VICTORIAN AGE SOCIAL PROBLEMS The Victorians were proud of their welfare of good manners and their middle-class values. They tended to ignore the problems which still bothered England. There was, in fact, a part of society mainly the working class, among which misery and distress were still widespread. The new urban conditions, made worse by growth of slums, had created a lot of health problems. Whole families were often crowded in single rooms, where lack of hygiene occasionally led to cholera. Debtors were punished with jail, and life in prison was horrific. Education too had its problems. Teachers were unskilled and corporal punishment was still applied to maintain the discipline. THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE The particular situation, which saw prosperity and progress on the one hand showed poverty, ugliness and injustice on the other hand, which opposed ethical conventionalist to corruption, moralism and liberality to money and capitalistic greediness which separated private life from public behaviour which is …show more content…
Brownlow, Oliver was talking in a good manner and also we first time see that he was enjoying his child hood there. Through all these incidents, Dickens had showed that child is after all child whether he is a victim of child labour or not. The dreams of all children are same, they all want to play but unfortunately, some cannot. Charles Dickens is known as the most important English novelist of the Victorian era being part of the Industrial Revolution as well. Dickens had firsthand experience of child labour when he worked at a shoe polish factory. Many of his works including Oliver Twist deals with the issue and he brings out the plight of children during his
Views on Society’s Problems The nineteenth century was a series of pivotal years in world history. The world was changing due to the rapid industrialization taking place in the 1800s. To keep up with massive demands for goods, masses of laborers would work in overcrowded factories.
In the nineteenth century, Dickens was writing a forgettable epic works. "Dickens beliefs and attitudes were typical of the age in which he lived” (Slater 301). The circumstances and financial difficulties caused Dickens’s father to be imprisoned briefly for debt. Dickens himself was put to work for a few months at a shoe-blacking warehouse. Memories of this painful period in his life were to influence much of his later writing, which is characterized by empathy, oppressed, and a keen examination of class distinctions.
The Victorian Era was the history of the United Kingdom during Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 to 1901. The Victorian society was broken up into four different classes, Gentry, Upper Class, Middle Class, and Working Class. Depending on what class you were a part of determined the type of diversion you got to participate in. Of course, the higher classes were involved in a wider range of activities. The lower classes activities were limited and not as diverse.
This heightens the impacts of the more vivid descriptions that follow, when Dickens describes the children as “wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable.” The juxtaposition of these terms to the traditional view of children as vulnerable creates a sense of shock in the reader. Furthermore, the use of asyndetic listing alongside the negative adjectives creates a semantic field of horror. In this way, the description of Ignorance and Want as children is used by Dickens to increase the atmosphere of pessimism.
The objective of this essay is to examine the female character Nancy Astley in the Television Series ‘Tipping the Velvet’ in relation to theories of modernity, feminism and the expanding city. Originally a book by Sarah Waters and then adapted into a television series for the BBC Tipping the Velvet is set in Victorian England during the 1890s. Nancy Astley is a young girl from Whitstable who works in the family oyster parlour. During an attendance at the local variety show, Nancy falls in love with a male impersonator, Kitty Butler. Following this night, Nancy eventually pursues her love to London where they have an affair only to be heartbroken and then goes on to find her own means of living in the City.
Throughout humanity, humans have been isolated to social classes and divided due to wealth, and status. Europe during 1450 to 1700 was issuing a major problem because poverty was common throughout Europe. This was a major problem as poverty was one of the factors of the high death rates because of starvation. As a result, many different European countries including the Spanish, France, Great Britain, and Netherlands, spoke up to the occasion in different attitudes and responses. Many individuals whether they are rulers, doctors, artists, council members had a different view to the poor as some will have a negative connotation portraying the unfortunate as idleness, while others will show sympathy and positivity in their ideas.
The industrial revolution woke up the sense of humanity in people, yet at the same time It turned it off. To begin with, from the year 1819 through 1901, Great Britain was beginning to face an all new era called the Victorian Era. In fact, this era was named like that, because of queen Victoria. Also, this era was very important because it introduced medical advances, scientific knowledge, and technological knowledge that helped increase work efficiency. However, not all the things that occurred were great.
You was not allowed to use ‘I’ or even talk to other certain people. You could not go outside the ‘City’ and you was not even allowed to go into the woods. The main people had to know every place and time you are somewhere. If you did any little thing that was not allowed you was punished majorly. Some of the punishments were a ‘jail’ type thing, even burned alive and even being whipped.
The Industrial revolution had many benefits such as the introduction of mass production, which allowed for the price of consumer goods to plummet, yet as with most changes, there are both supporters and non-supporters. Consequently. the first people who started to feel the negative effect of the Industrial Revolution were skilled artisans such as cloth workers. This is best exemplified in the Yorkshire Cloth Worker’s Petition.
In life some writers try to change society. Charles Dickens the author of A Christmas Carol and George Sims “A Christmas Day in the Workhouse” helped change people’s minds through their writing. There writing helped people realize that the poor was treated cruelly and would work for long hours, and that no one rich or in the middle class would help. Charles Dickens and George Gims wanted to make a positive change in society.
Child labor was a great problem in the Industrial Revolution. Factory owners usually hired women and children rather than men. They said that men expected higher wages, and they suspected that they were more likely to rebel against the company. Women and children were forced to work from six in the morning to seven at night, and this was when they were not so busy. They were forced to arrive on time and they couldn’t fall behind with their work because if they did they were whipped and punished.
Setting Oliver Twist is based on characters and events from late 18th to early 19th centuries in London and a village near by. “The city is repeatedly described as a labyrinth or a maze once you get into it, it’s hard to get back out. The city itself serves as a kind of prison. It’s filthy, foggy, and crime-ridden, and things aren’t always what they seem.
Charles Dickens is an influential author for all ages. He has written many books that children know very well, including A Christmas Carol, with the character, Ebenezer Scrooge, finding his love for Christmas again. Dickens has also written some more mature books with topics that relate to our world today, such as Great Expectations, were the young boy, Pip, deals with an abusive family. In Charles Dickens books, we read many different themes that all have one thing in common: good v.s. evil. Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, England, United Kingdom to his parents John and Elizabeth Dickens, and was their second child, they would go on to have eight children.
For instance; Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” is about child labor and the inhuman conditions. The Polish educationalist Janusz Korczak ,his written book which entitled the child’s right to
III. SOCIAL INFLUENCE AND PREJUDICE The society in the Victorian Era was amidst a great change. Having in mind the fact that they were moving from a pastoral life to industrialization, their lifestyle changed. As with every transition, there is the issue of adapting to changes because people tend to hold onto their principles.