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Ms. Tonelson's Classes

Charles Dickens: 

Picture
wellcomelibrary.blogsp...
    The name conjures up visions of plum pudding and Christmas punch, but also of

orphaned and starving children, misers, murderers, and abusive schoolmasters. Dickens was

19th century London personified, he survived its mean streets as a child and, largely self-

educated, possessed the genius to become the greatest writer of his age. 

    In 1824,
12-year-old Charles was removed from school and sent to work at a boot- blacking factory earning six shillings a week to 


help support the family. This dark experience cast a shadow over the clever, sensitive boy that became a defining experience. in his 


life, This childhood poverty and feelings of abandonment, although unknown to his readers until after his death, would be a heavy 


influence on Dickens' later views on social reform and the world he would create through his fiction.

charlesdickenspage.com

***Charles Dickens - The full biography of Charles Dickens,          the most popular novelist of the Victorian Era.  http://www.biography.com/people/charles-dickens-9274087/videos/charles-dickens-full-episode-2073085321

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Oliver Twist

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art.comart.com

    Dickens' second novel tells the story of the orphan Oliver set against the seamy

underside of the London criminal world.


    In this departure from the merry world of Pickwick, Dickens targets the Poor Law

Amendment Act of 1834
which renewed the importance of the workhouse as a means

of relief for the poor.

     Dickens was severely criticized for introducing criminals and prostitutes in Oliver

Twist
, to which Dickens replied, in the preface to the Library Edition of Oliver Twist in

1858, "I saw no reason, when I wrote this book, why the very dregs of life, so long as their speech did not

offend the ear, should not serve the purpose of a moral, at least as well as its froth and cream." The novel was

well received. One of the most dramatized of Dickens' works, Oliver Twist, was appearing in 10 theaters in

London before serialization of the novel was even completed.

charlesdickenspage.com

Oliver Twist:  Society and Class Distinction:

 "Society and Class" is one of the central themes of most of Dickens’s novels. In Oliver Twist, Dickens often

shows how superficial class structures really are – at the core, everyone’s really the same, regardless of the social

class into which they’re born. Dickens also exposes how callous and uncaring Victorian society was – people

just ignored the plight of the less fortunate because they were so self-satisfied, and so convinced that the

systems they had in place to take care of the poor were the best and most humane systems possible.

Questions About Society and Class


Dickens satirizes the complacency of all of Victorian society in Oliver Twist, and although he occasionally

addresses the reader as a peer, more often than not, he condemns the reader along with the rest of society.

shmoop.com/oliver-twist/society-class-theme.html

Poverty:

 The theme of "Poverty" is obviously related to the theme of "Society and Class." But while the "Society and

Class" theme is concerned with showing how the social class system is basically just invented by society to

justify the status quo, Dickens is also very concerned in showing just how miserable the lower classes really

were. With Oliver Twist, he doesn’t shy away from depicting the conditions of the poor in all their misery

with gritty realism.

.shmoop.com/oliver-twist/society-class-theme.html

Criminality:

Crime was a huge problem in London in the 1830s, when Dickens was writing, just as it is now. Novels and

plays about crime were hugely popular. Some novelists wrote about crime because they had a particular point

to make about the source of criminal behavior, or possible solutions to the crime wave. Other novelists wrote

about crime just because they knew it would sell. Oliver Twist was hugely popular, but Dickens definitely had

a point to make: he wanted to show how criminals really lived, in order to discourage poor people from

turning to crime. He also wanted to show how external influences created criminal behavior as much or more

than natural criminal urges
.

shmoop.com/oliver-twist/society-class-theme.html

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