Student Essay on Charles Dickens; and How He Depicts the Hard Lives of Children in His Novels

Every author has a certain theme to all of their novels, no matter how different they may be one can always see something within a story that links to another one of the authors stories. The themes are also different for each author, some being happiness where the characters have good luck, while other novels are sadder, and have darker themes to them. One author who has a darker theme that is connected through his books is Charles Dickens; the theme that can be found in most of his novels is one where the main character is mostly a child and they are going through a hard time in their life, but how he knew about the hard lives of children has been wondered about before and there is proof that he either had done research on it or experienced the oppression himself in his own life.

Great Expectations was written in the 1800s and has escalated to the point of being one of Dickens' most well-known novels. In the novel the main character, Pip, is a child whose parents had died when he was younger. So he is forced to live with his older sister, Dickens gives the impression that Pip's sister actually hates her younger brother; she also beats him repeatedly with "The Tickler" when she sees that he has been disobedient. The only friend he truly has at the beginning is Mr. Joe, his sister's husband; who is also oppressed by his wife. Even Mrs. Joes friends oppresses Pip when they all come over for dinner, talking about him as if he doesn't exist or that he isn't there. As the story goes on he receives word that he will be sent to Miss Havisham's house to play. Pip's life changes throughout the story, the boy getting some good fortunes and some bad ones as well. (Dickens, 1999)

Another one of Dickens' more famous stories in which the child character goes through a hard life is Oliver Twist. In this novel the boy, Oliver, is an orphan who is raised in a corrupt environment until he met his aunt. His mother had died when she was giving birth so he had no relatives other than his aunt. The orphanage he had lived at was abusive, and after asking for more food one time he was sold to an abusive man. He eventually ran away and joined a gang where he got a full education and after being arrested but acquitted due to the help of an eye witness he is sent off to live with his benefactor, though there is more confusion through out the novel in which Oliver even gets shot in the end he is finally adopted by his benefactor and all ends well.

It has been asked how Charles Dickens knew about the hard lives of children, to be able to write these novels Dickens and a friend had went around to famous boarding schools in Yorkshire to observe the children and how they lived. One book that deals with boarding schools and their abuse is Nicholas Nickleby, where the main character Nicholas goes to support his mother and sister after their father dies. He is given a job in a boarding school and that is where Dickens' research about the schools comes into play. Nicholas sees that the children are abused by a certain teacher and he leaves in disgust of the abuse. He goes to help his family when he heard of the abuse his sister was receiving by their uncle, in the end he obtains a decent job and even eventually marries a woman whom he helped save.

Little Dorrit was written in 1855 and set in the 1850s, where the main character, William Dorrit, whose family is imprisoned. This novel is a reflection on a time in Dickens own life where his father was imprisoned for debt, though he doesn't set the novel in the same time that it happened for him he rather sets it in a time that was happier. There is a general theme of imprisonment; both physical and psychological, throughout the book. Though the critics didn't like the novel it was one of his top selling sectional stories to date, and the readers of it weren't as harsh as the professional critics and in fact thought it was a great story.

Even in The Christmas Carol Charles Dickens put a child through a hard time by having Tiny Tim is a cripple, even though the boy is not the main character of the story since Scrooge is it is still a child with hardships.

These aforementioned few novels already prove the point that Charles Dickens indeed does depict the hard lives of children in his stories, and he uses real life occurrences at boarding school he and another visited while he was writing Nicholas Nickleby. By reading The Friendly Dickens one can see that the novelist got the information and insight of abused children from his own life. But after it was released his books took a turn and the storyline changed. He stopped writing stories about the hardships of children, and then wrote ones about children with good luck and happier lives. Proof of his books turning to the upside is a children's book he wrote called The Magic Fishbone. In this short book the main character, Alicia, is given a magic fishbone by her good Fairy Grandmarina. Throughout the book there are times where she has the option to use the fishbone but decides not to and solves the problem another way, and her father always asks if she still has it and the answer is always yes. But towards the end of the book she finds out from her father that they are very poor, and then uses the fishbone to have 'quarter day' come where they get a lot of money. The Fairy Grandmarina comes back and gives the entire family a new wardrobe of rich silks and fabrics. She then takes Alicia to a boy who is also alone and presents them to each other to get married. As the reader can see, this children's book is much different from the others he has written in which the characters have hard lives and no luck at all.

After reading through either the novels themselves or the summary of novels, a fan of Charles Dickens can see the way he depicts the hard and oppressed lives of children in his writing. Whether Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, or Oliver Twist is read the same feeling of oppression can be seen and recognized. Though his novels changed after the publication of The Friendly Dickens, the majority of them do show oppression and those are the ones that are most popular and most read. There is proof as to how he knows about oppression of children and is able to depict it so well as he has experience with a hard childhood by his father going to jail for the reason of debt; he also witnesses abuse by researching and sitting in on classes at a boarding school where the children are constantly abused for the reason that his book Nicholas Nickleby would be realistic and factual even though they are fiction novels.