, which was published in Bentley's Miscellany in 1837-38 and Nicholas Nickleby in 1838-39. Dickens was now the most admired writer in Britain and over the next few years he wrote a sequence of popular novels including the Old Curiosity Shop in 1840-1841, Barnaby Rudge in 1841, Martin Chuzzlewit in 1843-1844 and a Christmas Carol in 1843. Though Dickens was a successful novelist, he continued to be involved in social reform. He disappointed his hosts in America in 1842, by criticizing slavery. (Charles Dickens: (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk)

Dickens was also firm in investing some of his royalties in a new radical newspaper, "The Daily News." Dickens became editor and in the first edition printed on 21st January 1846, he wrote: "The opinions promoted in "The Daily News" will be values of progress and improvement; of education, civil and religious liberty, and equal legislation." (Charles Dickens: (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk) the Daily News was not a great marketable success and Dickens left the job of editor. But he was firm on creating a means where he could speak his ideas on social reform and in the year 1850 started editing Household Words. The weekly journal had articles on politics, science and history. To make more people buy and read "Household Words," it also had short stories and humorous pieces. Dickens also used the journal to serialize novels that were involved with social issues such as his own Hard Times in the year 1854 and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South in the year 1855. By the year 1851 the twenty-four page "Household Words" was selling 40,000 copies a week. Dickens published "Household Words" between 1850 and 1859 and at that time worked in support of parliamentary reform and developments in the education of the poor.

Dickens was very antagonistic to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and wrote many articles on the workhouse system. Dickens was also worried with public health and the improvement of the legal system. In 1859 he quarreled with the publishers of "Household Works" and he replaced it with All the Year Round. Though the new magazine had matters about social problems, it focused mainly on literary matters. Many important novels were serialized in All the Year Round including Dickens's own a Tale of Two Cities in 1859 and Great Expectations in 1860-61. The magazine also had three of Wilkie Collins's novels, the Woman in White in 1860, No Name in 1862 and the Moonstone in 1868. Until his death in 1870, the magazine All the Year Round continued. (Charles Dickens: (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk)

The Works of Charles Dickens:

Dickens quick grasp of the conversation helped him to create colorful characters through their own words. The Pickwick Papers is a story about a group of strange people and their travels to Ipswich, Rochester, Bath and elsewhere. OLIVER TWIST in 1837-39 portrays the London gangland and tough years of the orphan Oliver Twist, who's right to his bequest is kept undisclosed by the wicked Mr. Monks. Oliver undergoes hardship in a poor farm and workhouse. He infuriates authorities by asking a second bowl of porridge. From a lonely detention he is trained to a casket maker, and becomes a member of a gang of young thieves, headed by Mr. Fagin. At last Fagin is hanged at Newgate and Mr. Barnlow takes on Oliver. A droopily formed tale of young Nickelby in searching his wealth is the story of NICHOLAS NICKELBY in 1838-39. David Copper field, a later work of Dickens was a story based on his own experiences in the factory. David's mother who was a widow marries the dictatorial Mr. Murdstone. David starts having friendship with Mr. Micawber and his family. "I went in, and found there a fat, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout and black tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head, than there is upon an egg, and with a very broad face, which he turned bursting upon me. His clothes were untidy, but he had a commanding short-collar on." (Charles Dickens (1812-1870): (www.kirjasto.sci.fi/)Dora, David's first wife, expires and he marries Agnes. He seeks his vocation as a journalist and later as a novelist. (Charles Dickens (1812-1870): (www.kirjasto.sci.fi/)

GREAT EXPECTATIONS in 1860-61 started as a serialized publication in Dickens's periodical All the Year Round on December 1, 1860. The story of Pip or Philip Pirrip was among Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's preferred novels. Pip, an urchin, lives with his old sister and her husband. He comes across a runaway convict named Abel Magwitch and assists him against his wish. Magwitch is summoned up and Pip is taken care of Miss Havisham. He falls in love with the merciless Estella, Miss Havisham's ward. With the help of an unknown supporter, Pip is correctly educated, and he becomes a snob. Magwitch turns out to be the supporter; he dies and Pip's great expectations are damaged. He works as a clerk in a trading company, and marries Estella, Magwitch's daughter. (Charles Dickens (1812-1870): (www.kirjasto.sci.fi/)

The novels of Dickens have in it cruelty and enchanted dream; quick, sensible, actual detail and fable, mockery, and melodrama; the ordinary and the strange. They vary through the "comic, tender, dramatic, sentimental, grotesque, melodramatic, horrible, eccentric, mysterious, violent, romantic, and morally earnest." Though Dickens was firm in making money out of writing, he was conscious what his readers wanted and he also understood that novels had a moral purpose to stir natural moral feelings and to cheer good behavior in readers. This moral purpose led the London Times to call Dickens the most admired instructor of the Nineteenth Century in his obituary. At his time, Dickens was the most celebrated writer in Europe and America. During his visit to America to give a lecture, his fans chased him, waited outside his hotel, gazed in windows at him, and stressed him in railway cars. In their eagerness, Dickens's fans behaved in a manner comparable to the fans of a superstar today. (Charles Dickens: cademic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/)

Life Experiences of Charles Dickens:

When Charles Dickens was eight or nine years old, he was mislaid in the city in the crowded financial and commercial center of the great city of London. A pal of the family had taken him to have a glance at the outside of St. Giles's Church. On parting from his friend, he was aghast; but he soon recovered and was firm in setting to search for his fortune. Taking a glance at his own childhood, Dickens saw that he was not a well-cared boy. The boy grew into a young man through the pure productiveness of his innovative intellect and an amazing amount of hard work, changed himself into the most well-known writer of his age. Dickens wrote to his friend and upcoming biographer John Forster in April 1856, of how obvious it was to him, that one is motivated by appealing strength until the voyage is worked out. The cheerful years of Dickens early days was from 1817-1822, which he spent in Chatham, a busy port on England's southeast coast. He was sent to school, and started to read avidly as if for life. Charles Dickens got extremely upset, when his father John Dickens was detained for debit. Dickens was an extraordinarily responsive child, and this dreadful period of disgrace and disregard stained him permanently. Even at the altitude of his reputation, he would forget himself in his dreams, and, as he said he would stroll sadly back to that time of his life. (Charles Dickens: The Life of the Author)

Contributions of Charles Dickens:

Dickens began a weekly magazine titled Household words in 1850, in which he gave the serialized works of Child's History of England in 1851-53, Hard Times in 1854, a Tale of Two Cities in 1859, and Great Expectations in 1860-61. Diagonally, he continued with his novels like David Copperfield in 1849-50, Bleak House in 1852-53, Little Dorrot in 1855-57, and Our Mutual Friend in 1864-65. Dickens became more and more dissatisfied, as his career improved. His works had always replicated the troubles of the common man, but works like Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend uttered his succeeding irritation and disappointment with society. In 1858, Dickens started a chain of paid readings, which became accepted immediately. By these readings, Dickens was able to collect his love of the stage with a correct version of his writings. In all, Dickens presented more than 400 times. The readings regularly made him tired and sick, but they made him to raise his income, get creative happiness, and stay in touch with his fans. (Charles Dickens: (www.incwell.com)

Social Class according to Charles Dickens:

In Charles Dickens 'Great Expectations' social class played a major role in the society. Social class ascertained the way in which a person was dealt with and their entree to education. but, social class did not describe the quality of the person. In Great Expectations, an individual's social class ascertained the quantity of education they had. It is essential to recognize this connection between education and social class to obviously recognize the significance of social class. A person like Joe who was an ordinary blacksmith did not have any education at all. Pip, in the early days when he was low class, had a deprived education at a small school. The school was not the finest of schools, but it's all that the lower class possessed. The teacher used up more time resting than teaching and Pip had learned more from Biddy than from the real teacher. Even though he had an education when he was low class, his education as a gentleman with Mr. Pocket was much superior. Another instance of how social class changes education is the distinction of education between the two criminals. Magwitch, born underprivileged and low class had no education at all while Compeyson, born wealthy was high class and a gentleman with an education. Education is an aspect in showing how social class deeply ascertained individual lives. (Importance of Social Class in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations) Dickens's works are distinguished by assaults on social evils, inequality, and duplicity. (Charles Dickens: The Literature Network)