Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Researching History Behind the Novel
After finishing the second chapter of Oliver Twist, I am extremely shocked at a few things. First, I did some research to see if places such as Mrs. Mann's actually existed in the 1820's, and I found that they did. Apparently some of them had only 1 out of every 10 babies live. This has changed my outlook on the entire novel. I have so much sympathy for Oliver now, growing up in a place where you only see death! I also decided to look up what a "Beadle" is, because I had no idea at first. Apparently it is basically a person in charge of a workhouse. That definition really helped me understand Mr. Bumble's role in the rest of chapter two.
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It seems Dicken's books had a lot of reality to them. I think you can start to get a sense of the society and living conditions of the time while reading his novels. In the front of my book, I have a time line of Charles Dicken's life as well as a historical timeline. It's pretty interesting to see the things that happened leading up to Oliver Twist. Some of note may include; Great Reform Bill, abolishment of slavey, and the start of chartism.
ReplyDeleteThat was really eye-opening for me to realize as well, because at first, as I was reading, it seemed like Dickens was painting a picture of this far away, imaginary world, yet I have to remind myself that this was a reality for many children in the early 1800s. It was hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of these workhouses that seemed even worse than a modern jail, but they were in fact very real to many, many people.
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