Dickens's Treatment of Education and Social Mobility: A Comparative Look at Dickens Critique of Victorian Culture - Essay Example

The common understanding of the poor at the beginning of this period in history was a general impression that the poor were poor because of some inherent evil or as restitution for having committed some grave sin. Having lost their ability to supplement farming incomes with hand-woven fabrics and other goods thanks to the increase in machine-produced goods, the rural poor found it necessary to move to the cities to seek employment. As technology progressed, these individuals found it more and more difficult to keep up with the changing times, losing and gaining employment in an unpredictable cycle.

In addition, wages at the factories were typically held relatively low so as to maximize profits and the proliferation of available workers combined with few laws to safeguard their rights created an employer’s market of an extreme degree. Regardless of sins committed or not, these individuals who were devoid of other means of support became the working class poor, continuously held down by a combination of lack of education and the prevailing opinion that they lived the lives they did because they were incapable of making ‘right’ decisions.