Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist and Hard Times

​​In a nutshell

Charles Dickens was an English writer considered the greatest of the Victorian era. His most emblematic works are A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, ​and Hard Times.

The Author's Life

Charles Dickens was born in England in 1812. He had an unhappy childhood since his father was imprisoned by debt and Dickens was put to work at a factory, even after his family's financial situation improved and his father got out of prison, he was still obliged by his mother to continue working in a factory. At fifteen, he got a job as an office boy at a lawyer's where he was able to study.  By 1832, he had become a reporter in the House of Commons, and for a newspaper. 

In 1836, he published Sketches under the pen name 'Boz', a collection of articles depicting London's people and scenes. It was followed by The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club which revealed Dicken's humoristic and satirical qualities.

After the success of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens started his career as a novelist. He published Oliver Twist (1839), American Notes (1842), and A Christmas Carol (1843). His novels became a voice for exploited childhood, the sad reality of slums and factories, social issues, and the working class. Charles Dickens died in London in 1870 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Main Topics

Most of Dickens' works deal with themes such as exploitation, crime, abuse, education, and corruption that were mostly inspired by his own personal childhood experience and social observations gathered from his different travels and adult life experience. 

Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist is one of the most emblematic novels by Charles Dickens. It was begun in 1837 and continued in monthly parts until 1839. It portrays the cruelty and miserable childhood of the Victorian age in which children were exploited working in factories, mines, or chimneysweeps. Dickens depicted children as innocent beings or corrupted by adults, his nostalgia for the innocence of childhood is a critique of the oppressions associated with the adults' world. 

THE PLOT

 Oliver Twist is a poor orphan boy that is brought up in a workhouse in an inhuman way. He is then sold to an undertaker as an apprentice, however, the cruel and unhappy events he lives with the new master were his motive to run away to London. There he entered a gang of young pickpockets led by the Artful Dodger and trained by Fagin, who tried to turn him into a thief, but later he is helped by an old man. Oliver is eventually kidnapped by the gang and obliged to commit burglary; during the job, he is shot and wounded. A middle-class family adopts Oliver and showed affection towards him at last, later investigations are done and it is discovered that the boy has noble origins. The gang and Oliver's half-brother, who tried to ruin Oliver to keep their father's property for himself, are arrested in the end.

SOCIAL LEVELS IN LONDON

London is the most important setting of the novel where the three social levels are exposed. First, the parochial world of the workhouse is shown where people of the lower-middle class are insensible to the feelings of the poor. Second, the criminal world is presented, where poverty drives them to crime so they turn into murderers and pickpockets. Finally, the world of the Victorian middle class is described, where respectable people with moral values and human dignity live. 

THE WORKHOUSE

Dickens accused the social events and injustices of his time. With the increase of poverty in England, workhouses were spread to give relief to the poor. However, the conditions in these places were miserable, labour was required, food and clothing were scarce and families were often separated. Since there was a belief that poverty was caused by laziness, the idea of workhouses was that poor people would feel inspired to improve their situation, but, the Industrial Revolution made it impossible for most of them. Moreover, as Dickens mentions, instead of alleviating the suffering of the poor, officials of the workhouses would instead cause them further misery.

 Hard Times

Hard Times was published in 1854 and it is considered a novel of social protest against utilitarianism. It takes place in an imaginary industrial city called Coketown. The retired merchant Thomas Gradgrind has founded a school where his theories are taught, there is no space for imagination and feelings; and his two children, Louisa and Tom attend every day. He makes his daughter marry Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy banker thirty years older than Louisa.  She consents to marry in order to help her brother, who is given a job in Bounderby's bank, however, the marriage fails, and Tom robs his employer. In the beginning, he succeeds in throwing suspicion on an honest coworker, but he is eventually discovered and obliged to leave the country.

DICKENS AND A CRITIQUE OF EDUCATION

Dickens was one of the first authors in introducing the theme of education in his works. He thought education should be universal and not under the state system. Furthermore, he was against the church intervention in education and shared his concern for the deprived and poor with James Kay-Shuttleworth (1804-1877), who worked on the foundation for a national system of popular education. In 1843, Dickens visited and became a supporter of 'ragged schools', even knowing the limitations and lack of staff, he still objected to certain educational methods.

One strategy criticized in Hard Times is the 'object lesson' which was originally a method of instruction arising from children's personal experiences and fit their stage of development but was distorted in its introduction to English schools. Dickens critiqued through his work how this method was not applied right by providing children lessons whose vocabulary and content did not suit children's experience. Dickens condemned abuses and deficiencies of the education system and believed that education should be accessible for all citizens. In the year of his death, Parliament passed the Elementary Education Act (1870), which made education mandatory.