Children and parents in the works of Charles Dickens

Roulstone, Anthony Richard (1969). Children and parents in the works of Charles Dickens. University of Birmingham. M.A.

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Abstract

In this study the role and importance of the child and parent-child relationships are examined. It is suggested that these topics, together with the associated symbol of the inheritance, form the centre of Dickens's creative interest.
The child is important in Dickens's novels as a character; but Dickens's interest in and understanding of childhood are distinctively expressed in his characteristic adoption of the child's point of view. The vision of the world presented in Dickens, in its concrete immediacy, its imaginative freshness and its contact with fairy tale, magic and mythology, is frequently that of the young child. This deployment of the child's point of view, which is seen as an important source of Dickens's insight into human life and society, is studied in the first chapter.
This interest in the child is part of Dickens's deep concern with the confrontation and the resolution of the conflict and guilt that he finds in the parent-child relationship. His methods of approaching, exploring and resolving this conflict and guilt are studied in the second chapter. The chief problem of life is seen as adjusting to one's relationship to one's parents. The inheritance, which is used throughout Dickens's work as an important symbol of the complex bond between parent and child, forms the subject of the third chapter.

Type of Work:	Thesis (Masters by Research > M.A.)
Award Type:	Masters by Research > M.A.
Licence:
College/Faculty:	Faculties (to 1997) > Faculty of Arts
School or Department:	School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies, Department of English Literature
Funders:	None/not applicable
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman P Language and Literature > PR English literature
URI:	http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/6143

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