Lesson 1: Charles Dickens’s Life

Read the information below, making notes, and answer the questions you are given at the end.

Charles Dickens’ mother was a formidable woman, whom Dickens adored. His father was an accountant on an excellent salary. Dickens’ father, John Dickens, was a very kind man but his money management skills were rather lacking. He had an excellent salary but he borrowed more than he could afford to pay back, having children and a house to pay for too. Consequently, he lost his house and his business. Debt was treated as a crime by wealthy Victorians who wanted their money back so John Dickens was sent to prison and his wife, Dickens’ mother, joined him there, taking with her the little children. Charles was sent to work in a blacking factory, which is one where labels are added to bottles.

Dickens was traumatised by his experience of working in blacking factory. He was shocked by how appalling working conditions were for some people, and at how the rich were prepared to mistreat people in order to make more money for themselves. Dickens’ bad experience drove him to write many stories about the hardships suffered by the poor, as he does in A Christmas Carol.

Poverty in London was widespread and families struggled. Dickens disliked the fact that children from poor families were expected to help their parents by working eight to twelve hours a day, six days a week, in jobs that were backbreaking or hazardous to health. An example of such a job was chimney sweeping: small children were nimble and slender so they were sent up chimneys to clean the flues. The price of life was cheap though. If a child fell, they would break their little bones and without healthcare, would be maimed or would die, their bodies sometimes thrown in the Thames. Little children could fall into washing machines in clothing factories or become jammed in machinery. If this was to happen, factory owners would simply find another child to replace them. So many families could not afford food or healthcare that they would happily send their children to work to support the families, in spite of the risks.

In Victorian England, many children were very ill. There was no National Health Service, meaning that medical care had to be paid for, or doctors had to provide it voluntarily. Most of the time, poor people were forced to cling to the hope that their church would provide charity from collections to cover healthcare costs. Sick children were working to pay for family food and for their own healthcare. If no care could be provided, people could not go to hospital where treatment was expensive and they would have to work, making themselves more unwell.

Wealthy Victorians believed that it was their God-given right to rule society. Staying wealthy was their top priority and they did whatever was necessary to remain on top and in control, even if it meant mistreating the poor. People who made laws in Parliament made these laws to help themselves and their wealthy friends to stay wealthy. Staying wealthy during the Victorian period involved being greedy and selfish and punishing those in debt with prison, rather

About the Author: Charles Dickens

Social Problems: Child Labour

Social Problems: Healthcare

Wealthy and Poor: The Divide

than helping them out of debt and supporting them in accessing food to feed families. It also meant not paying to improve working conditions for the poor.

Answer the following questions in full sentences. Ensure you include the question in your response at some point so you know what you are trying to say, e.g. 1. Charles Dickens’ earlier life was made difficult by…

1. What happened to Charles Dickens in his early life to make him unhappy with Victorian England?2. Why did Dickens have concerns about life in Victorian England?3. Why were children particularly at risk?4. Why was medical assistance difficult to access?5. How did Members of Parliament make their country worse?

Lesson 2: Oliver Twist characters

Click on this link to watch a video which summarises the plot of Oliver Twist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o909brBJvCo

Find out what you can from the video about the following characters: Fagin, Bill Sykes, Artful Dodger and write your answers below:

Fagin

Bill Sykes

Artful Dodger

Dickens creates a lot of characters who can be both good and bad. Some are wholly good and some are wholly villainous. Rank these characters in order of good to bad and justify your responses. Research the characters online to inform your answers.

Lesson 3: self-assessing your knowledge of character

Create a wanted poster for the character of Bill Sykes

This is an example of a Wanted! Poster but there are some errors and some features missing. Search online for Wanted! Posters to see what features should be here?

Look at the description of Bill Sykes on the slides in the lesson above and the information you learned about him during your research. What should be included here to help find him?

Lesson 4: creative work

Life for many Londoners, and those beyond London, was difficult if you were poor. Revisit your work from lesson 1 where you learned about the plight of those who were poor in London.

You are going to write a formal letter to the Mayor of London with the purpose of asking for changes to be made to protect those who were struggling to afford food and healthcare.

Step 1: find out the important facts from your lesson 1 research

Step 2: apply the following persuasive features to them, e.g. a persuasive triplet here could be, inept, indescribably dangerous and inhumane! (The prefix –in is used to show how unpleasant the conditions were).

Features of persuasion

D: direct address

A: alliteration

F: facts

O: opinions

R: rhetorical questions/repetition

E: emotive language (use emotions!)

S: statistics

T: triplets (rule of 3)

Your letter should have your address and the recipient address, a date, a salutation, an introduction, three main paragraphs with problems and solutions and a conclusion. You should also sign it from yourself.

If you have any questions, please ask your teacher on milk. If you would like to challenge yourself, use varied punctuation and sophisticated language, e.g. instead of the word ‘scruffy’ you could apply ‘filthy’ and instead of the word ‘messy’ you could apply the words ‘unkempt’ or ‘slovenly,’ ensuring grammar is correct.

Lesson 5: characterisation

In the novel Great Expectations, which is a tale of a boy plucked from obscurity by an unknown benefactor, to become a gentleman, characters are given names with meaning.

Chapter 1 of Great Expectations throws us into the world of Phillip Pirrip (Pip), an orphan boy who is visiting the graves of his mother, father and siblings. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a convict who has escaped from the prison hulks on the nearby marshes grabs Pip, demanding a file to break free from his chains.

Read the extract from chapter 1 up to, and including, “Do you know what a file is?”

How does Dickens grab the audience from the very start of the novel?

Give three ways Dickens hooks you.

Use PEE formats to help you shape your response.

Remember, you must not start with the quotation, e.g. The phrase, “You’re to be to let live,” makes me think… You must include a point, telling me how you are hooked.

Peppercorny Farinaceous Dickens was a master of language, particularly for describing characters and place. He often played

with language, much like Shakespeare before him, to create names for his characters that would reflect their personality.

Can you work out what the two words above might mean? Do you think they have good/bad meanings? Explain why?

At the start of this section we talked about Dickens’ use of language when naming characters or places. Look at these characters and places from Great Expectations. What does each imply about their character?

Pip Miss Havisham Estella Satis House

After you have completed the task, come up with a name you think Dickens would deem suitable for the escaped convict!

Lesson 6: crime and punishment in Victorian England

Prison Hulks

In Victorian England, hulks, ships that were no longer seaworthy, served as extra prisoner housing space due to prison overcrowding. They floated on the Thames around this area, roughly where the bridge across to Kent is now near the marshes.

Dickens wrote to The Times newspaper in November of 1849. He was appalled public hangings and wanted them

abolished.

TASK: Research crime and punishment in Victorian London, focusing on the prison hulks. What were conditions like? What crimes did people end up on the hulks for? Where did they often get sent to from the hulks? Would you rather be in a hulk or a prison? Justify your response.

What is Dickens trying to say about public hanging? How effective is Dickens’ argument about public hanging? Identify the persuasive devices that he uses and comment on how effective they are? How successfully

do you think he makes his point?

What do you think Dickens’ attitude to the convict in chapter 1 was? Do you think he feels any sympathy for this man? Does it show in his writing – look back on the extract again. Justify your responses with quotations and explanations.

Lesson 7:

Read the extract and answer the following questions:

• How does Dickens use language to influence our first impressions of Estella in chapter 8 (does he want us to like or dislike her and how does he make this happen)?

• Do you think her name is significant?

• How does she treat Pip when she greets him? What do you think about how she treats him?

• Can you tell what Pip thinks of her?

Explain your ideas using P.E.E responses.

Great Expectations: Chapter 8

Pip visits Satis House and meets Estella

I was very glad when ten o’clock came and we started for Miss Havisham’s; though I was not at all at my ease regarding the manner in which I should acquit myself under that lady’s roof. Within a quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham’s house, which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred. There was a court-yard in front, and that was barred; so, we had to wait, after ringing the bell, until some one should come to open it. While we waited at the gate, I peeped in (even then Mr. Pumblechook said, “And fourteen?” but I pretended not to hear him), and saw that at the side of the house there was a large brewery. No brewing was going on in it, and none seemed to have gone on for a long long time.A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded, “What name?” To which my conductor replied, “Pumblechook.” The voice returned, “Quite right,” and the window was shut again, and a young lady came across the courtyard, with keys in her hand.“This,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “is Pip.”“This is Pip, is it?” returned the young lady, who was very pretty and seemed very proud; “come in, Pip.”Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the gate.“Oh!” she said. “Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?”“If Miss Havisham wished to see me,” returned Mr. Pumblechook, discomfited.“Ah!” said the girl; “but you see she don’t.”She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr. Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not protest. But he eyed me severely—as if I had done anything to him!—and departed with the words reproachfully delivered: “Boy! Let your behaviour here be a credit unto them which brought you up by hand!” I was not free from apprehension that he would come back to propound through the gate, “And sixteen?” But he didn’t.My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the courtyard. It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice. The brewery buildings had a little lane of communication with it, and the wooden gates of that lane stood open, and all the brewery beyond stood open, away to the high enclosing wall; and all was empty and disused. The cold wind seemed to blow colder there, than outside the gate; and it made a shrill noise in howling in and out at the open sides of the brewery, like the noise of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea.She saw me looking at it, and she said, “You could drink without hurt all the strong beer that’s brewed there now, boy.”“I should think I could, miss,” said I, in a shy way.“Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out sour, boy; don’t you think so?”“It looks like it, miss.”“Not that anybody means to try,” she added, “for that’s all done with, and the place will stand as idle as it is, till it falls. As to strong beer, there’s enough of it in the cellars already, to drown the Manor House.”“Is that the name of this house, miss?”“One of its names, boy.”“It has more than one, then, miss?”“One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or all three—or all one to me—for enough.”“Enough House,” said I; “that’s a curious name, miss.”“Yes,” she replied; “but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house, could want nothing else. They must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think. But don’t loiter, boy.”Though she called me “boy” so often, and with a carelessness that was far from complimentary, she was of about my own age. She seemed much older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and self-possessed; and she was as scornful of me as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a queen.We went into the house by a side door—the great front entrance had two chains across it outside—and the first thing I noticed was, that the passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning there. She took it up, and we went through more passages and up a staircase, and still it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us.At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, “Go in.”

I answered, more in shyness than politeness, “After you, miss.”To this, she returned: “Don’t be ridiculous, boy; I am not going in.” And scornfully walked away, and—what was worse—took the candle with her.

Lesson 7: evaluating Miss Havisham

The skills you are using here are analysis: showing you understand why the author has used such language and, more importantly, showing what the author’s intention is! Remember, Dickens always had a purpose.

Your task: revisit your Havisham poem from last term.

1. Annotate the extract with lines from the poem, e.g. can you match the colour in the poem to describe her dress to the colour in the extract?

2. Explain, using information from the extract to help you, why Pip found her ‘strange.’3. What is the room like where Pip meets Miss Havisham? What is unusual about it? What does Pip notice? 4. To what extent do you feel sorry for Miss Havisham, knowing what you know about her from your research

on the character which you completed in your poetry module.

Lesson 8: evaluating Dickens’ writing

Five paragraphs are required here to show you understand the writing. Remember, effect is what it makes you think and feel and what it teaches you about a character. Does it bring vivid images to mind? Does it make you feel a

particular way towards them? This is preparation for your GCSE Dickens work next term so it is very helpful for you to start evaluating the effectiveness of his writing now.