Explain the contribution of Charles Dickens in the field of English literature.
CHARLES Dickens highlights the changes brought about in people’s lives and characters by industrialisation. His novels stress on the evil effects of industrialisation.
- In his novel ‘Hard Times’ (1854) he describes, ‘Coketown’ (a fictitious industrial town), as a grim place .full of machinery, smoking chimneys, rivers polluted, purple and buildings that all looked the same, workers had no identity, they were known as “hands’ — operators of machines. The greed for more profits had reduced human beings into simple instruments. Human qualities were fast disappearing. Rich people had no concern for the poverty stricken people living in inhuman conditions.
- His ‘Oliver Twist’ (1838) gives harsh details of workers and unemployed poor. Dicken’s ‘Oliver Twist’ is the tale of a poor orphan who lived in a world of petty criminals and beggars. It gives harsh details of the grim conditions of the workers and the unemployed poor. However, Oliver was finally adopted by a wealthy man and lived happily ever after.