Charles Dickens: Abuse Of Children During Victorian Times

Research Paper on abuses of children during Victorian Times

Charles Dickens was a humanitarian and champion of children rights, who procured the ideas of social welfare for both children and women. He was a social commentator who realized the discrepancies between the rich and the poor, men and women. Dickens wrote novels which are the basis of legal reforms for modern society. Changes in the human rights for both women and children were advocated by Dickens, in which child labor and child poverty were neutralized. In the novel Hard Times by Charles dickens the rights of children are explored and the level of abuse and mistreatment is surfaced in old Victorian times. The two young children of Mr. Gradgrind, Tom and Louisa, exemplifies the young who are rebellious and filled with angst in society in which they grew up in. They were forced to conform to the strict rules of their father, who pretentiously tries to give them a totalitarian up bring. This is further exacerbated by the classism of the Victorians society, most notably when Louisa is forced to marry Josiah Bounderby, who is thirty years her senior. Louisa is treated as a possession rather than a human being, as her father coerces to marry she does not love. Further more, she has no say in her well being or her education, as she has no rights in society. In Victorian times children were considered as property under the care of a guardian or parent who had every right to govern the child’s welfare even to the