Topic= Oliver Twist
Dickens’s childhood
As we know from his memoir, after his father was imprisoned for debt, the 12-year-old Charles was sent to work in Warren’s blacking factory pasting labels on blacking bottles. Dickens remembered the experience both as a humiliation, and as a descent into the amoral world of London lowlife. ‘But for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond’. Dickens sees the possible other path his life might have taken: when he declares in his 1841 Preface that ‘I wished to show, in little Oliver, the principle of Good surviving through every adverse (difficult) circumstance, and triumphing at last’, he is suggesting that he was also lucky- maybe protected by Providence (fate).
What links can you make between what you have read and the novel?
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Answers
Explanation:
Boot polish factory where 12-year-old Dickens was sent to work, fixing labels to bottles of blacking, to help support his family. Dickens had dreams of becoming a gentleman and was humiliated working with the rough men and boys at the factory. The experience had a major impact on Dickens later life and works and also on his relationship with his mother who, after Charles left the factory as the result of a quarrel between his father and the owners of the factory, argued unsuccessfully to have him sent back. Dickens relates the misery he felt during this time in the fictionalized account of David Copperfield working at Murdstone and Grinby's warehouse (David Copperfield). Warren's Blacking Factory was located at 30 Hungerford Stairs, the Strand. A ferry operated at the stairs until 1845 when Hungerford foot bridge opened , hoping to spur trade at Hungerford Market. The market was torn down in 1860 to make way for Charing Cross railway station and the footbridge was replaced by a railway bridge in 1863. The railway company argued that few people used the footbridge due to the smell from the river. The Micawbers take temporary lodging in a "little, dirty, tumble-down public-house" at Hungerford stairs before emigrating to Australia (David Copperfield).