Fiction Messenger Economic Injustice in the Fictional

Fiction Messenger

Economic Injustice in the Fictional Works of Dickens and Gaskell

In his text on human commercial practices and economic behaviors, author James Black diverges from many of the dryer and less nuanced textual considerations of socioeconomic dynamics. He does so by couching his discussion in frequent divergences into iconic and modern works of fiction. These add a humanitarian consideration to many of his discussion points, helping to provide more complex rationales for why human beings in business and matters of money tend to behave the way they do. Beyond this, Black provides a compelling template for consideration of broader sociological concerns. This serves as an ideal framework for the present discussion, which considers pressing human issues such as poverty and labor conditions. Hereafter, we consider the works of Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell, both of whom would comment extensively on the economic affairs of societies in their highly politicized fictional writing.

The issue of poverty, and particularly of that in an urban context during the industrial revolution, would distinguish the fictional works of Charles Dickens. And in the palpable commentary that the British author offers, it is plainly apparent why writers such as Black have asserted the pertinence of allegorical fiction to discussions on far-reaching sociological and economic realities. For Dickens, the type of poverty, suffering and inequality that he witnessed on a daily basis in the slums of London would be the most important inspiration to his body of work. As the text by Perdue tells, Dickens worked tirelessly to produce descriptions of the lives that so many were living in the city as it swelled in commercial activity and human population. Accordingly, Perdue reports, "rich and poor alike are thrown together in the crowded city streets. Street sweepers attempt to keep the streets clean of manure, the result of thousands of horse-drawn vehicles. The city's thousands of chimney pots are belching coal smoke, resulting in soot which seems to settle everywhere. In many parts of the city raw sewage flows in gutters that empty into the Thames. Street vendors hawking their wares add to the cacophony of street noises. Pick-pockets, prostitutes, drunks, beggars, and vagabonds of every description add to the colorful multitude." (Perdue, p. 1)

Here, Dickens offers a description that underscores a new type of challenge to city-dwelling. While the industrial revolution was creating new opportunities for consumer convenience, commercial productivity and even socioeconomic mobility, its earliest phases revolved on an exploitation of the poorer classes. As these populations gravitated to the cities for low paying jobs in harsh conditions, their families crowded together in places of wretched filth, squalor and disease. Dickens would use to the pages of his fiction not just to describe this condition but also to create sympathy for those disaffected and to warn those living in excessive comfort of a coming mass revolt. Historically important novels such as A Tale of Two Cities would speak to the threat that widespread human misery would lead to bloody social upheaval.

This type of upheaval would manifest in some steps toward progress, also chronicled in the work of history's most important writers. Accordingly, we consider the texts of Elizabeth Gaskell who is noted for who powerful advocacy of women laborers at a time when both demographic descriptors contributed to great inequality and exploitation. One of the frequently unspoken realities of the industrial revolution was the reliance of the growing factory and textiles industries on female laborers. It is for this reason that works such as North and South, by Gaskell, are so critically important from an historical perspective. Her literal and realistic descriptions of labor organization efforts and the roles played by women would, even in the context of her fictional works, provide us with a lasting portrait of the time and place. Indeed, as the text by Lollar (1997) points out, "North and South is frequently praised for its 'realism in depicting the strike in Milton North which was based on the actual labor conflict in Preston in 1853-54." (Lollar, p. 1)

In particular, the source by Lollar describes some of the demographic conditions in the factories, with the article illustrating that women and underage children represented by far the largest groups populating a highly exploitive, dangerous and poorly-paying factory system. Gaskell's body of work would help to bring an empathetic and humanitarian face to previously academic examinations of the conditions faced by such laborers, forcing a more ethical evaluation of the human motor driving the industrial revolution.