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

How two chapters of Great Expectations reflect the influence of society in the time it was set.Charles Dickens is one of the most habitual British novelists in thehistory of literature with many of his characters being recognised inBritish society today. His ability to combine pathos, comedy, and mostof all, his social 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 financial difficulty. A few days later Dickenssfather was sent to jail for debt. He recalled this painful incurin 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, verymuch like the Dorrit family at the beginning of diminutive Dorrit. By thetime he was 25 years old, Dickens was already famous.Dickenss life influenced his writing a lot, and many of the novels hewrote were based on original experiences during his lifetime. For examplein 1832 he met Marie Beadnell and wanted to marry her but she rejectedhim the comic portrait of Flora Casby in Little Dorrit is said tohave been exalt 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 between thick and poor. In his childhood Dickens was part of aworking class family who soon became low class due to their financialdifficulty. But when he became an big(a) he was of high social classwhile his novels kept increasing in popularity and was earning himmoney all the time. Dickens had been from one end of society to the another(prenominal) and the contrast he saw was widely expressed in his novels.Victorian society had a constantly growing urban population, and withthe pessimistic analyses of Thomas Malthus, this helped cast one ofthe most notorious Victorian institutions, the workhouse. This wasbased on a theoretical distinction between the deserving poor, whoowed their pauperization 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 refuge there. Tight-fistedand callous administration made the institutions even worse, and thetarget of round of the bitterest controversial literature of CharlesDickens. Conditions gradually improved, but the dreaded workhouse