On Descriptions Of Poverty By British Writers In Victorian Era

The article is parted to five chapters to probe into the descriptions of poverty by British writers in Victorian Era, with a specific study of the writing of Charles Dickens and George Gissing. The first chapter surveys the causes and characteristics of social poverty in Victorian Era, as well as the endeavor English society made to understand and to alleviate impoverished problem, and it also lines the literary writings connected to social poverty during the19th century into a sequence with three intervals. The second chapter focuses on how Dickens describes social poverty. It summarizes Dickens’ presentation of the unbearable living condition and miserable life of the poor lived in London and some other industrial cities, and indicates his descriptions of crime and death are of multiple suggestions. The third chapter discusses how Gissing thought and wrote about life in poverty. It shows the experiences as a marginal man of middle-class caused his theme to move from descriptions of the labor and the poor to the torture that civilized young men living in poor suffered, and reveals that Gissing particularly stressed the negative influence impoverished life made on people’s spirit and morality. The forth chapter aims at presenting how the sense of belonging to middle-class effected the writers’descriptions of poverty. This chapter indicates that Dickens and Gissing, with the premise of confirming their belonging to middle class in their own writing, assessed the responsibility people from all ranks took in alleviating impoverished problem and held a worthwhile skepticism about several social practices at easing poverty of the day. The last chapter concludes the synchronic effect and the diachronic meaning of descriptions of poverty by British writers in Victorian Era. It points out that fictions in Victorian era, with its extensive social impact, confronted the selfish and relentless economic Utilitarianism; therefore they were beneficial to repair the diverging trends in the transitional society. It also suggests those writing, as special historical record and superb literary masterpiece, still holds permanent attraction to people all over the world as time passes by.