Portrayal of the Child in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations

Abstract

Charles Dickens is one of few novelists who have portrayed the plight and predicament of children in Victorian society. Perhaps it had been cathartic for him since his own childhood had been testing and tough. Most of his novel’s dwell at length on children’s sufferings and psychology. Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and David Copperfield are the prominent ones. Present paper attempts to elucidate and elaborate

upon the circumstances in a child’s life which blight not only his childhood but whole life. The paper attempts to draw focus on social structure of the time which couldn’t provide healthy and harmonious milieu to the children who were orphans and had to fend themselves. It is a pungent satire on societal norms of Victorian Era Where children like Pip and Estella undergo traumatic experience in the hands of adults like Ms Havisham and Pumblechook