Charles Dickens as a Social Critic Abstract This article is an examination of Charles Dickens as a soc ial commentator and critic

who used fiction effectively to criticize economic, s ocial and vulnerable and disadvantage segments of English society and contribute d several important social reforms. The social consequences of industrialization and urbanization are perhaps more persuasively depicted in Hard Times. Dickens be lieved in the ethical and political potential of literature and the novel in par ticular, he treated his fiction as a spring board for debates about moral and so cial reforms. In his novels of social analysis Dickens became an outspoken criti c of unjust economic and social conditions. Introduction: The life of Charles Dickens can be seen to mirror the in tellectual patterns of the Victorian age, which he became the dominant literary figure. He started his career as a journalist. Dickens (1812 1870) journalism an d melodrama gathered into the novel to it new life in middleclass entertainment. His first success came with Sketches by Boz (1836), the kind of light humorous wr iting been popular for more than a century. The extension of this form into the novel The Pickwick Papers (1836 -37) established Dickens as a comic novelist in th e 18th century tradition represented by Smollett, whom he acknowledged as one of his masters. Dickens not only a novelist but also most important social comment ators who used fiction effectively to criticize economic, social, moral abuses i n the Victorian era. Dickens showed compassion and empathy towards the vulnerabl e and disadvantaged segments of English society, and contributed to social refor ms. The Novel a Repository of Social Conscience: Dickens was a great moralist and a perceptive s ocial commentator. Dickens believed in ethical, political potential of Literatur e and the novel in particular he treated his fiction as a spring bone for debate s about moral and social reform. In his novels of social analysis Dickens became an outspoken critic of unjust economic and social conditions. Dickens was much more than his predecessors in exposing the ills of the industrial society includ ing class division, poverty, bad sanitation privilege and meritocracy and the ex perience of the metropolis. In common with many 19th century authors Dickens use d to the novels as a repository of social conscience. Cazamion defines: A novelis t universally associated with social issues, he was attacked for allowing his im agination to come between his writing and his subject, and his underlying attitu des can be evasive Dickens Works: As he begins to play on his readers awareness of social pro blems and the growing conscience of the age Oliver Twist (1837 - 38) highlighted t he problems of poor city children who after the poor law act of 1833 ended up in the work house, or at the mercy of the crooks like Fagin and Bill Sykes. One of the most memorable images in the novel is when Oliver asks the work house maste r for more to eat... the sufferings of children continues in the Yorkshire schoo ls described in Nicholas Nickleby (1838 - 39), money emerges as the main influence behind the action here, a role it continues to play in late novels of the centu ry. In the 1840s, Dickens described increasingly realistically the society of his time, but with a faith and optimism which reaches a climax in the semi autobiog raphical David Copperfield (1849 -50). Dickens plots and portrayals of character ar e regarded by some critics as melodramatic and sentimental, but his insights int o human situations are frequently profound and always assessable. Hard Times (1854 ), subtitled For These Times is the most familiar of Dickens state of the nation nov els, perhaps because it is one of his shortest. It contains a picture of industr ialized English midlands which emphasizes the dehumanizing aspects of industrial revolution. For example, Charles Dickens informs the reader of the underlying i ssues that the novel highlights through the emphasis placed in the description o

f the place, as noted in Hard Times, when he describes the industrial town Coke to wn: It was a town of red brick or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it w as a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a sa vage. The emphasis of the red color though repetition, presents the reader with visual imagery as one tends to imagine the color in its original state, and after it h as been spoiled by smoke. The reality of the description of Coke town lies in th e true depiction of any industrial building in the real world, which eventually becomes soiled by the smoke from the manufacturing fires and machines. Furthermo re, the color red is also symbolic of blood, while black reminds the reader of evil. The two colors are juxtaposed against the word machinery propels one to conclude that machines cause blood and they are evil, while the word ashes insinuate death. Dickens deliberate diction in the description of the industrial town, executes t he idea that industrialization has resulted in the injuries and deaths of some w orkers. This view further reiterates the perception that Dickens was a critic of the Industrial Revolution, a phenomenon characteristic of realist literature. T herefore, as attested by Thibaudet a realistic work attains its perfect artistic level when, from its intense truth, we pass naturally and necessarily to a great symbolic intuition (Fanger and Emerson) Characterization: Beginning as a little more than a comic journalist, which enabled him to present his works to his readers stores set in his own day in which the vitality of characters, the enthusiastic savoring of their physical environment, the movement from comedy to pathos, from compassion to horror, the sheer high spirits which he rendered eccentrics, villains, unfortunates, hypocr ites, social climbers, criminals, innocence, bureaucrats, self deceivers, roiste rers, and confident men, human oddities of all kind with his own physical and mo re individuality each involved in rich pattern of interacting lives played out a gainst social background whose sights and sounds and smells where rendered with vivid particularity in which all this is presented with an almost reckless prof usion. Dickens began with a great sense of life and little sense of form capturi ng the individual oddity, the extravagant movement with remarkable skill and the n marking time as it were, until he could introduce another such moment. The dem and for Dickens novels was now enormous; he was assiduous in catering for his pub lic. His devices are often third rate, as they depend upon such themes as the de aths of little children. His genius had little tragic force. If Dickens moved on to profounder and better organized works, he never left behind him the qualitie s he demonstrated in Pickwick Papers. He never lost his touch for burlesque or for satirical comedy. His feeling for the eccentric, his sense inn as a symbolic as well as a literal crossing of the ways. Dickens, brilliant in his ability to pr eset the facts of human behavior in all richness and individuality is so far inc apable of illuminating its source or motives specially the extremes of either ma lice or humility or concern. Conclusion: Dickens as a social commentator exerted a profound influence on later novelist committed to social analysis. Some of his concerns with a condit ion of England question were further dealt within the novels of Charles Kingsley , George Eliot, George Gissing, and George Orwell and recently in the post moder n novels of Martin Amis and Zadie Smith. The disillusion and doubt which exist i n the later of Dickens became more dominant in late Victorian and early 20th cen tury literature, especially in the novel. The novels became increasingly popular and forum for the expression, discussion and shaping of ideals and ideas. The h istory of the period, then, was not always as emphatically the history of progress a s Macaulay asserted.

Books Referred 1. Carter, Ronald & McRae English. 2. Fielding, K.J. . 3. Kettle, Arnold l Essays and 4. Daiches, David erature Volume II. : The Routledge History of Literature in : : : Charles Dickens Critical Introduction The 19th Century Novel, Critica Documents. A Critical History of English Lit