Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
society in the victorian era
society in the victorian era
great expectations characterisation
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: society in the victorian era
Social and Political Aspects in Kipling and Dickens' Writing Styles
The Victorian period started from 1830 to 1901, and it was known for
various aspects. These aspects are distributed between authors and
writers of this era. The Victorian period is so called due to Queen
Victoria who ruled Britain successfully, and the city of London
expanded from about two million people to six and a half at the time
of her death. Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling are representatives
of Victorian literature; each of them is concerned with specific
social and political issues of that era, and these issues are shown in
their stories. Charles Dickens story is “Great Expectations” and
Rudyard Kipling’s story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”.
Charles Dickens story “Great Expectations” reflects the values of
social realism and how each deals with the other due to poverty as a
result of little employment. For example, in this story Pip, the
narrator suffers at the treatment of his sister Mrs. Joe who tries to
control him by showing her power over him, because she thinks that he
is young and needs to be disciplined, (This made him hate her and
thought as if she is his enemy), because usually when a person treats
the other badly, the last feels negative about it. This might be an
indication of the social relationship in British families in that era
and that women are used to house work only and arising up their
children, whereas Rudyard Kipling’s short story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”
reflects the idea of social aspects between animals and humans, and
the way they think and deal with each other. The story’s setting was
in India, and as everyone knows that this country is one of the
poorest countries in the world; so by this we can know that peopl...
... middle of paper ...
... where Teddy, the small English white
skinned boy, and his family represents British people who live in
India, and treat the Indians as servants. So Rikki and the other
animals worked hard to kill the snake for their master’s sake. So the
conclusion is that the ideal Indian was brave and loyal to the
British.
Finally, a social aspect is based on the relations of people and the
way of their living, whereas the political aspects are based on the
country’s administrative system and the services it provides. The
social and political aspects are the most important issues of a
country, because it is the scale of measuring people’s comfort. I
think that Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling show successfully those
aspects in their stories, in order to keep the reader conscious about
the country’s system and show them the reality of British people and
Indians.
of this boy, for on his brow I see written which is Doom, unless the
Dickens' Attitude toward Victorian Customs of Crime and Punishment. During the novel called Great Expectations, Charles Dickens makes it. obvious to us how he feels about crime and punishment in the Victorian era. The era of the.
On February 7, 1812, a popular author named Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England during the Victorian Era and the French Revolution. He had a father named John Dickens and a mother named Elizabeth Dickens; they had a total of eight children. In Charles’s childhood, he lived a nomadic lifestyle due to his father 's debt and multiple changes of jobs. Despite these obstacles, Charles continued to have big dreams of becoming rich and famous in the future. His father continued to be in and out of prison, which forced him, and his siblings to live in lodging houses with other unwanted children. During this period of depression, Charles went to numerous schools and worked for a boot cleaning company. This caused him
Readers of Charles Dickens' journalism will recognize many of the author's themes as common to his novels. Certainly, Dickens addresses his fascination with the criminal underground, his sympathy for the poor, especially children, and his interest in the penal system in both his novels and his essays. The two genres allow the author to address these matters with different approaches, though with similar ends in mind.
In many novels, the society created by the author is surrounded by wealth and corruption. Numerous amount of times these settings are produced based on the life in which the author lives. Charles Dickens is no different. In the midst of most of his novels, Dickens exposes the deception of Victorian England and the strict society that holds everything together. In Dickens' novel Our Mutual Friend, a satire is created where the basis of the novel is the mockery against money and morals. Throughout this novel, multiple symbols and depictions of the characters display the corruption of the mind that surrounds social classes in Victorian England.
... message that speaks as a voice of social reform. Dickens’ is trying to say that one should not worship money, as it can completely change a person, and in this case, for the worst. Readers feel that money and power do corrupt, and that social distinction is something that should not occur, even though it does. Even in the singular case of Pip, one can see just how obsessed people become with social class, instead of focusing on the things that really count, such as the people one loves. As Linda K. Hughes of the New York Times once said, “…Victorians were almost obsessed with becoming better people (social class)... This story truly captures that age,” which strengthens my point that Dickens’ was trying to portray this obsession in a negative way. The series of events that occur within the book parallel the real world and are indicative of true human nature.
Social Classes of Industrial England in Charles Dickens' Hard Times In his novel, Hard Times, Charles Dickens used his characters to describe the caste system that had been shaped by industrial England. By looking at three main characters, Stephen Blackpool, Mr. Josiah Bounderby, and Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, one can see the different classes that were industrial England. Stephen Blackpool represented the most abundant and least represented caste in industrial England, the lower class (also called the hands) in Charles Dickens' novel. Stephen was an honest, hard-working man who came to much trouble in the novel, often because of his class.
A Comparison of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen ADVANCED ENGLISH LANGUAGE ESSAY Of the many authors to emerge during the nineteenth-century, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen were among the few who would make a lasting impression on the literary world for generations. Hard Times, often referred to as Dickens’ ‘Industrial novel’ and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice have been much read and well-loved classics for many years. It is the purpose of this essay to compare and contrast the different worlds depicted in both Hard Times and Pride and Prejudice. It will also look at the literary development between the early and late nineteenth-century. The essay will end with the examination of the stylistic characteristics of each author.
Use of Language to Portray 19th Century London Society in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens is one of the most popular and ingenious writers of the XIX century. He is the author of many novels. Due to reach personal experience Dickens managed to create vivid images of all kinds of people: kind and cruel ones, of the oppressed and the oppressors. Deep, wise psychoanalysis, irony, perhaps some of the sentimentalism place the reader not only in the position of spectator but also of the participant of situations that happen to Dickens’ heroes. Dickens makes the reader to think, to laugh and to cry together with his heroes throughout his books.
The death of God for many in the Victorian era due to scientific discoveries carried with it the implication that life is nothing more than a kind of utilitarian existence that should be lived according to logic and facts, not intuition or feeling – that without God to impose meaning on life, life is meaningless. Charles Dickens, in Hard Times, parodies this way of thought by pushing its ideologies and implications to the extreme in his depiction of the McChoakumchild School.
Throughout the novel, the author explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging from the criminal Magwitch, to the poor peasants Joes and Biddy, to the middle class of Pumblechook, and finally to the rich Miss Havisham. This theme, being the procedure that people where categorized into classes, is essential throughout the story, since Pip realizes that wealth and class are less significant than affection, loyalty, and inner worth. The most important fact to be remembered about the post-industrial revolution class system is that Dickens ignores the nobility and aristocracy in favor of the main theme of this novel: ambition.
In the 1830s, as the capitalist system had established and consolidated in Europe, the drawbacks of the capitalist society appeared, and the class contradictions also sharpened day by day. The capitalist mode of production "has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than calloused `cash payment'. It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom --- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."(Marx, Engels 1972: 253). Additionally, the development of natural science and the victory in objecting to the religion and idealism struggle of materialism impelled the writers to break the traditional concept and illusion, and to watch the world and research the social realistic problems with the relatively objective even scientific eyes, so that Realism replaced Romanism to become the principal school of European literary circles. Since at that time the realistic literature was good at ferreting out to capitalist society and criticism, Maxim Gorky called it as "the criticized realism"(Gorky 1978: 110-111).
In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens seems to love to demonstrate how rich the rich actually are. One guy even needs four servants to make his hot chocolate every morning in the book. It’s this sort of excess wealth that breeds discontent –especially when the poor are on their hands and knees in the street licking up drops of spilled wine. The French Revolution began as a critique of the aristocracy; as Dickens demonstrates. However, the "classless" formation of the new French Republic becomes yet another form of class violence. Someone’s always in power. And the powerless always suffer.
However, the strong, yet subtle implications that Charles Dickens introduces to his novels, particularly “Great Expectations”, has made a strong impression during his time and even in the modern day. Dickens explores the wide gap among the “most wretched criminals (Magwitch), the poor (Joe and Biddy), the middle class (Pumblechook), and the very rich (Miss Havisham)” (Gupta, 18), a social hierarchy resulting from the Post-Industrial Revolution. “Great Expectations” demonstrates the role of social class in the society by emphasizing that social class does not define the character of the individual, the relationship with in the characters, and the value of the characters.