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

8 Pages 1937 Words

y lived briefly in London, and then the Navy Pay Office sent John to Chatham when Dickens was five. During this time the Dickenses thrived, creating seven children in all, but when John was sent back to London in 1822, he simply could not live on his pay. The events that occurred because of this misfortune amounted to the ultimate class humiliation of young Dickens. He had thought that he was going to be educated for some profession, as the wealthy children of the time were. However, those hopes were crushed, as he had to support himself with the money he earned in a shoe-blacking factory. This event was the outcome of his family ultimately being sent to debtors’ prison. Perhaps the most humiliating occurrence was that young Dickens had to do his work in the window of the blacking factory, enabling passing strangers to observe and scorn upon him. Later, when his family was freed from debtors’ prison, his mother was even resentful to take him back. (Smiley, pages 78-80) The intense feelings of injury and abandonment that were created as a result of his childhood misfortunes are seen in Dickens’s work, characteristics that relate to the Victorian era.
Dickens’s life revolved around the evolutions that occurred during the Victorian era. As a culture’s government, economy, and activities evolve, the artists of the era modified, too, by incorporating the change they see in the world into...