Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Notes on references
- PART I LIFE AND AFTERLIFE
- PART II SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
- 12 Popular culture
- 13 The rise of celebrity culture
- 14 The newspaper and periodical market
- 15 Authorship and the professional writer
- 16 The theatre
- 17 Melodrama
- 18 The Bildungsroman
- 19 Visual culture
- 20 The historical novel
- 21 The illustrated novel
- 22 Christmas
- 23 Childhood
- 24 Work
- 25 Europe
- 26 The Victorians and America
- 27 Educating the Victorians
- 28 London
- 29 Politics
- 30 Political economy
- 31 The aristocracy
- 32 The middle classes
- 33 Urban migration and mobility
- 34 Financial markets and the banking system
- 35 Empires and colonies
- 36 Race
- 37 Crime
- 38 The law
- 39 Religion
- 40 Science
- 41 Transport
- 42 Illness, disease and social hygiene
- 43 Domesticity
- 44 Sexuality
- 45 Gender identities
- Further reading
- Index
24 - Work
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Notes on references
- PART I LIFE AND AFTERLIFE
- PART II SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
- 12 Popular culture
- 13 The rise of celebrity culture
- 14 The newspaper and periodical market
- 15 Authorship and the professional writer
- 16 The theatre
- 17 Melodrama
- 18 The Bildungsroman
- 19 Visual culture
- 20 The historical novel
- 21 The illustrated novel
- 22 Christmas
- 23 Childhood
- 24 Work
- 25 Europe
- 26 The Victorians and America
- 27 Educating the Victorians
- 28 London
- 29 Politics
- 30 Political economy
- 31 The aristocracy
- 32 The middle classes
- 33 Urban migration and mobility
- 34 Financial markets and the banking system
- 35 Empires and colonies
- 36 Race
- 37 Crime
- 38 The law
- 39 Religion
- 40 Science
- 41 Transport
- 42 Illness, disease and social hygiene
- 43 Domesticity
- 44 Sexuality
- 45 Gender identities
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
There are two ways to approach the relationship between Dickens's novels and Victorian work, one through his biography and the other through the history of the industrialisation and urbanisation of Britain in the nineteenth century. It is easy to trace the impact of Dickens's early experiences of work as a 12-year-old child at Warren's Blacking in his opposition to child labour and general sympathy for working people, but the restructuring of Britain by the forces of industrialisation and urban growth is equally important in understanding the types of labour that he represents in his various novels. Complicating analysis of the theme of work in Dickens, however, is the tendency in Victorian novels to render labour invisible and to represent it through plots focussing on domestic settings, interpersonal relationships and issues of gender and sexuality.
From the late eighteenth century onwards Britain was transformed from an agricultural to an industrial society as the population moved from the country to industrial cities such as Manchester and Birmingham, or to the economic and political centre of London, seeking better wages if not better living conditions. From 1801 to 1851 the population in the principal towns and cities tripled, resulting, not surprisingly, in appalling overcrowding. London went from 958,803 to 2,362,236 inhabitants in this period, spawning some notorious slum areas and inspiring Dickens's description of Jacob's Island in Oliver Twist.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Charles Dickens in Context , pp. 194 - 202Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011