Charles Dickens and Children Melancholy - Essay Example

CHARLES DICKENS AND CHILDREN MELANCHOLY Introduction In almost all societies across the world, children are often appreciated as the best beings, which are often expected to understand and perpetuate the will and character traits of the society. In many of these societies, it is expected that children will be brought up in ways that enable them to learn effectively and follow in the right paths according to the laid down cultural practices and norms of the society. For this reason, the responsibility to ensure that this is met lies not only in the parents of the child, but also in the society at large.Many literatures have been composed about various ways on how children can be brought up in the right path. These books, journals and other forms of literature often emphasize on the inculcation of proper morals and right standards of growth for children. In the process of demonstrating special devotion to neglected children and those that have been abused in various ways, Dickens presents himself as one of the first novelists in England to give a central and most frequent role on children stories and other issues (Allen 2008, 43). In doing this, Dickens had a firm believe that children were actually uncorrupted and unsullied, something that needed to be protected in order to help these children in their growth and development. In most of the books that Dickens wrote, the kind of children depicted in them are those that often did cast right and correct judgments on adults and the larger society in which they happen to belong. It is important to notice that Oliver Twist, Copperfield David among other orphans have all been effectively represented in most of the novels written by Dickens (Browne & Dickens 1938, 76). In most of the novels that have been composed by Dickens, orphans cane be depicted as being the common characters. It is believed that in this way, Dickens manages to make a reflection of the kind of life and suffering that he underwent during his growth as an orphaned child. Additionally he is able to present a kind of indifferent society, where no one shows any interest in orphaned children. In many instances, these societies are those where children often tend to lack parental love and guidance, only to end up languishing in the streets in search of food, shelter and a means of livelihood. Dickens novels present the kind of life that children in the streets face on daily basis and the struggles they go through in life from this perspective. In real life, few of the often make it to become responsible and active members of the society, this is often because they do not have any kind of guidance and mentorship in what they do. Through his depiction of most of these child-heroes, Dickens manages to effectively condemn the existing Victorian conscience (Grellet 2002, 27). From the famous scene depicted from Oliver Twist, in which the parish child faces punishment for simply asking a slightly bigger portion of the assigned bowl containing gruel leavers in the reads mind, the thought of inhumanity from men to children. Additionally, Dickens gives education of children an important priority in his writing and articulation of issues affecting children in the society. Dickens presents that picture of acute shortage of schools and other learning facilities and systems necessary for children’s learning. These depictions are actually some of the best and most memorable to Dickens presentation of children, in actual sense, these particular issues are what Dickens uses in showing some of the most inhuman aspects of the English way of life in the 19th century. According to Dickens perspective, children in the society seem to be growing from an actual passive observer of the human drama to a kind of creating and active character. Children Melancholy in Dickens’s David Copperfield and Oliver Twist In the actual Romantic period, the habit of expressing children characters was mainly reserved for the poetic terms. It was until the dawn of the Nineteenth century that things began to change. It is actually believed that the years between 1830 and 1840 saw the child becoming important and crucial characters in most of the novels and other kinds of literature that existed at that time (Clark 2003, 43). With this great opportunity, it seemed that anew vehicle had been brought that would be used in protecting and advocating for the rights of children in the human societies. In this perspective, Dickens seems to be the one who became the active figure in this idea. Dickens became active in the use of children as characters in his writings, something that was thought to be effective in educating the society about the need to respect children’s rights and responsibilities. He rose to become a very important and central figure towards transference of the romantic child into what was described as the Victorian novel. It is important to note that in most of the novels written and published by Dickens, Childhood has remained to be a very essential subject, featuring prominently. The importance of children in Dickens books According to “Dickens and Childhood,” Grants explains that children and their essence of childhood and children experiences are central to all the books and literature made by literature. For this reason, Dickens books will continue to be read for many times according to the qualities of the novelist himself. This has made Dickens to be celebrated as one of the best and celebrated children advocates. It is important to note that Dickens was actually influenced by Wordsworth and Blake towards his use of child characters in his novels. Dickens believed that children were essential characters in his books in order to advocate the rights of these children and allow them to experience the life they are supposed to experience in the actual life. In his novels, Dickens believed that children’s innocence was right because almost all children often had right judgments on the society as well as on adults. It is this reasons that makes children need certain protection and advocacy for their rights in order to maintain and sustain their innocence. According to Dickens, children’s innocence is often destroyed by many of the sinister forces that exist in the society. Many people exist in the society, who have no sense about the importance and need for children in the society, in most cases; these people often end up subjecting children to harsh life as if they were grownups already. It is this actual perception that Dickens has wanted to do away with by using children characters in most of the books he has written. In the novels made by Dickens, the child figure is importance in depicting the views and perspectives of the society. In this case, it is important to appreciate hat Dickens’s worldview and perspective is very simplistic. In normal instances, people are often judged by the way they react to the hope and innocence that children poses in most instances. Just like corruptions, decay and sin in the society is often judged in the way impact on children. In this regard, it is important to realize that the children characters that Dickens uses in his books are mostly orphans. If not orphans, these children have a single sympathetic parent something that aims at illustrating how vulnerable they are in terms of influence. In real life, orphans and single parented children lack some of the most essential factors that other children often have, they lack parental guidance and love, which is an important ingredient in the growth and development of all children. Adrian Arthur, one of the main fans of the novels by Dickens notes that in most of the novels he has read, there is hardly any child actor that does not have either parents or one of them (Dailey 2005, 62). For this reason, people reading these books can actually identify with some of the problems and challenges that children often have. Dickens does this intentionally in order to highlight the plight of children in various instances of real life. Additionally, the morals lessons brought out in his writings are aimed at teaching people on the need to protect children from various systems that does not fully regard their innocence. In one of the books like “in Hard Times,” young gradgrinds can be seen to have parents, however, the habit of Mr. Gradgrind is in such a way that he is actually an indifferent and executed transparency representing a small female figure that does not have much light. The loneliness as depicted by the children seems to increase tremendously with the absence of sisters and brothers; this is the same as Smike, Oliver as well as David. Additionally, it could also may have increased by the presence of the vicious relatives like his half brother Oliver and Monk, who happens to be the bitter enemy. Generally, these are the actual environments that children often find themselves. When they lack people to protect them in their growth, they end up being defiled and abused in various ways by people that do not have any humane feelings and sympathy for their innocence. This presents that need for highlighting the plight of children and offering some of the ways in which children can be protected from the vices that tend to destroy their innocent life. Dickens view of parents In most of his novels, Dickens presents many parents and caregivers as people who are uncaring and unconcerned about the plight of children. Irrespective of the social ills, Dickens has revealed some of the crimes that are perpetuated against the children in many of the stories that he has written. According to Dickens, most of the children that have emerged to become children heroes and heroines are those that have experienced life in the hostile and alien adult world. According to the way these children are nurtured in these environments the often tend to become solitary figures because they are always very lonely. It is important to note that only the children that are minors and bad in their characters seem to have friends to hang around with like Charley Bates and Dodger artful and more of the urchin gangs in the books written by Oliver Twist (Cunningbam 2008, 32). In his novel, Florence seems to have no close and trusted allies she can rely on, while David Copperfield and Oliver Twist have preference for making friends rather that associating with the thieves and the lowly companions (Dickens 2002, 72). They feel that by creating this association, they can effectively help these children to have a sense of love and belonging and feel to be part of the large human society. In actual sense, the lack of parental love and guidance should bring about people that can have the feelings of the plight of these children, helping them to make informed choices and decisions that can help them manage the hard life on the streets and other places where they are openly ignored and chased away. The environment of loneliness depicted in this manner is the actual world that Oliver Twist has to live and content with. In the same way, this is the kind of world characteristic of Dickens’s “child” (Dunn 2004, 17). It is important to note that apart from experiencing total abandonment, the children portrayed by Dickens are also heavily mistreated in various ways, including both physical and emotional abuses. In most of his novels, most of these children die in their childhood while others remain to be children in either their sexual and mental states. This is a very sad experience because the people expected to offer the much-needed protection are those that end up causing this kind of harm to these children, thus affecting their physical and emotional growth and development. This is actually something that could have been avoided if parents and caregivers of these children would have taken their roles actively and protected the lives of these children. In Dickens’s novels, the children are actually the descendants of disembodiment; they are also portrayed as the unrealistic children figures belonging to Romantic poetry. They are the children being glorified and praised because of their sensitivity and pure innocence. Much of these extreme idealizations actually seem to pervade many of the novels written by Dickens depicting the life and plight of children in their society. Dickens illustrates a kind of society that can be described as having uncaring parents that do not have any idea about the children they have born. In fact, instead of these parents standing out as their protectors, they are actually condemning and adding bitterness in their lives. Making most of them to move away and find some solace in the streets and other companies that they think are actually suitable and helpful, which is very contrary, since most of them end up facing abuses from the uncaring street life. According to Dickens, it seems that death is actually the eventual symbol of the child’s suffering and happens in most cases on the children in their earlier years on the streets. This is actually sad because children are supposed to be celebrated as people that can grow to become change agents in the society, but when they die because of the cruel street life, then it becomes difficult to anticipate a society that can develop positive attitudes not only to the children but also to the other members of the society. Dickens’s motivation in writing about children The motivation to write about children by Dickens seems to stem from the fact that he was actually a victim of a series of hardships during his early life. This painful childhood memories are actually what Dickens wants to portray so that he can help protect children in their growth. Dickens notes that like Copperfield, the kind of happiness he seems to enjoy is not that which he wanted. For this reason, he always had a craving for something bigger and better that would have helped change his life. Dickens disappointment in life seems to have come in his middle years, the moment he realized that life was actually not a kind of fairly story, but something quite different. Dickens realized that the society was a kind of uncaring and unconcerned system that paid little attention to children. This motivated Dickens to take a pen and paper and write several novels that highlight the plight of children in the normal society (Chien 2012, 201), illustrating how few of these children rise up to become heroes and heroines with many of them dying in their childhood because of the harsh life. Criticisms about being too sentimental in writing about children Perhaps it is important to begin by focusing on the question of what really sentimentality is actually all about. Sentimentality can be described as a kind of manipulation tactic, or a special kind of emotion. It is an actual desire for a person to be mixed with feelings of self regard and being overwhelmed (Cassuto 2009, 21). It can also be said to be a kind of overwrought response to various instances of trigger. In writing about children, sentimentality has often been question in various instances. One of the criticisms raised against this factor is that it sometimes brings about false feelings that may not actually be an actual representation of the emotions on the ground. In most cases, people tend to be moved by the plight of children, while being sentimental achieves this development very much, it sometimes seems to exaggerate the actual feelings and experiences. Sentimentality can make some people to easily ignore the fact that children or other people being the subject matter in the writing. In this case, the writers of children affairs may seem to use this tool simply to make people convict themselves. In as much as children face some of the evils being highlighted, sentimentality does not often depict the lives of the few children that are brought up in conducive environments, something that can also motivate parents and caregivers to show concern for this children in their growth and development (Solomon 2004, 57). For this reason, writers that depend on sentimentality in order to drive their message home should balance between its ability to deliver the set objectives and the negative impacts it can have in the same process. Conclusion It can be seen that the decision to pick on David Copperfield and Oliver twist did not seem to happen as a mere coincidence; rather it was because of the ability of these books to effectively illustrate the suffering and different plights of children in their growing in the society. The main theme illustrated in these works is the actual challenges and problems that children face and the reactions from the society, which seem to be a total neglect of these factors and developments. These works depict of the 19th century society that offers little attention to problems and challenges affecting the minors. In this century, many institutions had just began to growth, developing at a tremendous rate. The present population at that time could not provide the much needed labour force in these institutions. For this reason, child labour started to emerge, with children being forced to work in the mills and factories. Additionally, children were also forced to work in these mills and factors alongside other places because of poverty, families paid little attention to their problems and challenges because they were motivated at making money that would be used to sustain their livelihoods. In this case, some people took this development as an opportunity to exploit the children physically and emotionally, with sexual abuses being most common. Most of the children had to die in their childhood because of these and many other problems that they were being exposed to. Some had to run to the streets, where they thought they would find some solace; however, things did not change as expected. This is because, the streets to not have mentors that can guide these children; instead, they piled more misery as the children continued facing more physical and emotional abuses from people they thought would care for them. Dickens and Oliver twist (Carney 2012, 133), in their literally works, try to illustrate these problems and challenges that children face in the streets and other sections of the society, especially from people they think can protect them. The moral lessons in these novels point to the need to protect and care for children in different ways. Bibliography Allen, M. 2008. "A Sketch of the Life". A Companion to Charles Dickens. David Paroissien. Blackwell Publishing, The United Kingdom. Browne, M., & Dickens, C. 1938. Oliver Twist. Childrens Theatre Press, Anchorage, Ky. Carney, B. 2012. "Introduction: Mr. Popular Sentiment‟: Dickens and Feeling 19" Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century. Vol 14. No. 3, 123-143. Cassuto, L. 2009. Hard-boiled sentimentality: The secret history of American crime stories. Columbia University Press, New York. Chien, C. S. 2012. "Dickens Orphans as figures for justice" .Whampoa –An Interdisciplinary Journal . Vol 63. No. 2, 193-206. Clark, B. 2003. Kiddie lit: The cultural construction of childrens literature in America. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Cunningbam, H. 2008 "Dickens as a reformer". A Companion to Charles Dickens. David Paroissien. Blackwell publishing, The United Kingdom. Dailey, D. 2005. Charles Dickens who wrote what. Chelsea House Publishers, China. Dickens, C. 2002. David Copperfield. York press, London. Dunn, J, R. 2004. A Routledge literary sourcebook on Charles Dickens David Copperfield. Routledge, New York. Grellet, F. 2002. Literature in English. Hachette Superior, Paris. Solomon, R. 2004. In defense of sentimentality. Oxford University Press, Oxford England. Read More