What are the detrimental effect of child labour? Discuss Oliver Twist as a critique of child labour?

Name : Radha B. Ghevariya Paper no : 6: The Victorian Age Roll No. : 22 Sem : M.A (Sem:2) Year : 2015 Submitted to : Smt. S.B . Gardi Development Of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction

- Charles Dickens was an English Writer and Social Critic. -Born: 7, February,1812 -Died: 9 June , 1870 : Notable Works : 1)The Pickwick Paper 2) Oliver Twist 3)Great Expectation etc,…..

About Book

Historical fiction

Social criticism

Portrayal of criminals

What are the detrimental effect of child labour?

Considerable differences exist between the many kinds of work children do some are difficult and demanding , other more hazardous and even morally reprehensible children carry out a very wide range of tasks and activities when they work.

Poverty in Victorian England

In the 19th century , rapid changes in employment , housing and social welfare brought about a huge change in people’s lives. The period of adjustment led to many workers living in extreme poverty and even dying on city streets of starvation in Victorian times.

Oliver Twist as a Child Labour?

- Oliver Twist who had been orphan. - who sold out a child labor. - the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. - The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of hardships as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own early youth as a child labourer contributed to the story's development.

Oliver Twist as a Child Labour?

Oliver Twist , Charles Dickens gives the reader an inside look at the shocking social effect of poverty in Victorian England. Dickens describes poverty as “repulsive” and “loathsome”. He talks about the slums themselves in Oliver Twist :

“ Every repulsive lineament of poverty , every loathsome indication

of filth ,rot and garbage ;all these ornament the banks of folly ditch”

In a Oliver Twist , Charles Dickens indicates that child labour was another dreadful factor of poverty.

Recruitment of

children

Presence of street children

Child labor

Contemporary evil

Dickens later said,

“I know that , but for the mercy of

god , I might easily have been ….. A little robber or a little vagabond”

Conclusion

In Oliver Twist, Dickens mixes grim realism with merciless satire to describe the effects of industrialism on 19th-century England and to criticize the harsh new Poor Laws.

Oliver, an innocent child, is trapped in a world where his only options seem to be the workhouse, Fagin's gang, a prison, or an early grave.