Bitter childhood was Charles Dickens' greatest inspiration

Bitter childhood was Charles Dickens' greatest inspiration

Arwind Bondre | Tuesday, February 7, 2012


As well-known Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini said, all art is autobiographical, and we do find autobiographical elements in the literary creations of many writers. But few have drawn on their past as profusely as Charles Dickens. In fact, it is obvious that the bitter experiences of his troubled childhood became a source of continuing inspiration for him.

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, at Portsea (later part of Portsmouth) on England’s southern coast and has been generally hailed as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. While it was an age alive with a revolution in commercial enterprise and immense advances in the use of mechanical devices, and was greeted by many as the new era of prosperity, it also had its dark side. The era became notorious for the employment of children in factories and mines.

This was the social environment in which Dickens spent his early years and he was naturally affected by it. His father, John, a clerk in the navy pay office, was well paid, but his carelessness in money matters often brought the family to the brink of disaster. In 1824, when Charles was 12, the family reached the bottom, and he was withdrawn from school and sent to work in Warren’s blacking factory, while John went to the debtors’ prison. At the factory, Charles was paid six shillings a week for a 12-hour day, from 8am to 8pm, with an hour off for lunch and half an hour for tea.
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These working hours were, of course, usual then. It’s no wonder that these events deeply affected the young boy. Though he was later sent to school again, the experience of lonely hardship was never forgotten.

It seems, as biographer Christopher Hibbert points out, Dickens managed to keep secret these days of his childhood which filled him with extreme shame and bitterness, but could not control himself from bringing the name, Warren’s blacking, and the advertisements which made it famous, in his writings. In Great Expectations, for example, the first thing Joe Gargery does, when he comes to London, is go and look for the Blacking Ware’us. And in Barnaby Rudge, the old house in which the secrets of the past are buried — one of many such houses in Dickens’s works which are used as symbols of repression — is called The Warren!

Moreover, many of Dickens’s heroes seem to be cut off from other people, feel insecure, and have a sense of deprivation. In his clearly autobiographical novel David Copperfield, while depicting the typical course of a young man’s life in Victorian England, Dickens, of course, fictionalised many elements of his own childhood. But also in Oliver Twist we meet the boy-worker — “a poor houseless, wandering boy without a friend to help him, or a roof to shelter his head”.

In addition to being perhaps the most famous novelist of the Victorian age, Dickens was an influential social reformer. Of all the great British authors of the 19th century who wrote on the social evils of their time, few reached the level of his eloquence. He was undoubtedly an important participant in the social reform of Victorian England. His work was highly praised for its realism and social concern by writers like Leo Tolstoy and GK Chesterton. But perhaps some of the best words of appreciation for this great Victorian writer came from Queen Victoria herself when she wrote, ‘He had a large loving mind and the strongest sympathy for the poorer classes. He felt sure a better feeling, and much greater union of classes would take place in time. And I pray earnestly it may.’

There is, of course, no doubt that in spite of the extremely troubled childhood, one striking facet of Dickens’s personality remained intact — his unique sense of humour. In his Sketches By Boz he exhibited his tremendous power of observation of people and their idiosyncrasies. Soon after, when The Pickwick Papers was published in 1836, his reputation as a great humorist was firmly established in the English-speaking world. Some even say it is very likely that future generations will know him chiefly as a humorist, as his humour was broad, humane, and creative.

Today, when the world celebrates his 200th birthday, there is no doubt that Dickens’s special place in the Hall of Fame remains assured.

—The author is an entrepreneur and founder trustee of Arbutus, an NGO working in education for sustainable development