CHARLS DICKENS LIFE

Charls Dickens – Life

– Born in 1812 in Portsmouth
– The family moved to london (difficult period)
– Father imprisoned for debts
– Charles withdrawn from school and sent to work into a blacking factory at the age of 12 (traumatic experience.
– After his father’s financial position improved, he went back to school
– Became parliamentary reporter and later journalist
Works

1836 ) the Pickwick Papers : humorous stories about a group of eccentrics who meet to recount their adventures
1837 -> 1857) 14 novels of several genres, from adventure stories like Nicholas Nickelby and Oliver Twist (acute social observation with fairy-tale structure) to his historical novel Barnaby Rudge (set in the 18th century) to the sentimental humanism of Dombey and the autobiographical David Copperfield (Victorian optimism)
After -> several condemnation of Victorian society.
Great expectation : revisitation of David Copperfield in a better ironical vein.
Bleack house, Little dorrit, our mutual friend : nightmarish, almost apocalyptic vision of Victorian London.
Mystery of Edwin Drood (last novel, unfinished) : forerunner of the detective story.
Hard times (1854)

Plot : Thomas Grandgrind lives in Cocketown (he’s a teacher), and believe only in facts and figures and bring two children, Louisa and Tom (he crushes any imaginative impulse like students at school -> children are bottles to feed). Luisa marres Mr Bounderby (factory owner, 13 years old than her) and Tom is employed in Bounderby factory. Louisa is unhappy and is distracted by James Harthouse, that tries to seduce her -> she tell this to her father for protection. Finally Grandgrind understand that his rationality is nonsense, Louisa separates from Bounderby, Tom robs to him but is found and is forced to leave the country.

Features: Dickens wants to denonce the evil of society. Hard times is a critique of the dehumanizing effects of industrial society. Dicken’s sense of humor is one of the most radically modern aspect of his writing. His pathos and sentimentality are often difficult to digest, yet they are representative of a current feeling common in Victorian Age. Cocketown is a realistic vision of the industrial city of the time and is the symbol of the type of life it represents. Many scenes in the novel are conceived in a vivid theatrical way.

Style :
– Different types of speech (comic effects)
– Description of landscapes and environment are a social and psychological map of the situation they depict.
– Connections between the different social sectors and classes which lie beneath their apparent separation.

Grandgrind and the theories of Utilitarianism
Thomas Grandgrind is transformed trough comic exaggerations into the utilitarian leader James Mill.
Utilitarianism = 19th century political, economical and social doctrine which based all values on utility measured by the extent to which it promoted the material happiness of the greatest number of people.
For Dickens the utilitarianism was based on fallacious conception of human nature (no space for human qualities such as generosity, altruism and imagination).

Text – Cocketown : town of brick, made grey from the smoke spitted by chimneys, a black canal run through it. The city is everywhere the same and inhabited by anonymous factory workers whose live revolve around a repetitive routine. The goods produced in Cocketown are destined to the homes of the rich who donìt want to know where they came from.