Children's Suffering in the Victorian Era: Study on Dickens' Great Expectations novel

Abstract

Victorian Age was a long period of success in English history. Everyday social life in Great Britain in the 19th century was most influenced by a social division of the whole society on social classes. Charles Dickens is the one of most famous Victorian novelist and famed literary personalities in the Victorian phase. Dickens concentrated on the social problems of his period. The novel " Great expectations " represents a number of exciting themes such as suffering of society, poverty, abuse children, and family life. The paper aims at investigating and analyzing Dickens' depiction of suffering children in his novel Great Expectations and to show the various kinds of children suffering. The researcher adopted descriptive analytic methods. The sample consists of one literary work written by Charles Dickens and other relevant tools of the previous studies such as the books and journals. Based on the investigation of the suffering of children in “Great Expectations”, the researcher find that Dickens represents the existing picture of the children suffering in his society and he tries to find out the reasons of children social suffering. Hence, we can assume that, Dickens has abilities to write about the social events. Finally the researcher recommends that the children must be looked after in their early life and bring up them in a good manner.