Dickens's View of the Middle Class in Victorian Society

Dickens's View of the Middle Class in Victorian Society

As exemplified throughout contemporary literature of the nineteenth century, the

Victorians were in the midst of social, political, and economic turmoil that

would generate vibrations throughout all social classes. The emergence of a new,

mercantile middle class was driving all classes towards a society based on

capitalism. Competition was arising between the middle class and the aristocracy

for a secure social position with little, if any, concern for integrity and

moral values (Joyce 299). Like many Victorian writers, Dickens fundamentally

labors over the idea of how to live life in this changing society and contend

with the issues of morality it presents. He creates "an allegory of a nation's

transformation" in Great Expectations, illustrating aspects of the changing

Victorian hierarchical social order ranging from the virtuous, working-class

rural laborers to the newfound middle-class, basing their lives on the leisurely

life of the self-indulgent aristocrats (Cottom 103). Embodying the

characteristics of this new middle class in Victorian England, ridiculed by

Dickens, is the Pocket family: Mrs. Pocket, an obsessive woman aspiring from

birth to be an aristocrat, and Mr. Pocket, a man Dickens would label

"shabby-genteel." Dickens deliberately intertwines the Pockets into Pip's

narrative in order to satirize the principles and futility of both the middle

class and the aristocracy whom they impersonate.

Social class in nineteenth-century England, as portrayed in Great Expectations,

has a strong parallel to morality and values. The higher an individual climbs in

the social order, the greater the desire becomes for capital wealt...

... middle of paper ...

...ure: The Politics of Interpretation. Minneapolis: U

of Minnesota P, 1989.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. 1861. Ed. Janice Carlisle. New York: St.

Martin's, 1996.

---. Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People.

London: Oxford UP, 1957.

House, Humphry. "Writings on Great Expectations and George Bernard Shaw."

Cotsell 44-56.

Joyce, Patrick. Class. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.

Pine, L.G.The Story of Titles. Rutland: Tuttle, 1969.

Sanders, Andrew. Dickens and the Spirit of the Age. Oxford: Clarendon P, 2001.

Schilling, Bernard N. The Rain of Years: Great Expectaions and the World of

Dickens. Rochester: U of Rochester P, 2001.

Wilson, Angus. "The Heroes and Heroines of Dickens." Dickens: A Collection of

Critical Essays. Ed. Martin Price. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1967. 16-23.