INTRODUCTION

Charles Dickens presented in his works both good and bad sides of Victorian England. He tried to resolve in his books the problems that he had in real life such as poverty, education, sanitation, workhouses etc. He wanted to reach to his contemporaries to make them aware of the reality around them and urging them to take a stand. Dickens was mostly affected by the situation of children. Not many writers associated themselves with the thought of suffering children as Dickens did. After reading his biography I understood why he was so interested in this situation. He himself had a tough childhood. He went through all those stages of humiliation, despair, sorrow exactly like children presented in his works. Dickens changed the childrens living conditions through his works, even if he still couldnt forget his bad childhood, where he had to adapt to the sad realities of his time. The following paper will begin with a presentation of Dickenss life and work, focusing more on his childhood because of its effects on his life as a famous writer. In the second chapter I will illustrate some of the small characters of his novels, and the feelings that the author has for them. I will also elaborate on the fact that all these children act more like grown-ups rather than their real age. In the third chapter I will write about the living situation. Ill present the difference between London and the bright English country side, institutions where the childrens were exploited such as the workhouse and the warehouse, as well as a reality specific of his age, the debtors prison. At the end of the chapter I will show the problems of the educational system. In the last chapter Ill try to present the characters that are influencing the children, and the two spheres of life that are almost always present in the novels that have a child as the hero. Those are the evil world and the good society.

CHAPTER I CHARLES DICKENS - HIS LIFE AND WORK

Charles Dickens was one of the most popular writers of the Victorian age. Because of his ability to combine comedy, pathos and social satire in his novels, he gained thousands of contemporary readers and many of his characters, such as Mr. Micawber, Mr. Pickwich, Quilp or Uriah Heep, etc. have entered the British national consciousness. Dickenss was a writer that would address the entire nation and he was convinced that every writer should be like that so he did not agree with Henry James statement that "the greater the writer, the smaller the audience"1, or with the aesthetes. He wrote for a large audience wanting to be read and understood, corresponding and collaborating with the public. The feelings he had for a certain category of people, the happy endings of his novels are because of the literary preferences of his age.

1.1. The Growth of Man and Writer Charles Dickens was born in Landport (Portsea), near Portsmouth, on 2 February 1812. He was the second of eight children. His father, John, was a clerk in the Naval Pay Office at Portsmouth. His family moved around very much, but Dickens had a happy period in his childhood, when he was living in Chatham. He was forced to work in a warehouse when they moved to London because of financial problems. This part of Dickenss life is presented in David Copperfield and it was a painful experience. Not long after that, his father was imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison, and everyone but Charles lived with him there like the Dorrit family in the first part of Little Dorrit. After three months his father, John Dickens, was released because he declared himself an insolvent debtor. Charles kept working in the warehouse until 1825, but because his father had an argument with his employer, he was sent to school at Wellington House Academy.
1

Cartianu, Ana, Istoria literaturii engleze. Secolul al XIX-lea. Realismul critic, Ed. de Stat Didactic i

Pedagogic, Bucureti, 1961, p.27.

Dickens started working in the office of a legal firm when he was 15, in Grays Inn. After 18 months there, he worked as a freelance reporter in the court of Doctors Commons. He worked for different newspapers as Parliamentary reporter and correspondent. These occupations sharpened his observations and developed his inclination to render with minute details the speech of people, their physical presence, the look of things"2. Later on in 1829, Dickens fell in love with Maria Beadnell, but he was rejected by her. The comic portrayal of Flora Casby in Little Dorrit, is said to have been inspired by Dickens`s meeting with Maria again, later in life. Dickens was very fascinated by the theatre, he wanted to follow an acting career and he was raising money for charitable causes or friends in distress by often directing and acting in shows. When his story A Dinner at Poplar Walk was accepted by the Monthly Magazine, his literary career began. He was using a pseudonym Boz while he was publishing a series of sketches of daily life in London in the Evening Chronicle. The pseudonym was his younger brothers childhood nickname. While working for the Evening Chronicle he fell in love with Catherine Hogarth the daughter of the Evening Chronicles co editor. Dickens proceeded to marry Catherine Hogarth on April 2, 1836, and during the same year he became editor of Bentley's Miscellany and met John Forster, who would become his closest friend and confidant as well as his first biographer. Dickens started to be famous at 25, when a London publisher had suggested reprinting a volume of similar sketches to accompany illustrations by the celebrated artist George Cruikshank. The results was the popularly acclaimed Sketches by Boz (1836). It was followed by The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, which was serialized in twenty monthly installments, between 1836 - 1837. The work was a big success. After the success of Pickwick, 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 idolized, died. She too would appear, in various guises, in Dickens's later fiction. A son, Charles, the first of ten children, was born in the same year. Charles Dickens introduced a new genre of social problem fiction which was imitated in 1840 and he also wrote in the picaresque tradition of the eighteenth century. To this period
2

Galea, Ileana, Victorianism and Literature, Ed. Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1994, p.38

belong: Oliver Twist (1937 - 1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1838 - 1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) and Barnaby Rudge (1841). He visited America in 1842. In America he spoke about the piracy of foreign books there and about the abolition of slavery, the latter being a practice which had adversely affected his earnings. He found the visit to be disappointing. The literary results of his trip were: American Notes (1842) and Martin Chuzzlewit (1843). They both had bitter remarks on the American democracy and way of life. That same year he began his well known short stories called Christmas Tales ( A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man) which he finished in Genoa next year. While he was traveling in Switzerland he wrote Dombey and Son. This is usually cited as the point where Dickens`s fiction matured. Dickens eventually changed the picaresque pattern of his novels and he adapted it to the requirements of a richer social and psychological content. In the last phase of his creation, Dickens devised his plots more carefully, focused on certain issues and themes, and gave up the episodic narrative of the earlier stage. In this period he published: David Copperfield (1849 - 1850), Bleak House (1852 - 1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1856 - 1857), Great Expectations (1860 1861), Our Mutual Friend (1864 - 1865). Dickens separated from his wife in 1858, by whom he had ten children, and he started seeing a young actress called Ellen Ternan. 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. Year 1866 brought another series of public readings, this time in various locations in England and Scotland, and still more public readings, in England and Ireland, were undertaken in 1867. Dickens was now really unwell but carried on, compulsively, against his doctor's advice. Late in the year he embarked on an American reading tour, which continued into 1868. Dickens's health was worsening, but he took over still another physically and mentally exhausting task, editorial duties at All the Year Round. 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, and the last episode of the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood appeared in September. The inscription on his tomb reads: "He was a
7

sympathizer to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." Dickens was without a doubt one of the most important literary figures of the nineteenth century. He revived and transformed the serialized, illustrated novel, and captured the public imagination with his emotive and exciting fiction. As a novelist, he can perhaps be accused of sentimentality, sensationalism, and an inability to portray female characters as other than angels or monsters, but nevertheless he must be remembered for his exposure of contemporary realities, of social injustice, of poverty etc.

1.2. Charles Dickens - A Social Critic 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. Charles Dickens thought it was his job as a writer to present the picture of the England that he knew: the obscurity of lower town life, the poverty, the sorrows and misery, the social injustice, the decadence of the petty bourgeoisie, the mercantile mentality of the upper bourgeoisie etc. He wrote with a sense of trust and responsibility when he presented all these aspects of English life. As documents, his writings have many times been quoted to illustrate specific institutions and realities of the nineteenth century England: child labour, the workhouses and the warehouses, the debtors` prison, schools, the Court of Law etc. Dickens lived and wrote in a time of suffering, of conflict, of expansions, of progress. The 63 years of Queen Victoria`s reign (1837 - 1901) were years of colossal internal and external transformations: the rapid growth of industrial capital was changing the structure of the dominant class; the social and economic transformations, affected by the Industrial Revolution were increasing the difference between the rich and the labouring poor, the growth
8

of a class consciousness among the workers determined new social relationships (e.g. the Chartist movement); externally, the incipient imperialist expansions was transforming England into the British Empire. It was a harsh, coarse, ugly time, like for instance, the matter of hanging. In all his work we see Dickens preoccupied with the gallows. The description to a hanging that he published in a daily paper, is said to have had its part in putting an end to public executions. But that was later on in his life. At his most impressionable time, the hanging used to serve as one of the entertainments of Londoners. It was an age in which the English character seemed bent on exhibiting all its grossest, meanest and most stupid characteristics. Sheer ugliness of everyday life reached a limit not easily surpassed. Dickens`s sense of responsibility as a citizen - writer, his active humanism, his generous desire to redress the social balance made him denounce the living conditions of the paupers. He presented in his novels the new forms of exploitation that the poor were subjected to. Prompted by the great Chartist crisis, Dickens deals with a problem of great actuality at that particular moment, the problem of workhouses. The paupers were subjected to a brutal regime of 14 hours work daily, husband and wife separated, so were parents from children. The industrial bourgeoisie was interested in securing the largest number of hands at the lowest possible prices. Another big problem that Dickens criticized was the slum. The people concentrated in the big industrial towns was increasing, therefore the growth of the slum areas took place. This situation resulted from the building of cheap houses which soon fell into disrepair because most people were merely after material gain and they were under no authoritative control. Many families were crowded into one room into underground cellars. Charles Dickens gives an identical picture of the slums of London in Oliver Twist. Ileana Galea wrote: "The streets of the slum were still the only playground for the majority of city children, few of whom had schools to go to until 1870, and none of whom had playcentres until the turn of the century3. The sad lives of the poor children affected Dickens the most. Lord Ashley (afterwards Lord Shaftesbury), in 1833, began his long dispute with stubborn conservatorism and heartless interest for the fate of little children who worked for wages in English factories and mines. At the time, there was a law that wouldnt allow children under the age of thirteen to commit in labours like that for more than thirteen hours a day. In the reports of Commissioners in the
3

Ibidem., p5.

matter of childrens employments at the time of Lord Ashleys activity, was made clear that some part of modern English accomplishment, results from the effort of children (among them babies of five and six), that spent their lives in the black depths of coal - pits and amid the hot roar of machinery. Contemporaries of Lord Ashley in Parliament dismissed these stories with a smile whilst employers of infant labour denied them. The novelists of the day helped in a way the children by exposing the deplorable existence of children through poverty, indifference, abuse and cruel methods of education. Charles Dickens did much in that respect, and also Charles Kingsley by the publication of Water Babies. Dickens has associated himself with the thought of suffering childhood more than any writer. He knew well the cruel life of the child labour in mines and mills. He was always speaking, carefully, to an age remarkable for stupidity and heartlessness in the treatment of all its poor children. However the circumstances of his life confined him, for the most part, to London child whose misfortunes are made vivid to us by his writings. Dickenss amateur years to life and literature were those which saw the rise and establishment of the new power in political and social England which owed its development to coal, steam and iron mechanism. As he was superior to the rank of proletarian by birth and inferior to that of capitalist, the young man observed in a spirit of lively criticism, not seldom of jealousy, the class achieving rapidly wealth and rule. He lived to become a characteristic member of this privileged society; but his criticism of its weaknesses and shortcomings never failed. He could never forget the miserable childhood imprisoned in the limbo of filthy London. For a better understanding of his belief and work, one must look back upon the beginnings of his life.

1.3. The Consequences His Childhood Experience Had on His Work Dickens as a child was working at Warren's Blacking Warehouse and the sensitive 11 year old boy, who was certain that he was destined to be a gentleman, ended up pasting labels onto pots of boot polish. The trauma of his time at the blacking warehouse stayed with him for the rest of his life. His envied his older sister, Fanny, because she was enrolled at the Royal College of Music, and received the type of education that he longed for. He found himself virtually abandoned because his family was living in the Marshalsea Prison, fact that he kept
10

hidden from his workmates at the warehouse. The man and boys he was working with were considered social inferiors. Because he was left alone, he became familiarized with all the good and bad parts that the Victorian Metropolis had to offer as he began exploring all parts of London. This period of his life was to be his making as he gained an excellent knowledge of the City with which the majority of his fiction would later become permanently linked. When interpreting Charles Dickenss novels, it must be taken into account the fact that his early experience was deeply imprinted upon his conscience and affected him very much. He spent the first 10 years of his childhood in Portsmouth and other ports on the south coast which remained a pastoral setting that Dickens evoked in his novels. He spoke of himself as "not a very robust child sitting in by-places near Rochester Castle, with a head full of Partridge, Strap, Tom Pipes, and Sancho Panza.4 As soon as the family moved to London, unhappiness came. Things were made very difficult for the cheap bourgeoisie because of the quick surge of industrial capital, the ruthless competition and the exploitation attached to it. This process, a casual theme in the literature of the time (Charles Dickens, W.M.Thackeray, George Eliot, The Bronts, and later Thomas Hardy) affected John Dickens, father of several children, who struggled for a time against difficulties and debt. Finally he was locked up in the debtors prison - Marshalsea - and followed there by his wife and family, their son Charles excluded. Because his father was imprisoned, Charles dreams of going to school and prosper were shattered. He became apprenticed to the Blacking Factory of Lamert and Warren where - owing to his manual dexterity at filling bottles and sticking labels - he was to be exposed in the shop - window as a living advertisement. For a child, with his intellectual capacities, this experience was a nightmare. Later, Dickens referred to it as a period of slavery, a period of intense suffering: "... I certainly had no other assistance, whatever - the making of my clothes, I think, excepted, from Monday morning until Saturday night. No advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolations, no support from anyone that I can call to mind, so help me God 5 . All day long he worked malnourished in a warehouse. This period of his life will appear as the Murdstone & Grinby episode in the partially autobiographical novel David Copperfield. In the evening he would return at the boarding - house run by an old woman who would be the model for Mrs.
4

Dickens, Charles, Nicholas Nickleby, Penguin Books, London, 1994, p.8. Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, 1992, p.152.

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Pipchin in Dombey and Son. On Saturdays he would pay his weekly visits to the family in the Marshalsea Prison and there he saw innumerable forms of human misery and madness, later reflected in the debtors prison of the Pickwick Papers, of David Copperfield and of Little Dorrit. Needless to say that Wilkins Micawber, a character in David Copperfield, is a disguised portrait of Dickenss own careless father. He felt abandoned by the society and also by his family when his mother insisted that he should continue to work at the warehouse even though an inheritance improved the financial situations of the family. At that age, he had the tormenting feeling that he lost his childhood, that the days without worries were gone. This was a period of life that Dickens didnt like to speak about; he even tried to hide it. G.K. Chesterton related in his book Charles Dickens that these torments were so real and so awful that, only thinking of them he felt an unbearable shame and a terrible humiliation of his dignity. Children are very sensitive and impressionable while growing. Having a bad childhood can lead to disastrous consequences later on in life. During this period every little sorrow may seem greater than it is in reality. This is what Charles Dickens says in the fragment of autobiography preserved by Foster (Life, Bk. I, chap.2) about his feelings during that period : "...how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age. It is wonderful to me that, even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough on me - a child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally...". Along these lines we understand why as the boy suffered from a sense of unnecessary humiliation, so did the man feel hurt in his deepest sensibilities whenever he reflected on that evil time. Him wanting to avoid speaking about that time was a very natural reserve. The two years of misfortune in London were important in the growth of the novelist. He became accustomed to the life of confusing London, himself a part of it, struggling and suffering at an age when the strongest impressions are received. London becomes a town at once real and bizarre, the peculiar background of some his novels. He used to have long walks across London at the end of his working day, walks that he views with precision, yet with the natural exaggeration of a child. After all the humiliation and sorrow, his agony ended when at twelve years old he was sent to school. It is a strange experience to leave the world in order to go to school instead of leaving the school to enter the world. Dickens only lived his childhood
12

after his youth. Because of the world he was living in he learnt the ugliest words before learning the beautiful ones and he knew the harshest things of life before he had prepared for them. David Copperfield will pass through a similar experience as the writer: he will work at the Murdstone & Grinby warehouse before going to the school. It is not hard to understand why Dickenss novels present orphans cut off from their families, from affections and support, because we know his childhood experience. Oliver Twist is a child brought up in a workhouse, David Copperfield is abandoned by his family in a harsh world, Nicholas Nickleby assists at the persecutions of a cruel teacher. The source of pathetic understanding for the misery of poor and vulnerable children was Dickenss personal experience. He tried though in all of his novels to sweeten their lives. The children of his fantasy were always saved from misery and sorrow. This is due, perhaps, to his literary influence. As he related in his autobiography and also in David Copperfield, as a child he read Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Robinson Crusoe, The Arabian Nights, and Tales of the Genii. The English novels show his taste for adventures. The last two books deserve a special attention as they are not connected with English traditions and English thought. He prefers the Easters fairy tales because he desires to discover romance in the dark life of London and wishes to find wonders in the boring life of common streets. George Gissing writes in his work Charles Dickens: A Critical Study that where the common man sees nothing but everyday routine, Dickens is filled with the perception of wonderful possibilities. He has put repeatedly the spirit of the Arabian Nights into his pictures of life by the river Thames.

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CHAPTER II THE CHILD HERO

The most important factor of the fairy tale structure of Dickenss novels is the child hero with everything he stands for. He helps Dickens create frightening situations; arouse nightmarish visions populated by monsters and giants through the imbalance between the age and experience of the child and the cruel conditions with which he is confronted. These children (e.g. Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Nell, Florence Dombey, Paul Dombey etc.) do not experience inner conflicts so they are virtuous, and generally flat. Their situation is pathetic as they are abandoned human beings, orphans and are exploited or tortured by grotesque monsters. In the end, a new hopeful society is formed around them. When reading Dickenss novels, we are left with the impression that the children do not look a lot like real ones.

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2.1. Dickenss Compassion for His Child Characters The unhappy childhood is one of Dickenss favorite themes. During his own childhood he was submitted himself to an impressive number of hardships: his father was imprisoned, he had to work at a young age and he was tortured as an apprentice. With childrens help, Dickens tries to exorcize and take revenge on a long series of humiliations, because the children of his novels can be considered his alter-egos. His personal sympathy with abandoned or persecuted children left a remarkable mark on almost all his books. Dickenss interest in the lives of children could also be explained by their conditions of existence in the Victorian period; children were in need of moral and physical support. Victorian writers indulged themselves in the childs world as well as in the nature of childhood. Their preoccupations with childhood could result in sentimentality - the notorious death of Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop - but it could also result in fresh uses of language, especially in fantasy. The opening of Great Expectations portrays a child authentically and timelessly because Dickens uses exactly the dreamlike, associative process by which a childs mind works: "As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them ... first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstone. The shape of letters on my father`s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above", I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly6 . Paul Dombey is the hero of another picture of childhood such as only Dickens could draw overflowing in observation and filled with imaginative sympathy. During that period, a picture like this was necessary as England sadly needed awakening to its responsibilities in the matter of children. In his constant preoccupation with children, their suffering, their education, their claims of every kind, Dickens was a great influence on his contemporaries. He spoke with a new voice on behalf of children at a time when children were commonly neglected, and often horribly mistreated, he found a way of calling attention to their abandoned lives. Oliver Twist had already played his part, Little Nell, like Oliver, abandoned among dangers, moved a more caring interest. These days its hard to reproduce that sentiment of the heart towards suffering childhood, but for his generation, Dickens was perfectly successful with these as with other themes. He went after an artistic motive and obtained exactly the effect that he wanted.
6

Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations, Prietenii Crii, Bucureti, 1994, p.5.

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Dickens had a pessimistic view about the fate of poor children as he expressed it in The Old Curiosity Shop: "...it always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life, when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity - two of the best qualities that Heaven gives them - and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments... The children of poor know but few pleasures. Even the cheap delights of childhood must be brought and paid for.7 Through his public speeches, he draws the attention of the public on the sad situation of the most innocent human beings. In one of these speeches, possibly the greatest and most moving passage is that which describes a poor baby he saw in Scotland, whose cradle was an old egg-box, where, he says, it lay quiet and pitiful, its eyes seeming to wonder "why, in the name of an All merciful God, such things should be". In his novels we like those children best of whom we obtain only a passing glimpse. This is the case with Smike or Maggy. Dickens is good to them simply because are unfortunate creatures from whom even ordinary kind people would turn with involuntary dislike. Smike is saved from the cane of Squeers by Nicholas Nickleby. Maggy, in Little Dorrit, is a starved and diseased fool, a very child of the London gutter. Dickens gives her for protector the brave and large hearted child of the Marshalsea, Amy Dorrit, whose own suffering have taught her to compassionate those who suffer. Maggy is to be rescued from filth, cold and hunger; she is to be made as happy as her nature will allow. It is kindly done, and, without a doubt, an example of more value to the world than any glorification of successful intellect. Dickenss children are modest and happy, kind and long-suffering, resigned and ready to forgive injustice, seldom indignant or fighting against difficulty or cruelty. His love and appreciation for them creates a sadness and a melancholy which might be infectious and paralyzing for the reader were it not for aggressive evil of his negative characters and for the readers own angry attitude at social injustice. Dickens laughed and cried with his imaginary children, he made us all grief over the deathbed of little Nell or of Paul Dombey. Nell is an innocent walking among a grotesque form of suffering and wrong. Her death is not the dying of a little girl, but the vanishing of a beautiful dream. Oliver is a child of the workhouse who is saved from the underworld by some good people. Contemporary readers were much excited about the fragile, little Paul Dombey whose "old-fashioned" ways became a good example. His
7

Dickens, Charles, The Old Curiosity Shop, Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1995, p.7.

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sister, Florence, is pretty and gentle; she was a real mother to her little brother. Pip is considered Dickenss best imaginary child. David Copperfield is a different matter. Here we have the authors vision of his own childhood, and he makes it abundantly convincing. Sometimes the children in Dickenss novels do not convince us entirely. They seem puppets set in motion with strings by the puppeteer. Although they are involved in most of the scenes of the novels, they dont determine the action in a decisive manner, they play a rather passive role. This impression is created by a certain abuse of coincidence. When Oliver Twist casually makes acquaintance with an old gentleman in the streets of London, this old gentleman, of course, turns out to be his relative, who desired of all things to discover the boy. When Steerforth returns to England from his travels with Emily, his ship is wrecked on the sands at Yarmouth, and his dead body washed up at the feet of David Copperfield, who happened to have made a little journey to see his Yarmouth friends on that very day. With some exception, that of Little Nell and of Paul Dombey, the destinies of the children in Dickenss novels follow the well-known formula of a fairy-tale, describing the life of the hero from birth to early youth with the classic happy-end.

2.2. The "Small Adults" Some of Dickenss children may be considered small - adults as they act like them, they work to earn their living or, at some point in their lives, they take decisions that will influence their lives in a crucial manner. These childrens thoughts "are like those of adults, only purer. They still believe the things that adults would find it comforting to believe, if only they could bring themselves to be fatuous enough. Such plastic children bring tears to the grown-up eye, because they represent an innocence which the grown-up wrongly imagines he once possessed himself"8. The story of Oliver Twist plunges the reader into an uncomfortably unromantic world where children are starving to death, they are killed off by their keepers, the innocent beings suffer, and the cruel and abusive men prosper. Olivers childish miseries are projected against a background of hopeless pauperdom; readers are impressed by this gentle, attached, affectionate creature who is so unlike a typical workhouse child. Being born in a workhouse, where according to the practice of the institution orphans are named in alphabetical order, the child is
8

Galea, Ileana - Victorianism and Literature, Ed. Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1994, p.47

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registered as Oliver Twist, the name signifying the original twist impressed upon Olivers character by the unfortunate circumstances of his birth and early surroundings. He spends the first nine years of his life in the workhouse. One evening, deciding that the situation has become unbearable, "desperate with hunger" and "reckless with misery", Oliver stands up and pronounces his claim for more food. "`Please, sir, I want some more.` The master was a fat, healthy man, but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonders, the boys with fear. What! said the master at length, in faint voice. Please, sir, replied Oliver, I want some more`. The master aimed a blow at Olivers had with the ladle, pinioned him in his arms, and shrieked aloud for the beadle... Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more. For more! said Mr. Limbkins. Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary? He did sir, replied Bumble. That boy will be hung, said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. I know that boy will be hung.9 Oliver was an optimist. The whole tragedy of this incident is in the fact that he expects the universe to be kind to him, that he believes that he is living in a good world; he believes that there are rights of man that should be respected. He is one of the oppressed people that simply asked for justice; he is the parish boy who innocently asked for more. But the board of directors doesnt share his belief, and, as they consider Oliver a wild, rebellious child, they incarcerate him and, finally, they offer a reward of five pounds to anyone who might be willing to rid the institution of the young rebel. In time, an undertaker, by the suggestive name of Sowerberry, is willing to take charge of Oliver as an apprentice. The misery
9

Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1955, p.12-13

18

there being unbearable and because he was living in terror, Oliver left from the undertaker, and makes a decision to leave for London but here it proved to be no different, it was a larger place of tyranny and exploitation. Oliver Twist is not a realistic character. In London, Oliver falls into the hands of thieves and evil-doers and there is very likely that he will become one of them; every effort is made to turn Oliver into a thief but he cannot be corrupted. Dickens does not want to follow the logical consequence of the story. Another fault of this character is that although Oliver has been brought up under Bumble and Company, among the outcasts of the world, he is remarkable for purity of mind and for accuracy of grammar. When taken to Fagins house, Oliver doesnt understand the meaning of their words and acts which even a well-bread boy of his age could not fail to understand; the workhouse boy had never heard of pickpockets. Oliver is rescued from his troubles by the kind Mr. Brownlow and wakes up among decent, good middle-class people who will take care of him. He is again kidnapped by a gang of thieves and again finds a peaceful shelter in the Maylie household, where he is kindly brought up. Apparently, Dickens wishes Olivers experience to appear a long troubled dream. He wishes to contrast the existence and the relations of two worlds: on one hand, the underworlds of the workhouse, of the parish funerals and of the thieves den; on the other hand the comfortable life of respectable middle-class people. He wants to stress the hopefulness and the promise by a picture of aggressive elements of darkness and light. But, to the modern reader, it is the long, troubled dream of Olivers early life which is real, while the Brownlow -Maylie world is the dream world. Therefore although the theme of the book is the troubles of the poor, their struggle against the bourgeois state, the plot twists and negates its own grounds. Suddenly Oliver, the oppressed, wakes up as a young bourgeois. The law - so far against him now protects him. The latter part of the book is written from a bourgeois position and negates the initial conflict of the novel, by giving it a moralizing, sentimental and conventional happyend. The story of Oliver Twist seems a fairy - tale, the beauty of which may lie in its innate simplicity: "Once upon a time there was an unhappy little boy..." There is another case with Paul Dombey, he is a precociously gifted and cruelly overwrought child. His father transfers all his inhuman and selfish love on little Paul whom he considers the future owner of his firm: "This young gentlemen has to accomplish a destiny"10 , his father says. But the sickly Paul dies before being able to materialize the mean ideal of his
10

Dickens, Charles, Dombey and Son, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1955, p.29

19

father. At five years old, he is a pretty little boy, well-disposed, though his small face, being pale and sad, already suggests his tragic future. But the feature that perfectly describes him is his strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way of regarding life; in fact, Paul has something of a wise. Paul seems a fantastic character of a fairy-tale; indeed, Dickens compares him with a being of these tales - a changeling - who was a child left by the fairies instead of the one stolen by them. This fragile little boy who should have stayed home and should have been taken care of is sent to Mrs. Pipchins infantine boarding-house and then to Dr. Blimbers school, for as his father tells Mrs. Pipchin: "...instead of being behind his peers, my son ought to be before them, far before them"11 Mrs. Pipchin who is "a great manager of children", "an ogress and childqueller"12 terrorizes and starves the children who live in her house; she eats all kind of courses in front of them while they have to content themselves with little food. But of all these children, only Paul who is the youngest one, has the courage to revolt himself against this situation and to criticize Mrs. Pipchin for her deeds: "Its not polite to eat all the mutton-chops and toast."13 Then Paul is sent to Dr. Blimbers school. At Dr. Blimbers suggestion that he would like to make a man out of little Paul, he wisely, replies: "Id rather be a child".14 Here this fragile little child, who shouldnt have been sent to school at all, is exposed to a constant cramming. Here it is what Dickens writes about the amount of books Paul has to read and cram from day to day: "There were so many of them that although Paul put one hand under the bottom book and his other hand and his chin on the top book, and hugged them all closely, the middle book slipped out before he reached the door, and then they all tumbled down on the floor"15. Paul feels confused and overwhelmed by all these books: "When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he found he had no idea of number one; fragments whereof obtruded themselves into number three, which slided into number four, which grafted itself on to number two"16.

11

Ibidem, p.188. Ibidem, p.142. Ibidem, p.147. Ibidem, p.196. Ibidem, p.214. Ibidem, p.215.

12
13

14

15

16

20

Remaining without his mother, Paul directs all his love towards his sister, Florence, to the jealousy of his father. He wants Florence to be proud of him, to make her believe that everyone loves him. Thats why when Ms. Blimber tells him that no one at school could like him as much as they wished, Paul decides to change. So he become more considerate, he feels an increasing impulse of affection towards almost everything and everybody; he likes to render services to the other boys. "Paul was an object of general interest, a fragile little plaything that they all liked and no one would have thought of treating roughly"17. So at the end of the term everyone loves him, even the dog, Diogenes, who has never in his life received a friend into his confidence before Paul. He returns home, becomes sicker and soon dies. The scene where this gentle little boy is presented on his deathbed is one of the most touching of the novel. Like Nell, Paul has already thought of death, identifying it with a happy life in the country surrounded by gardens, woods and fields. On his deathbed he is surrounded by all the people who love him, saying good-bye to each of them. Paul is a victim of excessive parental love and of a system of ignorant selfishness. It is impossible to portray more skillfully the sorrows of an exceptional gifted child ground in the mill of what is understood to be instruction. In describing Pauls short life, Dickens appeals to our compassion and indignation. Pips autobiography, Great Expectations, seems similar to that of David Copperfield. They are both orphans, terrorized by cruel, narrow-minded people (David by the Murdstones, Pip by his sister Mrs. Maria Georgiana J. Gargery and by a stupid uncle, Mr. Pumblechook); each of them is humiliated by a job inferior to their intellectual capacities (David has to work al Murdstone & Grinby factory, Pip is Joes apprentice, who is a blacksmith); they are both friends with simple, pure-minded people (David with Peggotty, Pip with Joe, who is more his equal and friend than a paternal figure); they are deprived of an education, but later they get one because of hazard (Davids benefactor is an aunt, Betsey Trotwood, while Pips is the convict Abel Magwitch). Pip is considered an authentic character. This opinion is determined by Pips common mental reasons, according to which he guides his life, that is aspiration for a "better world", mistaken by Pip with the world of wealthy gentleman and his temperamental tendency towards the cowardice of not doing what he knows its right and of doing what he knows it isnt right. With Pip we have a real character because we assist to all his moral dilemmas. His lies, his ingratitude towards Joe, his duplicity, his pretentious generosity -all

17

Ibidem, p.242.

21

these stages he passes through when he becomes a young man with "great expectation" - turn him into a negative character. As a child, Pip proves his kindness and gentleness in his relationships with Joe Gargery. Joe is the only friend in the world for Pip, he is his entire society. Once Joe tells Pip that he lets his wife over him because he sees how difficult it is to be a woman, remembering his mother, and he wants to do the right thing as a man. As a result, Pip has new understanding and respect for Joe. Like all Dickenss children, Pip is mistreated by an evil character, i.e. his sister, who is a raging, bitter woman. Although the writer paints Mrs. Joe in a rather humorous light at times, the reader is still keenly aware of the fear the poor child lives in. An interesting and prophetic relationship is established between Pip and an escaped convict, Abel Magwitch. Ironically, this man will be Pips mysterious benefactor and not the noble Miss Havisham, as Pip thinks, indulging in the appearances. The orphan and the escaped convict share a common loneliness and a common marginalization from society. Thats why, even while he is afraid, Pip instinctively displays a sympathetic reaction towards Magwitch. It is this relationship which will cause Pips great expectations for himself to rise and fall. Dickenss best-known child-hero is David Copperfield, the novel presenting the writers view regarding his own childhood. Dickens confessed in the preface to David Copperfield that this hero was his favourite: "Of all my books, I like every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield."18 The novel is true to life and it is especially true to childhood. The early pages of the book seem like fragments of a forgotten infancy. The dark house of childhood, the loneliness, the things half-understood, the nurse with her inscrutable moods and her more inscrutable tenderness, the sudden deportations to distant places, the seaside and its childish friendship, all these stir in the reader something out of a previous existence. Above all, Dickens has excellently depicted the child enthroned in that humble circle which only in after year he perceives to have been humble. Maybe people contemporary with Dickens objected to a child being taught by a woman like Peggotty. But, surely, nothing is more important in the world than to be educated in a sense of human dignity and equality. And a child who has once had to respect a kind and capable woman of the lower class will respect the lower class forever.
18

Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, 1992, p.5.

22

Educated by the Murdstones, their tyranny and cruelty provoke in David a sense of guilt. When he is sent to Mr. Creakles school he has to wear a sign with the warning "Beware! He bites." David remembers that he got to be afraid of himself, believing that he was, indeed, a violent child who really bit. Then David is sent to London. In this city he has to earn his living by working at the Murdstone & Grinby factory. His ability to live on his own at such a young age, his precocious self-dependence makes Mrs. Murdstone treat him as an adult; she tells him all the troubles of her family. In fact, David is more responsible than the Micawbers concerning their financial problems. He worries more, he is scared by the bailiffs, he tries to find for them a way out of this situation, he even tries to loan them money. The curious friendship that exists between this child and some adults represents for David a happy escape from the sad and poor life he is forced to lead. For a boy of his intellectual capacities, a boy who has to work with other children, inferior to him from this point of view, its no wonder he suffers so much; he feels a sense of unmerited degradation, a desperation as he doesnt see any rescue from his kind of existence. He doesnt reveal to anyone his feelings, not even to Peggotty, partly for the love of her, partly for the shame he feels, he just tries to do his job as well as he can. "I know that I worked from morning until night, with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactory fed. I know that by the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond"19. In spite of this situation in which he is forced to behave like an adult, David is still a child. His little pleasures and extravagances may seem more touching than his troubles. Sometimes, in the morning, on his way to work, he cannot resist the stale pastry put out for a sale at half-price and thus he spends the money he should keep for his dinner. What child wouldnt act in the same way? Or another touching moment is the one in which David enters a public-house and asks for a glass of their best beer; he tries to behave like an adult: "...just draw a glass of the Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it."20 The landlord and his wife are amazed by the attitude of this little boy; she even gives him the money back and kisses him. But David cant bear this situation anymore, he decides to leave London and look for his aunt, Betsey Trotwood. She is the one who will offer David the life he deserves, the good
19

Ibidem, p.154. Ibidem, p.153.

20

23

and happy life any child deserves. Therefore David Copperfield knew the worst of the world before he knew the best of it. His childhood at Dr. Strongs school is a second childhood. A few words should be mentioned about the persons David meets in his early years. They seem a little larger than they really are, for David is looking up to them; they seem exaggerated. Murdstone appears to us as he would be seen by a boy who hate him; and rightly, for which boy wouldnt hate him? Steerforth appears to us as he would be seen by a boy who adores him, and, rightly, for which boy wouldnt adore him? If these characters had had a plain terrestrial existence, they might have appeared less special. Maybe Murdstone, in common life, was only a heavy businessman with a human side that David was too sulky to find. Maybe Steerforth was only an inch or two taller than David, and only a shade or two above him in the lower middle class. But this does not make the book less true. All these children are forced by life to give up their childhood and face everyday problems like adults. However they still have the purity of mind specific to children. And this is what makes them so touching and close to the readers.

2.3. The "Little Mothers" In many of his novels, Dickens proves a special affection for a strange type of little girl, a girl with a premature sense of responsibility and duty, with a kind of angelic precociousness. There are lots of girls of this type in his novels. One of them is Little Dorrit, another one is Florence Dombey, even Agnes in her childhood and Little Nell. However a thing is quite evident: no matter how charming these girls are, they dont know the charm of childhood. They are not little girls, but little mothers. Amy Dorrit is the child of the Marshalsea as she was born in prison. She spends her childhood in the cell of the family, the jail yard and the turnkeys booth. Little Dorrit was born and raised in a false social condition; she has grown up under the lock without contracting one bad habit of thought or speech, she doesnt know anything about the life outside the prison. As her mother is dead, Amy is the only one capable of becoming the head of the family even though she is the youngest of the family. She ignores the contempt and the ironies of the people around her, she ignores her exhaustion and despair, and she works a lot until everyone admits that she is necessary, even indispensable.

24

At 13, Amy attends the classes of school outside the prison. She applies her brother and sister, Edward and Fanny, at the same school. She asks a milliner to teach her to sew so that she can earn her living. As a real mother, Amy thinks of the future of Fanny and Edward. She wants Fanny to take dance classes; the teacher, impressed by her age, doesnt accept her money and gives Fanny free lessons. Amy wants her brother to become a lawyer but Edward is a lazy young man and he keeps changing jobs, he ends up involved in an illegal business. The conclusion would be that Little Dorrit, being faced with the situation of her family (her father, William Dorrit, the father of the Marshalsea, is a shy and indecisive man, he puts on airs of an impoverished nobleman, while Edward and Fanny are too lazy), realizing her fathers incapacity of assuming his role in the family, takes the matters in her hands and becomes the head of her family. In Dombey and Son the relationship between brother and sister is very strong. Florence Dombey is a real mother to Paul. Although she is only 6 years older than her brother, she takes care of him since he is a baby: she sings to him, carries him upstairs and soothes him whenever he has a nightmare. The image of Paul in the arms of little Florence is impressive: "She was toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms, his head was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently round her neck. So they went, toiling up, she singing all way, and Paul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment.21 When Paul attends Dr. Blimbers school and feels overwhelmed by the amount of books he has to study, Florence decides to help him. She spends the night reading the books Paul has to study so that, later, she could explain him everything. No wonder Paul admiringly says of her: "Theres nobody like Florence"22 Being a girl, Florence is condemned from her birth to be neglected by her father: "What was a girl to Dombey and Son! In the capital of the houses name and dignity, such a child was merely a piece of base coin that couldnt be invested - a bad Boy - nothing more." 23 Her mother being dead, no one in the family loves her. Mr. Dombey is indifferent to her; he even feels an extraordinary uneasiness in her presence. Dickens wants his readers to sympathize with Florence, he describes her feelings and her position in that cold house: "The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and uncomplaining, was possessed of so much affection
21
22

Dickens, Charles, Dombey and Son, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1955, p.137. Ibidem, p.186. Ibidem, p.28.

23

25

that no one seemed to care to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed to mind or think about the wounding of..."24 We know that Paul identifies Florence with their mother as, on his deathbed, he says: "Mama is like you, Floy. I know her by the face!25 Florence hopes that now that her brother is dead, her father will show a little affection towards her as they both loved Paul and watched him die and they are united in the dear remembrance of him. But her father doesnt show any sign of tenderness or love for her. After Paul`s death, her father leaves the house. Florence has to live only with the servants in the great dreary house Florence starts to study a lot. She thinks that more she knows, more she accomplishes, the gladder he will be when he comes to know and like her. In spite of the fact that Florence has everything she needs, her case could be considered, much more painful as she is neglected by her own father. Agnes Wickfield is one of Dickenss most delicate feminine characters; she is the symbol of love, tenderness, honesty, kindness. These qualities that Agnes has are very clear to the reader from the first moment she appears in the novel. Here it is what David Copperfield says about her: "Although her face was quite bright and happy, there was a tranquility about it, and about her - a quiet, good, calm, spirit - that I never have forgotten, that I never shall forget."26 Agnes is Mr. Wickfields daughter and housekeeper and this image is completed by the basket - trifle that hangs at her side. She runs the house from an early age, she takes care of her father and tries to protect him from Uriah Heeps intrigues. One of the most beautiful comparison in the novel is the one in which David compares Agnes with a stained glass window: "... when I saw her turn around, in the grave light of the old staircase, and wait for us, above, I thought of that window; and I associated something of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield ever afterwards."27 In the preface of The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens explained his intentions regarding the heroine of the novel, Nell Trent: "...in writing the book, I had it always in my fancy to surround the lonely figure of the child with grotesque and wild, but not impossible
24

Ibidem, p.57. Ibidem, p.290. Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, 1992, p.212. Ibidem, p.213.

25

26
27

26

companions, and to gather about her innocent face and pure intentions, associates as strange and uncongenial as the grim objects that are about her bed when her history is first foreshadowed."28. Nell lives in the old curiosity shop which sells second hand and ornamental goods with her rather silly grandfather. The shop is a strange place with all kind of old and curious things, accentuating the girls innocence and youth: "There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there, fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters, rusty weapons of various kinds, distorted figures in china and wood and iron and ivory, tapestry and strange furniture..."29. The grandfather is a rather helpless and indecisive man; he is not able to rescue himself from any difficulty, leaving his granddaughter to take all the decisions. One of the characters in the novel, Mrs. Nubbles, justly describes him when she speaks about "the imbecility of mind of the old man30. He has a dangerous "hobby": gambling. The feeble grandfather becomes another man when he turns to gambling: evil and obsessed, selfish when he thinks himself selfless, hanging over the money he has stolen with a "ghastly exultation". Because this is exactly what this old man did: he stole the money Nell kept for food and lodgings so that he could lose it at gambling. The actual theft of her money (chapter 30) is the novels most intense moment of terror together with another moment, a few paragraphs later, when she discovers who has robbed her. Nell is shocked; she cant believe her grandfather could do such a thing. Now all she wants to do is to remove her grandfather from the possibilities of temptation and take him to a place of calm and peace. Therefore she gives up to the possibility of improving their situation (she is a guide at Jarley`s Wax Works) so that she could keep him safe. Little Nell is a character much loved in her own time, but so little tolerated in ours. The fact is that through much of the novel she exists as embodied virtue (purity, innocence, courage) and embodied situation (suffering) rather than as a living child. Many critics noticed the crudities of this character: her unnatural and staring innocence, her constrained and awkward piety. In spite of her successful discourses as guide at Jarleys Wax Works and as guide through the old church, in spite of her beauty which creates a sensation in the little country place, she is rather silent and immobile; for instance, she is only a passive sufferer beneath the scorn of Miss Monflathers.
28
29

Dickens, Charles, The Old Curiosity Shop, Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1995, p.4. Ibidem, p.6. Ibidem, p.300.

30

27

During her journey through England, it is obvious that Dickens decides that his heroine should die at the end of novel; Little Nell seems exhausted by life and by the long effort to help her grandfather. She is also exhausted by the spectacle of suffering in the industrial badlands. She is almost broken-hearted by the death of a little boy. From this point Nell seems to be almost a disembodied spirit who can, unseen, watch the living, watch over them and share their feelings. This could be Nells ultimate role: to be pure spirit not flesh and to live in myth immortally, yet maintain some contact with the time-bound earth. Her death is purely symbolical, signifying the premature close of any sweet, innocent and delicate life. Nell is the victim of avarice, dragged with bleeding feet along the hard roads, always pursued by heartless self-interest. In The Old Curiosity Shop there is another little girl: the Marchioness. She can be placed in Dickenss gallery of children who are ill-treated by evil characters. However she is greatly more real to us than the heroine of the book; she is "a small slipshod girl in a dirty coarse apron and bib, which left nothing visible but her face and feet" who lives in "a very dark miserable place, very low and very damp: the walls disfigured by a thousand rents and blotches". 31 The Marchioness is much more of all that Little Nell was meant to be; much more really devoted and brave. She has all the qualities a feminine character should have: she is incurably candid and incurably loyal, she is full of terrible common sense, she expects little pleasure for herself and yet she can enjoy bursts of it, and, above all, she is physically weak and yet she can face anything. In spite of how impressed we are by these childrens maturity, what is beautiful and divine at a child is his or her unconsciousness and unconcern, exactly the opposite of Little Nell who has never known the simplicity of a child.

31

Ibidem, p.218.

28

CHAPTER III CHILDRENS LIVING CONDITIONS

Charles Dickens observed low life at a young age. While reading his novels, we are aware that the boy, familiar with London on its grimiest side, working in a warehouse, living in attics, visiting a debtors prison, didnt escape the contamination of his surroundings. All these abuses were imprinted on his memory. Thats why the children of his novels have the same sad conditions of living as he once had. G.K. Chesterton writes in his work Charles Dickens that we learn of the abuses and cruelties children are subjected to from journalists, inspectors, teachers or employers who are seized with remorse. But we never learn of them from the victims, from the children. One could say that the human beings have to learn the art, as they learn any art, to complain when someone hurts them. Dickens became a spokesman of all the small victims of tyranny, injustice and deprivation and launched an appeal for greater justice and humaneness. He left his mark on every sordid aspect of nineteenth century life: the workhouses, London underworld and slums, schools, debtors prison etc. He put "his finger upon the neuralgic points of contemporary sores, thus creating a feeling of tension and pain in the reader."32

3.1 Life in the English Cities Charles Dickens placed the action of most of his novels in London, the city in which he spends most of his life. He described the London that he knew during his struggling childhood and youth. He could not ignore the reality that was surrounding him: the dark, stinking, dirty streets, the decayed suburbs, the unbelievable poverty and filth. In his biography, Dickens, Peter Ackroyd wrote that: "If a late twentieth-century person were suddenly to find himself in a

32

Cartianu, Ana, Istoria literaturii engleze. Secolul al XIX-lea. Realismul critic, Ed. de Stat Didactic i

Pedagogic, Bucureti, 1961, p.53

29

tavern or, a house of the period, he would be literally sick-sick with the smells, sick with the food, sick with the atmosphere around him."33 This is the city where Oliver Twist, David Copperfield or Little Nell lived part of their lives. In Oliver Twist, London appears as a filthy labyrinth, image conveyed by the menaced worm-eaten waterside tenements. Here is what Dickens wrote about Fagins house: "The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and dirt. There was a deal table before the fire... Several rough beds made of old sacks were huddled side by side on the floor"34. London as a place of disgusting mystery and terror, of the grimly grotesque, of labyrinthine obscurity and vivid fascination is Dickenss own. The vile streets accurately described and named, the bare, filthy rooms inhabited by Fagin and Sikes, the hideous public house to which thieves resort are before us with a haunting reality. This is how Dickens describes London in the scene where Oliver and Bill Sikes travel through the Smithfield Market on their way to burglarize the Maylie home: "It was a market-morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire, a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney - top, hung heavily above.. Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a mass... the crowding, pushing, driving, beating, whooping and yelling, the hideous and discordant dim that resounded from every corner of the market; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid, and dirty figures constantly running to and fro, and bursting in and out of the throng; rendered it a stunning and bewildering scenes, which, quite confounded the senses.35 But in Dickenss work this sad reality is characteristic not only for London but also for several English towns. In the early chapters of the novel, Oliver becomes acquainted with the terrifying slum. Here too we have mouldering tenements, some houses which had become insecure from age and decay, were prevented from falling into the street, by huge beams of wood reared against the walls.. The kennel was stagnant and filthy...36 The grotesque and
33

Ackroyd, Peter, Dickens, Sinclar-Steven, Minerva, London, 1990, p.189 Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1955, p.96-97 ibidem, p.210 Ibidem, p. 70

34

35

36

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sinister impression of the scene is enhanced by the description of the people Oliver encounters in the house. Inside, there are some ragged children in a corner; the corpse is something covered with an old blanket; the man and the woman watching over the corpse are so like the rats he had seen outside37 - the mans eyes bloodshot, the old woman`s bright and piercing, and her two remaining teeth protruding over her under lip. The same state of decadence appears in some of the towns Nell and her grandfather pass through: Dismantled houses here and there appeared, tottering to the earth, propped up by fragments of others that had fallen down, unroofed, windowless, blackened, desolate, but yet inhabited.38 But whenever he wanted to save the children from the corrupted world of the city, Dickens found an escape in the silence, joy and happiness of the countryside. No man ever loved England more, and the proof of it remains in the picture of a plain, old - fashioned, rural life. In The Old Curiosity Shop this picture is predominant. Here we have more of the country than in any other of Dickenss novels. He sets us amid fields, lanes and cottages, and produces by the simplest means that atmosphere of rusticity which has an unfailing charm for the reader. Nell climbs the tower of the church and is enraptured with the scene around her. The freshness of the fields and woods stretching away on every side and meeting the bright blue sky, the cattle grazing in the pasturage, the smoke that, coming from among the trees, seemed to rise upwards from the green earth.39 The purifying effect that the countryside has on his character is even more obvious in this except from The Old Curiosity Shop : The freshness of the day, the singing of the birds, the beauty of the waving grass, the deep green leaves, the wild flowers, and the thousand exquisite scents and sounds that floated in the air, - deep joys to most of us, but most of all to those whose life is in a crowd or who live solitarily in great cities as in the bucket of a human well, - sank into their breasts and made them very glad40 In David Copperfield the countryside is represented by the small village of Yarmouth, the place where young David spends the few moments of happiness of his childhood. At first,
37

Ibidem, p.71 Dickens, Charles, The Old Curiosity Shop, Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1995, p.185 Ibidem, p. 350 Ibidem, p. 100

38

39

40

31

David is not very impressed: ...if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and the towns and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer41. But he changes his impression when he reaches the village itself: When we got into the street (which was strange enough for me), and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had down so busy a place an injustice; and said as much to Peggotty, who heard my expression of delight with great complacency, and told me it was well known (I suppose to those who had the good fortune to be born Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the universe.42. David is delighted by the idea of living in a boat that was once sailing overseas. If it had been Aladdins palace, rocs egg and all, I suppose I could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it. There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there was little windows in it; but the wonderful charm of it was that it was a real boat which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of times and which had never been intended to be lived in the dry land43. Therefore Dickens described these two settings, London and the countryside, antithetically. While Londons characteristic is the fog, in the countryside the brightness of the sun is present everywhere. Even the characters are influenced by the surroundings. In London many of Dickenss characters are evil, selfish, insensible, while in the countryside the people are simple but always happy and ready to help anybody. I would like to close with a quotation from Little Dorrit where Dickens compares the effects of the rain in London and in the country, therefore enhancing the contrast between the two settings. In the country, the rain would have developed a thousand fresh scents, and every drop would have had its bright association with some beautiful form of growth or life. In the city, it

41

Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, 1992, p. 34-35 Ibidem, p. 35 Ibidem,

42

43

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developed only foul stale smells, and was a sickly, lukewarm, dirt stained, wretched addition to the gutters44

3.2 The Workhouse, The Warehouse, The Debtors Prison Dickens lived in a time of great changes in England. He lived in an age of speedy industrialization, a fact that led to great changes. He witnessed all these changes and he felt he had to write about them, and about their effects on the lives of the poor, and especially on the lives of poor children. In his novels, he expressed his revolt against the oppressions poor children were subjected to in places as the workhouse and the warehouse. He was also concerned with a reality of his day: children growing up and living in prison (his own family living for a period in Marshalsea where his father was imprisoned). Dickens exposes the full horror of such places, and since the victims concerned are children, his revolt becomes particularly moving. His revolt was simply and solely the eternal revolt; it was the revolt of the weak against the strong. His description of these institutions led to their closing. The problem of the workhouses was considered in one of his early novels Oliver Twist. Dickens saw the Workhouses, not as institutions that existed for the poors benefit but as many individuals anxious to assert their authority at someone elses expense. He was aware of the fact that this regulation was not only the one which hurt the pauper most keenly but the one which the Board got the most pleasure out of inflicting. The Board established the rule that all the poor people should have the alternative of being starved by a gradual process in the house or by a quick one out of it...45 Dickens presented the workhouse as a symbol of oppression and, thus, he turned his character - Oliver Twist - into a symbol of all the oppressed. Oliver lives for nine years in a socalled baby farm kept by Mrs. Mann. Here children grow like weeds, unwashed, unfed and frequently beaten. At the age of nine, he is brought into the workhouse and joins the other children in the daily routine of hard work, violence and starvation.
44

Dickens, Charles, Little Dorrit, Chapman and Hall, London, 1954, p.37

45

Ford, Boris, The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, Penguin Books, London, 1991, vol VI, From

Dickens to Hardy, p.124

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At his tender age, Oliver has to struggle for survival in this hostile environment. Describing the life of the little boys in the workhouse, Dickens attacks the so-called welfare and happiness of the Victorian age: The room in which the boys were fed was a large stone hall, with a copper on one end; out of which the master, dressed in a apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at meal - times. Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer, and non more-except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation which never took very long the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls, they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed.46. Oliver rebels against the system when, one evening, he asks for more. The members of the board are shocked by this simple request of respecting ones human rights qualifying him as a rebel and saying that, one day, That boy will by hung.47 Actually, the members of the board, about whom Dickens says ironically that they are very sage, deep, philosophical men48, consider the life of the poor in the workhouse as a happy one, the workhouse being a regular place of entertainment. It was a regular place of entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay, a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round, a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work.49 In David Copperfield, Dickens writes again about the workhouses. Uriah Heep is its social representative. He is the boy who didnt revolt, as Oliver Twist did, but adapted himself to the circumstances, obeyed and accepted to be modeled after its norms. Later in life, he behaves as he was taught in the workhouse; he constantly shows a two-faced and a hypocritical humility, thus turning into a monster.

46

Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1955, p. 12-13 Ibidem, p. 13 Ibidem, p.12 Ibidem, p.12

47

48

49

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The growth of industrial capitalism evolved a system of factory laws, an industrial legislation whos most revolting aspect, child labour, Dickens denounces. It was believed that a workshop, which for its smooth running had to steal pauper children from their cottage and from workhouses making them labour most of the night and thus losing their time for rest, might contribute to the national and individual happiness50. It is also worth recalling that, in 1819, a shocking act established 12 hours daily work for children less than nine years of age. Dickens had a difficult childhood. The darkest period of his childhood was the time when he had to go to work at the age of twelve. It was shortly before his father was imprisoned for debt and the family moved in with him, leaving little Charles outside the prison gates living by his own. He was employed at Warrens Blacking warehouse. This episode, that haunted him all his life, was recorded in his autobiographical novel, David Copperfield. On a Sunday morning, he walked three miles to the warehouse beside the Thames. The warehouse was described in David Copperfield as a house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down hill to the river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat. It was a crazy old house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and literally overrun with rats. Its paneled rooms, discoloured with the dirt and smoke of a hundred years, I dare say; its decaying floors and staircase, the squeaking and scuffling of the old grey rats down in the cellars; and the dirt and rottenness of the place.51 This was the place where the twelve years boy Charles was greeted by James Lamert, this was the place where little David was greeted by Mr. Quinion, and took him to the counting house on the first floor, where was an alcove looking down at the Thames, which was to be his working place. His work consisted in taking the bottles of blacking and preparing them for sale. I know that a great many empty bottles were one of the consequences of this traffic, and that certain men and boys were employed to examine them against the light, and reject those that were flawed, and to rinse and wash them... When the empty bottles ran short, there

50

Cartianu, Ana, op.cit, p41.

51

Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, 1992, p. 135-136

35

were labels to be pasted on full ones, or corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks. All this work was my work, and of the boys employed upon it I was one.52 Just as little Charles walked each day to the blacking warehouse, back to the rats, rotting wood and black paste so did little David Copperfield. He worked for ten hours a day, with a meal break at twelve and a tea break in the afternoon. This painful experience seemed to haunt him all his life. He called it the secret agony of my soul.53 Both in his fictional and autobiographical work, Dickens emphasized the degradation he felt during this period, degradation caused not only by the hard work and the hard conditions, but also by the companionship of the working-class boys. This tells us much of his instinctive reaction to the labouring of the poor. The working class was considered a substratum of society, inspiring to the classes above them a fear of disease, a horror of uncleanness and the dread of some kind of revolt. But, eventually, little Charles, and also David left behind this work of privation and degradation. On February 20 1824, John Dickens was incarcerated in the Marshalsea Prison an insolvent debtor. It was a common offence in that period. The insolvent debtor was classed as a quasi-criminal and kept in prison until he could pay or could claim release under Insolvent Debtors Act. It often happened that a prison remained indefinitely within the prison walls. John Dickens was released after three months but the image of the prison remained forever in his sons mind. This childhood trauma reveals itself through Dickenss constant preoccupation with the life in prison: beginning with his essay A Visit to Newgate until his novels David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, etc. On his first visit to the Marshalsea prison, young Charles Dickens arrived at the main gate and was directed to the turnkey`s house: My father was waiting for me in the lodge, and we went up to his room (on the top story but one), and cried very much. And he told me. I remember, to take warning by the Marshalsea, and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a year, and spend nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and six pence, he would be happy; but that a shilling spent the other

52

Ibidem, p. 136 Ackroyd, Peter, op.cit, p.83.

53

36

way would make him wretched.54 This piece of advice has attained immortality in David Copperfield through the words Mr. Micawber. The prison which young Dickens, and then young David, entered was just off Borough High Street, the main entrance and turnkeys lodge at the end of a narrow court... Pass the lodge and you enter a small yard in front of the prison there were rooms, on a average some eight feet by twelve feet, and eight and a half feet in height; each room had a fireplace, a cupboard and small from which the sky but not the street could be seen. There was an airing yard beyond the prison building and, in addition, a trap and common room where the prisoners might resort. And around this whole area was of course the high wall, with the spikes upon it. It was not a large place, and it would have been crowded, noisy, squalid and malodorous; a dank and desperate reality, indeed, the despair seeping into its bricks, its stone staircases and unswept floors.55 David Copperfields first impression of the prison is influenced by, what it seems to be, Dickenss own memory of that institution; it results a mix of reality and childhood books: ...and when at last I did see a turnkey (poor little fellow that I was!), and thought how, when Roderick Random was in a debtors prison, there was a man there with nothing on him but an old rug, the turnkey swam before my dimmed eyes and my beating heart.56 But the novel in which the Marshalsea Prison is the centre image is Little Dorrit. This novel is the materialization of Dickenss obsession, of the feeling that the entire system is a huge prison that deprives men of freedom, both physically and morally, and marks them for their entire life. The early chapters of the novel are the most evocative accounts of prison life with the little heroine living and working within the prison. In fact the image that remained imprinted on Dickenss mind was the sight of the children playing within the prison walls. There are the games of the prison children as they whooped and ran, and played at hide and seek, and made the bars of the inner gateway `Home`.57 In the preface to Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens confessed that he found portions of the Marshalsea still standing. Although the outer front courtyard was changed into a butter shop, he
54

Ibidem, p. 75-76 Ibidem, p. 76 Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, 1992, p. 145 Ackroyd, Peter, op.cit, p.77

55

56

57

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found `Marshalsea Place`: the houses in which I recognised, not only as the great block of the former prison, but as preserving the rooms that arose in my minds-eye when I become Little Dorrits biographer... I pointed to the window of the room where Little Dorrit was born, and where her father lived so long...58 The image of the Marshalsea Prison never left Dickens. The high wall with the spikes on top of it, the shadow cast by the prison buildings, the lounging shabby people - all of these images return again and again.

3.3. The Educational System Dickens was not only a realist writer but also an intentional and conscious educator. His interest in the educational system of his time is clearly proved by the prefaces, the articles and by the ideas given in his books concerning the childs education at home, in institutions and schools. Dickens taught his readers to think much of children just at the time when England had a special need of an educational awakening. Throughout his novels, he pleaded for a new education including good conditions in schools, kind treatment of children, a greater liberty at home and at school. He dealt with more than thirty schools in his novels: Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickleby; Mr. Martons schools, Mrs. Monflathers school in The Old Curiosity Shop; Dr. Blimbers school in Dombey and Son; Mr Creakles school, Dr. Strongs school in David Copperfield; Mr. Thomas Gradgrinds school in Hard Times; Mr. Wopsles great aunts school in Great Expectations etc. He condemned the cruelty and the harshness in education of such characters as Squeers, Creakle, Bumble, the Murdstone, Mrs. Pipchin. In contrast to them, he gives us sympathetic teachers as Dr. Strong or Mr. Marton. Dickens denounced the conditions children were learning in, and the teaching methods used by schoolmasters in the Preface to the first edition of Nicholas Nickleby: Of the monstrous neglect of education in England, and the disregard of it by the State as a means of forming good or bad citizens, and miserable or happy men, private school long afforded a notable example. Although any men who had proved his unfitness for any other
58

Dickens, Charles, Little Dorrit, Chapman and Hall, London, 1954, p. 4

38

occupation in life, was free, without examination or qualification, to open a school anywhere... and although schoolmasters, as a race, were the blockheads and impostors who might naturally be expected to spring from such a state of things, and to flourish in it, these Yorkshire schoolmasters were the lowest and most rotten round in the whole ladder. Traders in the avarice, indifference, or imbecility of parents, and the helplessness of children; ignorant, sordid, brutal men, to whom few considerate person would have entrusted the board and lodging of a horse or a dog; they formed the worthy cornerstone of a structure, which, for absurdity and a magnificent high-minded laissez-aller neglect, has rarely been exceeded in the world.59 The schoolmasters advertised their school in newspapers drawing a favorable picture of their institution: ...Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages, living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry... Terms 20 guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations and diet unparalleled...60 Nicholas Nicklebys first enthusiasm to teach at Mr. Squeers school is turning into astonishment when he sees how Dotheboys Hall really is: a long, cold-looking house, one storey high, with a few straggling out-buildings behind, and a barn and stable adjoining. 61 The food given to these children shows the selfishness of such schoolmasters as Squeers, the food resembling to that of animals. Living in these conditions the children could not develop neither physically nor intellectually. They are only pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the countenances of old men...62 The most frequent teaching method in Dickenss time and novels is corporal punishment. The flogging system was considered the basis of education, as beating was the shortest way to make these poor little children do what they were asked to do. Dickens insisted upon the overthrow of corporal punishment because in his time was the almost universal remedy for all defects in animals and human beings. The example of Squeerss ill treatment and lack of proper food is Smike, the boy who is a student at Dotheboys Hall for years. Squeers instead of an answer to a question knocked off the trunk with a blow on one side of his face,
59

Dickens, Charles, Nicholas Nickleby, Penguin Books, London, 1994, p. 4 Ibidem, p. 31 Ibidem, p. 74 Ibidem, p. 102

60

61

62

39

and knocked him one again with a blow on the other.63 This is the behavior of a man that called himself a father to these children. But Dickens reveals us the true meaning of these schools. They are infant bastilles64 for unwanted children. They are just means of making money for the so-called schoolmasters. Squeers himself admitted that his school was but a shop and the boys were his source of money, his source of garments for his boy. They were nothing but slaves. They were sent away by their parents and would never know when they will ever go home again. That is why Dickens called these Academies, schools for unwanted children, or, we could say, orphanages in disguise. Nicholas Nickleby, as Charles Dickens, couldnt tolerate anymore the acts of tyranny he assisted to. The scenes at Dotheboys Hall end with Nicholas`s speech when he is defending Smike from the cane of Squeers: Touch him at your peril! I will not stand by and see it done. My blood is up, and I have the strength of ten such men as you. Look to yourself, for by heaven I will not spare if you drive me on!65 Dickenss own childhood experience in school urged him to create Salem House in David Copperfield. Again we have a here a most forlorn and desolate schoolroom with scraps of old copy-books and exercises litter the dirty floor.66 The so-called schoolmaster, Mr. Creakle, enjoys threatening and beating the children so that the boys are crying and writhing before the school day begins. Dickens revealed some of the gravest defects of the teaching methods. Dombey and Son deals with the evil of cramming. Dickens saw in this method the destruction of the development and imagination of children. He was conscious of the necessity of a childs freedom and he believed that knowledge formed the soul. But in Blimbers school under the forcing system ... all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning in the world. 67 Being forced to learn without

63

Ibidem, p. 48 Ackroyd, Peter, op.cit, p. 272 Dickens, Charles, Nicholas Nickleby, Penguin Books, London, 1994, p. 104 Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, 1992, p. 74 Dickens, Charles, Dombley and Son, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1955, p. 203

64

65

66

67

40

understanding, the children grasped their heads convulsevely.68 The case of little Paul Dombey is Dickenss indictment against this method. Paul was forced to cram every day. This delicate little boy, who shouldnt have been sent to school at all, had to memorize masses of texts that had no meaning to him. The result of this educational system was that the brightest young men ceased to have brains when they begin to have whiskers,69 like in the case of Toots. Another example of cramming and lack of professional training we find in Hard Times. Dickens shares with us the perfect system of education and of ethics of Thomas Gradgrind, follower of the utilitarian Manchester School. He set the opening chapters of the novel in a schoolroom and suggestively entitled the chapter Murdering the Innocents. Thus he could attack the psychological and educational ideas of utilitarianism. The children in Hard Times were little vessels and little pitchers for facts. The word vessel not only suggests the passive receptiveness which the utilitarians expected from the minds of children, but also the confidence of the utilitarians that they knew just what the contents of little vessels should be. Dickens also wrote about education at home. The best known example of this type of education is found in David Copperfield. In this novel we sympathize with the fate of little David who, being subjected to a permanent state of terror and lack of sympathy, could not learn anything; nothing got into his head but sled away. When taught by his mother, the same lessons were a path of roses while the Murdstones turn them into a path of thorns. The cruelty, the coercion made David sullen, dogged and cruel. Being beaten one day for a trifle, he rebelled and bit Mr. Murdstones hand. The Murdstones filled him with selfdepreciation; they taught him to believe that all his life he would have to submit, to conform to the plans of others while his interests and purposes would always be crushed. In addition to the revelation of bad education, Dickens did his best to show the best conditions of education, even if there were just a few, as in The Old Curiosity Shop and Dr. Strongs school in David Copperfield. Dr.Strongs was an excellent school, as different from Mr Creakles as good is from evil.70

68

Ibidem, p. 204 Ibidem, p. 194 Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, 1992, p. 202

69

70

41

In all his books Dickens pleaded for the cultivation of the imagination, and for the teaching of literature, art and music in schools. The child must be taught to be originative and executive in learning and cram must be completely avoided. He believed in a free childhood: free of restrictions, free of coercion so that children could develop according to their personalities.

CHAPTER IV THE INFLUENCE THAT THE ADULTS HAVE ON THE CHILDRENS LIVES

One of the principal qualities of Dickenss work lays not so much in the inventiveness as regards plots and adventures but rather in the phenomenal richness and variety of characters. This quality is evident in the diversity of characters that surround and influence the children in all their actions. Actually, it seems that the little heroes are often used by Dickens as tools so that the other characters, more impulsive and more fascinating, could be better spotlighted. They are for the most part realistic but also eccentric, fantastic, strange characters. Dickens divides his characters into two moral categories. For him the world is made up of good and evil persons. Of course there are also unwonted, comic, grotesque characters. But each of them has a main character trait that situates him or her in one of the two moral categories. In order to set before the reader the image of the character, image so vivid in his mind, Dickens simply describes and reports. There is, in general, a very precise and complete picture of externals: the face, the gesture, the habit, we learn the tone of voice, the trick of utterance; Dickens said once that every word spoken by his characters was audible to him. One thing that we could reproach Dickens is his descriptions of women whom he portrayed only as monsters or angels, maybe with a single exception, that of Nancy in Oliver Twist.

The Two Opposite Spheres of Life

42

In Dickenss novels, children are thrown alternately into two opposite spheres of life, characteristic of the two groups always present in Dickenss novels: the congenital, good society and the imprisoning, hostile one, standing for two contrasting sets of values. The settings themselves illustrate this opposition: the places frequented or inhabited by the evil characters are gloomy, frightening, usually presented at night while the surroundings of the good characters are bright, comfortable and quiet. In his novels, Dickens teaches a moral lesson. His morality is very simple, a few rules serve for guidance; to infringe them is to be punished; to follow the path of the just is to ensure a certain amount of prosperity and reward. The readers want to see a villain get his deserts, and Dickens, for the most part, gives them abundant satisfaction. Because of the opposition between good and evil, Dickenss novels may be considered fables. He depicts his characters in pairs of opposites or in black and white. As in traditional fables, there are mysteries and final miraculous discoveries which make possible the punishment of the evil characters and the victory of the virtuous ones. Dickens took the elements of evil from concrete social realities, from bad legislation, from Victorian education, from slum life etc. They acquire the significance of nightmarish forces, haunting the universe under the form of monsters. The good is something stable and unalterable and reveals mans eternal dream of harmony and fulfillment.

The Good Society The generous, kind characters in Dickenss novels act out of generosity, benevolence,

an acute feeling for suffering, indignation against all abuses. But these good characters are less convincing than the wicked ones. They are all good-natured and seem to act as they do because they cannot act otherwise. None of them has a considered opinion about why he or she does well. The good characters come from different social strata: the middle-class, the working class, the poor etc. Oliver Twist is saved from the world of thieves by decent, good middleclass people who want to take care of him: Mr. Brownlow, Mr. Bedwin, Rose Maylie, Dr. Losborne. Mr. Brownlow, who finally proves to be Olivers fathers best friend, engages whole-heartedly in the saving of the boy. Mrs. Bedwin is a kind old nurse who unquestioningly
43

cared for Oliver in his time of need. She treats Oliver with great tenderness although she does not fully know his status or condition in life. In one encounter: The old lady very gently placed Olivers head upon the pillow, and, smoothing back his hair from his forehead, looked so kindly and lovingly in his face, that he could not help placing his little withered hand in hers, and drawing it around his neck.71 She cares for him not for a need of praise, but for the good of her frail patients health. Rose Maylie shows strong empathy for Oliver Twist. When others consider his past as a liability, she chooses to look beyond it: Even if he has been wicked, think how young he is; think that he may never have known a mothers love, or the comfort of a home; that ill-usage and blows, or the want of bread, may have driven him to herd with men who have forced him to guilt.72 Rose identifies with Oliver because she, too, is without parents. Oliver, who first lived in the squalid and dangerous London, finds his peace and serenity in the countryside together with the Maylies: Who can describe the pleasure and delight, the peace of mind and soft tranquility, the sickly boy felt in the balmy air and among the green hills and rich woods of an inland village!73 Nurses always played an important part in the lives of the children. Usually, through their love and care, they replace the mothers of the little heroes. In David Copperfield, little David, who is tormented and terrorized by the Murdstones, finds comfort only with Peggotty. This simple woman is able to see the injustice David is submitted to and tries to protect him whenever his mother Clara Copperfield is too blind or too weak to protect her son. There is a funny detail, suggestive of Peggotty`s goodness and affection: whenever she hugs David, the buttons on the back of her gown fly off because of the enthusiasm of the embrace. Richards in Dombey and Son is another loving devoted nurse, she takes care of little Paul. Mr. Dombey doesnt agree with any affection between his son and the nurse. Of course this thing is impossible. Richards, whose real name is Polly Toodles, extends her love to Florence Dombey, too. She tries to make Mr. Dombey love his daughter, too, although this proves to be an unsuccessful attempt.

71

Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1955, p. 75 Ibidem, p. 217 Ibidem, p. 319

72

73

44

The little heroes spend the happiest part of their childhood together with the simple, working people: David lives in Yarmouth with Peggotty`s family while Pip is happy only in the company of Joe Gargery, whom he considers more a friend than an uncle. The boatman Peggotty and Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, are drawn on similar lines, in both; the gentle nature is hidden beneath a ruggedness proper to their calling. There is a certain resemblance, too, between the stories in which each plays his part; childlike in their simple virtues, both become strongly attached to a child - not their own - living under the same roof, and both suffer a great disappointment in this affection. The boatmans niece is beguiled from him to her ruin, while the blacksmiths little relative grows ashamed of the old companion and the old home. I think Joe Gargery is a more realistic character than Peggotty. He is a man of such a sweet temper that he endures in silence the nagging of an outrageous wife. He is so delicate and sensible that he perspires at the thought of seeming to intrude upon an old friends progress in life; his torments are more real than those of Peggotty. Who can believe Mr. Peggotty to be a realistic character when he sets forth to search for his niece over the highways and by-ways of Europe? In The Old Curiosity Shop the merely good are for the most part boring if not intolerable: the Garlands, Kit and his mother, the schoolmaster, the single gentleman, the grandfather (except when he is gambling or menacing Nell), the sexton. Mrs. Nubbles and her children are meant to illustrate one of Dickenss leading ideas that the decent poor represent the ideal in life. Kit is a good-natured, straightforward lad, possessing a delicate sense of honor. In spite of the grandfathers behavior towards him, Kit watches over Nell when she is alone at night and he tries to find them after they leave London. Among all these good, flat characters there are some that deserve our attention: Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick in David Copperfield and, especially, Nancy in Oliver Twist. Miss Betsey Trotwood, one of the most eccentric feminine characters in Dickenss work, is an apparently severe but golden-hearted woman, as Dickens wrote. Her goal in life is to take care of Mr. Dick and to protect her property of the invasion of the donkeys. She is the one who saves David from his wretched existence. Victim of a bad marriage, she does not accept her destiny; while others would have passed their life in tears, Miss Betsy sets about making for herself a rational existence. Her surname is characteristic of her nature; the two elements forming it trot and wood show her energy. Mr. Dick is a harmless madman whose mental balance was affected by history, he is always thinking of the execution of Carol I Stuart, and by contemporary life. Miss Trotwood doesnt consider him mad but an eccentric man, because in spite of his opinion that the world has gone crazy and of his passion for kites, Mr. Dick is a
45

good man, endowed with an exceptional common sense. He is the one who advises Miss Betsey what to do with David: to give him shelter, to bathe him, to give him some clothes, to send him to school etc. Nancy is the best character of the benevolent society in Dickenss work. She is a victim of circumstances, a person who oscillates between her humanism and her adherence to Bill Sikes and the thieves. She disregards her own pitiful situation to relief the suffering of others. Sikes, Nancys demanding and criminal superior, falls seriously ill and nearly dies. Nancy has every reason to let him die, but instead she helps him get well. She is offered an escape from the criminal world, but she wont take it because Sikes is desperately ill. The strongest case for compassion in the novel is between Nancy and Oliver. Nancy, unlike Rose Maylie, is not in a position to take Oliver out of the life of a poor orphan, yet she risks her life to make Oliver safer. Nancy is ready to risk everything so that Oliver would live far away from the crime world she suffered under: she gives to Rose Maylie information about Monks, she confronts Sikes etc. In an ultimate form of compassion, Nancy sacrifices her well-being and her life to get Oliver out of the life which burdened her. Good characters are not very credible for the readers of Charles Dickens. They dont have a reason why they are good all the time. They have no temptations, difficulties or struggles: they are uniform and unruffled.

The Evil World Charles Dickens excelled in the creation of evil characters. His wicked personages are

of such great intensity, that they have become symbolic. Nobody was ever less optimistic then Dickens in his treatment of evil men. He painted his villains and lost characters more black then they really were. He crowds his stories with a kind of villain, rare in modern fiction - the villain without any redeeming point. There is no redeeming possibility for Bill Sikes, Monks, Brass, Quilp, Uriah Heep etc. His villain does not exist only to be a character, but he is there to be a danger- a ceaseless, ruthless and uncompromising menace. Children are surrounded by evil characters from early childhood: Oliver Twist lives in the workhouse with people who are not interested in the well-being of children: Mr. Bumble,
46

Mrs. Corney; David Copperfield is terrorized by the Murdstones; the Brasses in The Old Curiosity Shop hold in captivity and torment a poor little girl, the Marchioness. In one of his first novels, Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens turned to the denunciation of the abuses evident in the parish. To show the indifference concerning the fate of children, it is enough to quote a fragment from Oliver Twist, describing the attitude of Mrs. Mann, who keeps the baby farm: she knew what was good for children, but she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself.74 In the workhouse system, Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Corney, his future wife, stand out. Mr. Bumble is the parochial beadle characterized as an officious jack-in-office; he is a choleric man who has a great idea of his oratorical powers and of his importance.75 However his surname reminds us of the bumble-bee, suggesting therefore the idea of useless noise which perfectly characterizes him. In the story, Mr. Bumble gets only his deserts; he who marries with his eye upon a pair of silver sugar-tongs, and is also a blustering jackass, can hardly be too severely dealt with. Mrs. Corney exhibits her true self for her husbands benefit, and, so far as we know, does not repent of her triumphs as an obese shrew. After leaving the workhouse, Oliver gets to know another scary reality - the parish. He is sold to Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker, who presides over unending funerals; in his gloomy, sinister house, Oliver has to sleep among the coffins. Here he is terrorized not only by his master but also by another boy, Noah Claypole, a charity boy, who tells Oliver from the very beginning youre under me.76 It is interesting to note that, whereas even Mr. Bumble is at moments touched by natural sympathy, and Mr. Sowerberry would be not unkind if he had his way, the woman of this world - Mr. Corney, Mrs. Sowerberry and the workhouse hags - are fiercely cruel. In David Copperfield, the little heros happy life, his warm and pleasant home, ceases to exist at the very moment his mother marries Mr. Murdstone. His surname, formed of murder and stone, is perfect for his type of person who has a stony heart. His appearance scares David: He had that kind of shallow black eye... I want a better word to express an eye

74

Ibidem, p. 31 Ibidem, p. 34 Ibidem, p. 64

75

76

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that has no depth in it to be looked into which, when it is abstracted, seems, from some peculiarity of light, to be disfigured, for a moment at a time, by a cast.77 As if Mr. Murdstone wouldnt have been enough, Ms. Jane Murdstone, his sister, also moves in. David is frightened of the aspect of this metallic lady: ...gloomy lady; dark, like her brother ... She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman, she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite.78 They educate David, locking him in a room, punishing him when he does not know the lesson, not allowing him to have any spare time; for the gloomy theology of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of little vipers ... and held that they contaminated one another.79 In The Old Curiosity Shop, a number of sordid figures play their villainous or eccentric pranks around the innocent little Nell. Their home is the grimy centre of London; set amid country surroundings, they would seem to pollute the landscape. Mr. Quilp of Tower Hill and Mr. and Ms. Brass of Bevis Marks represent the spirit of inhuman greed against which the author is throughout pointing his lesson. Dick Swiveller, when first we know him, is on the way to become another vile person. But his sense of humour and the favour of circumstance combine to arrest his progress. Between Sampson Brass and his sister, Sally, there is a fine contrast in similarity; the sisters rascally courage when Sampson shows himself a groveling poltroon is excellent truth. He always follows his interest; he has the habit of soliloquizing on the virtues of Quilp in Quilps presence. Dickens perfectly describes him in just one sentence: Mr. Brass smiled as only parasites and cowards can.80 Miss Sally is much more frightful than her brother. One finds it difficult to think of her as feminine. In fact, there is a striking resemblance between Sampson and Sally; if she wore man clothes, one couldnt tell one from the other. She is seen terrorizing several times the Marchioness. For all her qualities, Dick calls her the Dragon Lady.

77

Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, 1992, p. 21 Ibidem, p. 45 Ibidem, p. 52 Dickens, Charles, The Old Curiosity Shop, Wordsworth Edition Limited, Hertfordshire, 1995, p. 423

78

79

80

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Dickens is known for his realistic description of the underworld, the most criminal and degraded of London`s population81 in Oliver Twist. When Oliver arrives in London, he falls in the hands of a band of thieves consisting of Fagin, the leader of the band; Bill Sikes, a sinister criminal; the pickpockets Artful Dodger, Toby Crackit, Charley Bates; the shadowy Monks. Dickenss aim is to discredit a school of fiction then popular, which glorified the thief in the guise of a gallant highwayman. Dickens wrote in the preface to Oliver Twist that he wanted to describe the miserable reality of the rogues, ...to paint them in all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all the squalid misery of their lives, to show them as they really were, for ever skulking uneasily through the dirtiest paths of life...82 The place where the thieves live is in contrast with the serene, bright atmosphere of the good characters: A dirtier or more wretched place he had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odours. 83 Here Fagin, the head of the thieves, lives; he is a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous looking and repulsive face was obscured with a quantity of matted red hair. 84 Bill Sikes is a wicked brute, the protagonist of one of the most atrocious scenes in Dickenss work, the scene where he kills Nancy. He may not seem exactly a real man, but for all that he is a real murderer. His strange and vile adventure reaches its height in the scene of his death, the besieged house, the murderer turned almost a maniac and dragging his victim uselessly up and down the room, the escape over the roof, the rope swiftly, running taut, and death sudden, startling and symbolic. The end of Bill Sikes is exactly in the way that the law would have killed him. All the villains get what they deserve in the end: Fagin will be imprisoned and then hanged; Monks also will die in prison. But, as for Charley Bates, it is impossible to condemn him. His jollity is after Dickenss own heart, and, as there is always hope for a boy who can laugh, one feels it natural enough that he will become the merriest young grazier in all Northamptonshire. But what of his companion, Mr. Dawkins, the Dodger? The writer was besought to give him a chance, but of the Dodger we have no word. His last appearance is in Chapter XLIII. Dickens must have enjoyed the writing of that chapter; Jack Dawkins before the Bench is a triumph of his most characteristic humor.
81

Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1955, p. 3 Ibidem, p. 4 Ibidem, p. 96 Ibidem, p. 98

82

83

84

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In spite of the realism in the presentation of the dregs of life, we can complain about the language they use. For Dickens, Sikes or Fagin were convincing figures, though they never once utter a vile word. Wolves tear your throats! growls Bill Sikes, feeling from his pursuers - a strange exclamation for a London burglar. And again, when brought to bay, after the murder, he calls one of the horrified thieves this screeching Hell-Babe - phrase natural enough on the boards of a theatre, but incongruous in a London slum. Among the evil doers in the work of Dickens, the teachers and the schoolmasters, as Squeers, Creakle, Gradgrind etc., are remarkable for their wickedness. But the wrong doings directed against children are more painful when they come from family members: Mrs. Joe Gargery, in Great Expectations and even the grandfather in The Old Curiosity Shop. Mrs. Gargery, a blacksmiths wife, is a shrew of the most highly developed order. She has a little brother, Pip, a mere baby still, whom she can ill-use at her leisure, remembering always that every hardness to the child is felt still worse by that good man, her husband. If ever she is good - tempered in the common sense of the word, she never lets it be suspected; without any cause, she is invariably acrid and always ready to break into fury of abuse. Mrs. Joe is a loud, angry, nagging woman. She always says how fortunate Pip should feel about being raised by hand by her and how much trouble she has gone through in that endeavour. Of course Dickens punishes her. She will be brought to quietness by a halfmurderous blow on the back of her head, from which she will never recover. Thus Mrs. Gargery learns patience and the rights of other people. In The Old Curiosity Shop the paradox is that the grandfather represents, at times, a great threat for little Nell. When he turns to gambling, he is evil and obsessed; he even steals money from Nell. He becomes a different man to the alarm and astonishment of his granddaughter His face was flushed and eager, his eyes were strained, his teeth set, his breath came short and thick, and the hand he laid upon her arm trembled so violently that she shook beneath its grasp.85 On the whole, evil characters are more impressive than the good ones for Dickens proved a remarkable artistry in describing this type of personage. They are much more credible and we remember them for a longer time.

85

Dickens, Charles, The Old Curiosity Shop, Wordsworth Edition Limited, Hertfordshire, 1995, p. 188

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CONCLUSIONS

Dickens will be remembered mostly for the characters he created. He achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime and is regarded as one of the giants of English literature. The hundreds of people who filled his novels had believable personalities and vivid physical descriptions. They are among the most memorable in English literature, especially the children. Although he was not a revolutionary writer in the history of world literature, we cannot his qualities cannot be denied: his sensibility in presenting the fate of children, his well drawn characters, his well put grotesquerie, his always present sense of humor and the fact that we have a perfect image of the 19th century England and English society. He used his fame and his work to draw the attention of the public on the situation of the children. We can say that his books affected the society: thanks to his novels which presented childrens lives through poverty, neglect and abuse, there were lots of acts passed in favor of the children, also his publication of Nicholas Nickleby led to the closing down of the Yorkshire schools. He was also a critic but the aim of his criticism is making people know about the problems of the society and make them to face these problems. He wants people to be better inside themselves. Charles Dickens continues to be one of the most widely read Victorian (nineteenthcentury) novelists. His novels describe the life and conditions of the poor and working class in the Victorian era of England, when people lived by strict rules. His moving, critical and sentimental stories are characterized by attacks on social injustices and hypocrisy, and offer an excellent insight into Victorian culture. Even if he had bad memories about his childhood, he liked writing about children and mostly about the boy David Copperfield that was inspired by him. He related in his biography that A boy's story is the best that is ever told.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ackroyd, Peter. (1990). Dickens, Sinclar-Stevenson. London. Cartianu, Ana. (1961). Istoria literaturii engleze. Secolul al XIX-lea. Realismul critic, Ed. de Stat Didactic i Pedagogic, Bucureti.

Chesterton, G.K., Charles Dickens, Ed. Univers, Bucureti, 1970. Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Wordsworth Classics, Hertfordshire, 1992.

Dickens, Charles, Dombey and Son, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1955. Dickens, Charles, Great Expectation, Prietenii Crii, Buc, 1994. Dickens, Charles, Hard Times, Penguin Book, London, 1985. Dickens, Charles, Little Dorrit, Chapman and Hall, London, 1954. Dickens, Charles, Nicholas Nickleby, Penguin Books, London, 1994. Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1955. Dickens, Charles, The Old Curiosity Shop, Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1995. Ford, Boris - The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, Penguin Books, London, 1991, vol VI, From Dickens to Hardy. Galea, Ileana, Victorianism and Literature, Ed.Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1994.

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