The Disease Writing In Charles Dickens’ Novels

In Charles Dickens’ novels,the disease writing plays an important part in narration.Not only does it contribute to his novels’ structure,but it also includes metaphor meanings.Disease writing represents Dickens’ political stand and moral standards.He uses it as the allegory and the treatment of moral as well.Disease can be normally divided into physical disease and mental disease.Gout,plague and epilepsy are three kinds of physical diseases which occupy a big part in his physical diseases writing.Similarly,PTSD and madness are two typical kinds of mental diseases.Obviously,the type of disease and the character who should suffer from illness are elaborately considered in Dickens’ novels,and his purpose is breaking the prejudice that some diseases belongs to special class or gender.In Victorian era,the middle class came to power,and they took a series of measures to improve social problems.Dickens’ disease writing is closely linked with the new Poor Law and the Public Health Reform lead by Chadwick.On the one hand,Dickens satirizes that the new Poor Law causes kids and women lacking of nutrition or outbreak of plague.In the Public Health Reform,ruling class classifies moral,poverty and cleaning as the same,and under this condition do they make policy to discipline poor people.It’s different from Dickens’ thought.Dickens also think that the reform do good to poor people’s diseases.On the other hand,he regards caritas as the key of his disease cure’s metaphor.Society’s relationship should be based on the principle of caritas,so that can public apathy and class hatred be cured.Dickens’ also did a lot to reduce the risk of disease in real life.Diseases are a plot device in novels and take the important narration role.The disease writing in Dickens novels is meticulous and authentic,and also shows his works’ realism tendency and his rich life experiences.Diseases are always transitions and foreshadowings for the structure of novels.And it is a component of the skill “reversal”.In addition it can also enhance the comic or tragic effect to arouse readers’ resonance.