Christopher Hibbert's biography examines the early writing of Charles Dickens and demonstrates the ways that Dickens's early life and experiences informed the plots and characters in his famous works.
What follows is an excerpt from an essay written by J. H. Plumb that appeared in Horizon Magazine, Autumn 1967.
Which Age of Anxiety?
Most of Dickens's heroes begin their lives cut off from other people. Insecure, obliged to make their way in a strange, discordant, threatening world, they try to become accepted by it and become a part of it, to understand it and to understand themselves, and in the meantime they share the sense of deprivation that made Paul Dombey live with "an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold, and bare, and strange."
Even Samuel Pickwick feels compelled to conclude that "we are all the victims of circumstances, and I the greatest." For though his adventures are comic, the world in which they take place is essentially a menacing, savage world where only the fittest will survive and the unprotected, the simple, and the good will be treated with indifference if not with cruelty. It is a world in which men live secret lives, in which, as Sairey Gamp says in Martin Chuzzlewit, "we never know wot's hidden in each other's hearts; and if we had glass winders there, we'd need keep the shutters up, some on us, I do assure you!"
The disquieting sese of being watched in this world, of being spied upon and caught out by gleaming eyes, eager eyes, spying eyes, eyes that stare, which constantly and disturbingly appear, and of being choked or suffocated in a stifling room, or lost in a labyrinth of streets, as in Oliver Twist; the images of crumbling riverside house that totter suddenly into ruin as the houses of Tom-all-Alone's do in Bleak House and the Clennam's house does in Little Dorrit; the desire to escape from the imprisoning city back to the countryside of innocent childhood, as shown in the Old Curiosity Shop; the fascination with dirty, muddled, crowded, fungus-ridden interiors; the concern with money; the plots that time and again revolve around a family mystery and the dread of its revelation; and of course, the difficulties of the relationships between parents and their children, which are investigated in novel after novel - all these ideas and symbols and themes that repeatedly occur in Dickens's writing can be interpreted in the light of the traumatic experiences and sufferings of these few months of his thirteen year."
Alice C. Linsley
When Dickens was age 13, his parents sent him to work at Warren's Blacking, 30, Hungerford Stairs, Strand. There he worked 12-hour days, earning six shillings a week to support his family. He felt abandoned, discouraged about having to leave his school, and stunned by the turn of events.
Warren's warehouse was filthy, ramshackle, and rat-infested. The floors and staircase were rotten and the lighting poor. The work was repetitive and boring. Charles felt the distance between himself, as son of a gentleman, and the other boys who worked there. He was forever conscious of what he called "a space between us" a distance accentuated by his more polished conduct and manners. Though Dickens only spent about 6 months at Warren's Blacking, his misery during that time shaped his future writing.
Charles' feelings about that time of his life are expressed on his novel David Copperfield:
"I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!"
Dickens's novels are crowded with orphans, prisons, dirt and poverty. These are symbols of the emotions the young Dickens felt, and they helped to produce one of the most prolific and enduring British writers the world has known.
Related reading: Charles Dickens on English Churches
