Victorian Influence On Charles Dickens's “A Visit To Newgate“

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Victorian Influence on “A Visit to Newgate”


The “spirit of the age” was dead and Romanticism was over. Eighteen year-old, Victoria, had become queen in June 1837. This date just so happened to fall around the start of one of the biggest literary movements of all time, the Victorian era. One of the most distinctive features of Victorian literature is its social orientation. As the ambiguities of rank and wealth reared their ugly heads, Charles Dickens’s was there, delivering the truth, the truth that lay behind the snobbery and malaises of the upper class. In “A Visit to Newgate,” Dickens approaches the issues of the poor and impoverished through the dismal display he reported of the Newgate prison in London. The report of this prison was given not only to awaken the upper classes to the sadness of the lower classes, but to also show the journey into the deep structures of the social world of the Victorian era. The report also portrayed the struggle of women in society. Through Dickens’s eyes, the reader is able to view the inside of the jail as well as the people of the prison, the poor in which make up the internal structure of the pristine Victorian era, the internal structure in which Dickens had been a part of for most of his life.
Dickens’s life during his childhood greatly influenced the person he became, as well as the topics and the manner in which he wrote. When asked about his childhood years Dickens stated:
My whole nature was so penetrated with grief and humiliation that even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget in my dreams that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and wander desolately back to that time of my life. (Dickens; Smiley, page 77)
Dickens, born February 7, 1812, was surrounded by sadness and poverty as a child. He began his life in Portsmouth, where his father, John, worked in the Navy Pay Office, a respectable and promising job. His famil...