Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist (1838)
This Bildungsroman (an ‘education’ novel) appeared in instalments in 1837.
It fictionalises the humiliations Dickens experienced during his childhood.
The protagonist, Oliver Twist, is always innocent and pure and remains incorruptible throughout the novel.
At the end he is saved from a life of villainy by a well-to-do family.
The setting is London.
Dickens attacked:
the social evils of his times such as poor houses, unjust courts and the underworld;
the world of the workhouses founded upon the idea that poverty was a consequence of laziness;
the officials of the workhouses because they abused the right of the poor as individuals and caused them further misery.
David Copperfield (1849-50)
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This novel is the most autobiographical of all Dickens’s novels.
In the preface the novelist wrote: “… like many fond parents, I have in my heart a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield”.
Narrative technique: a “Bildungsroman”; the protagonist, David, functions also as narrator.
Atmosphere: a combination of
realism and enchantment.
The characters: both realistic and romantic, characterised by a particular psychological trait.
Themes:
the struggle of the weak in
society.
the great importance given to
strict education.
cruelty to children.
the bad living conditions of the poor.
Hard Times (1854)
It is a ‘denunciation novel’: a powerful accusation of some of the negative effects of the industrial society.
The setting: the fictional city of Coketown, which stands for a real industrial mill town in mid-19th-century Victorian England.
Characters: people living and working in Coketown, like the protagonist Thomas Gradgrind, an educator who believes in facts and statistics. --> His school tries to turn children into little machines that behave according to such rules.
Themes:
a critique of materialism and Utilitarianism;
a denunciation of the ugliness and squalor of the new industrial age;
the gap between the rich and the poor.
Aim: to illustrate the dangers of allowing people to become like machines and to suggest that without compassion and imagination, life would be unbearable.