English literature: The Victorian Age

The Victorian era is generally agreed to give through the rule of Queen Victoria (1837-1901).
It was a extremely exciting period when many artistic styles, literary schools, as well as,
social, political and religious movements succeeded. It was a time of prosperity, broad
imperial expansion, and great political reform. It was also a time, which today we associate
with “prudishness” and “repression”. Without a doubt, it was an unusually complex age that
has sometimes been called the Second English Renaissance. It is, however, also the beginning
of Modern Times.

The social classes of England were newly reforming, and fomenting. There was a
contradiction of the old hierarchical order, and the middle classes were progressively
growing. Added to that, the upper classes’ composition was changing from simply hereditary
aristocracy to a combination of nobility and an emerging wealthy commercial class. By the
end of the century, it was silently agreed that a gentleman was someone who had a liberal
public (private) school education, no matter what his antecedents might be. There continued
to be a large and generally disgruntled working class, wanting and slowly getting reform and
change.
Conditions of the working class were still bad, though, through the century, three reform bills
gradually gave the vote to most males over the age of twenty-one. Contrasting to that was the
horrible reality of child labor which persisted throughout the period. As stated in the
beginning, the Victorian Age was an extremely diverse and complex period. It was, indeed,
the precursor of the modern era.

A massively popular author during the Victorian era, an era that wrought the Industrial
Revolution, Charles Dickens also was a social reformer as well as a critic and satirist in his
literary works. In fact, Dickens was himself influential in the modification of the Poor Laws,
an underlying subject of his novels Oliver Twist and his novella, A Christmas Carol in which
Dickens describes the squalid, dirty conditions of London in vivid detail. In his novel Bleak
House, Dickens sharply criticizes utilitarianism, pointing to the difference between the ideal
and the reality. He believed that in practical terms, the pursuit of an unimaginative, totally
rationalized society led to misery. His character Mr. Gradgind speaks the beginning words of
the novel, "Now what I want is facts"; however, his own daughter, Louisa Gradgind, given a
practical education without imagination or any artistic endeavors, has a life that parallels the
real-life advocate of utilitarianism, John Stuart Mills. For, in only his twenties, Mills, who
believed in the ideal of "the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest numbers" suffered a
nervous breakdown from such a stringent, analytical education himself.

Further, in his novel Bleak House, Dickens satirizes the injustice of delay in court
proceedings. Dickens's attack upon the flaws of the British judiciary system is based partly on
his own experiences as a law clerk as a young man, as well in part on his experiences as a
Chancery litigant as he sought to enforce his copyright on his earlier books. In Great
Expectations he continues his assault upon the corruption of the judicial system that has a
justice for the rich and a different one for the poor, by using Magwitch and the "gentleman"
Compeyson to portray this corrupt system of justice that gives a poor man a greater sentence
for a lesser crime.

An advocate for the lower middle class, often Dickens's moral characters come not from what
he considered a frivolous upper class, but from the commoners. In Great Expectations, for
example, the poor orphan Biddy and the barely literate Joe Gargery are exemplary characters.
And, of course, in A Christmas Carol it is Bob Crachit and his family who are the greatest
Christians.

Certainly, the writings of Charles Dickens were influential in effecting awareness of social conditions
as well as reform of these often deplorable conditions.