Scholarship on Dickens Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Scholarship on Dickens - Essay ExampleIn those days, London was described as the doomed metropolis with un healthy living conditions and was a galore of diseases. There were four epidemics of cholera within Dickenss own lifetime and, beside these mortal visitations, there were biweekly and regular outbreaks of typhus, typhoid fever, epidemic diarrhoea, dysentery, smallpox and a variety of ailments which were classified only as fevers.2 To improve the health condition of the people of London and different cities that were the main breeding ground for all diseases that would spread later to the rural areas of England, Dickens knew that sanitary conditions of the cities should improve. We see him attending many meetings to talk on behalf of sanitary improvement. Passionately arguing the case of sanitary reform in London on May 10th 1851, Charles Dickens said I can honestly declare that the use I have since that time made of my eyes and nose have only strengthened the conviction that c ertain sanitary reforms essential precede all other social remedies, and thatneither education nor religion can do anything useful until the way has been paved for their ministrations by cleanliness and decency.3 Sanitary campaign in London and other cities started only in his latter life.He was an influential social reformer of his time in many fields and be so very well-known, his views were respected. His characters of imagination provided him ample platform to argue the social reforms that he craved to see in the difficult times of Victorian England. His magazines and speeches on social injustice show him as one of the main propagandists of the time. He advocated the reforms without being specific about them. His desire was to see any kind of relievo to the sufferers. For example the Hard Times was based on a labour dispute in the weaving industry which was referred as The Preston Lockout 1853-54. According to George Bernard Shaw, he was a revolutionary without knowing it4. In a