How two chapters of Great Expectations reflect the influence of society :: Great Expectations Essays

How two chapters of Great Expectations reflect the check of society in the time it was set.Charles Dickens is star of the most popular British novelists in thehistory of literature with many of his characters being appreciate inBritish society today. His ability to combine pathos, comedy, and mostof all, his companionable satire has won him many contemporary readers.Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812. At 12 he was sent to work fora few months at a shoe-polish warehouse on the banks of the Thameswhen his family hit fiscal difficulty. A few days later Dickenss bewilder was sent to fall back for debt. He recalled this painful experiencein the early chapters of David Copperfield. While his father wasimprisoned, all his family except himself and his sister, who wasstudying music, stayed at the Marshalsea Prison with his father, very more than like the Dorrit family at the beginning of Little Dorrit. By thetime he was 25 years old, Dickens was already famous.Dickenss life influen ced his writing a lot, and many of the novels hewrote were based on real experiences during his lifetime. For examplein 1832 he met Marie Beadnell and wanted to marry her but she rejectedhim the comic characterization of Flora Casby in Little Dorrit is said tohave been inspired by Dickenss meeting with Maria again later inlife.Dickens lived in Victorian times, times when there was a lot of focuson social class and status. Victorian society was, for all the changethat was taking place, a stratified, hierarchical society with a greatgap mingled with rich and poor. In his childhood Dickens was part of a working class family who soon became low class due to their financialdifficulty. but when he became an adult he was of high social class charm his novels kept increasing in popularity and was earning himmoney all the time. Dickens had been from one end of society to theother and the contrast he saw was wide expressed in his novels.Victorian society had a constantly ontogeny urban p opulation, and withthe pessimistic analyses of Thomas Malthus, this helped mould one ofthe most infamous Victorian institutions, the workhouse. This wasbased on a theoretical distinction amongst the deserving poor, whoowed their poverty to misfortune, and the undeserving poor, who wereto blame for their poverty the workhouse was made as unpleasant aspossible to deter the latter from seeking safety device there. Tight-fistedand callous administration made the institutions even worse, and thetarget of some of the bitterest contentious literature of CharlesDickens. Conditions gradually improved, but the dreaded workhouse