In these works Dickens combines social realism with exaggeration, surrealism, fantasy, and the picaresque to tackle important questions about the poor and disadvantaged in English society and to dramatize the consequences of rapid industrialization on its victims. He used the devices of literary horror to arouse public consciousness about terrible social conditions and to explore themes of greed, corruption, individual and institutional evil, reality versus unreality, imprisonment, and death. Although Dickens's Gothic-inspired fiction is highly entertaining, he also used it as a vehicle to express his moral outrage at the state of the social order and as a platform to reform what he saw as the worst excesses and injustices in English society.
Biographical Information
Dickens was the son of John Dickens, a minor government official who constantly lived beyond his means and was eventually sent to debtor's prison. This humiliation deeply troubled young Dickens, and even as an adult he was rarely able to speak of it. As a boy, he was forced to work in a factory for meager wages until his father was released from prison. Although he was an excellent student, he left school at fifteen, as was the norm, and did not attend university.
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