Abuse In Victorian Times Analysis

Today, we address our nation as very corrupt. In between the politics, crime, and other detrimental events we find a multitude of problems within our government and ethics, but what we fail to realize is as a world we have come a long way. In the Victorian Period, trials and punishments were unjust. Many accused and guilty criminals were set free simply because of their lawyer’s social standard or a lower-class person who was innocent was accused of a crime so someone of higher class could get away with it. Children and even adults were abused because it became normalized and many people were forced into inimical working conditions. Throughout Great Expectations, Charles Dickens addresses the corrupt aspects of the Victorian Period through …show more content…
Child and spouse abuse was often seen as normal. What we think of as child abuse in present time was seen only as a strict way of growing up in Victorian time. Charles Dickens addresses this in Great Expectations by demonstrating the crudeness Mrs. Joe used towards Pip and Joe. According to chapter 2 of Great Expectations it states, “My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbors because she had brought me up "by hand." Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand”. Being brought up by hand created a fear in Pip that carried over into his adulthood. The corruptness of this abuse is demonstrated when Pip meets Estella and she is crude and obnoxious and Pip views it as okay because that’s the only way he’s seen a woman act. Pip also develops a fear for an object called the tickler. As stated in Great Expectations “a wax-ended piece of cane warned smooth by collision with my tickled frame” These canes and blunt objects were often used as destruction to a child’s imagination in order to keep them cooperative and in place. In today’s society if you lay a hand on a child you could be locked …show more content…
It was not uncommon for children to be chimney sweepers. They would be lowered into a chimney, where they would clean until perfection, but many times breathing in the debris had detrimental effects on the child’s body. It was also not uncommon for children as young as five to begin working in the factory. A vast number of adults and children died every day from the accidents and the harsh and brutal conditions of the factory. This demonstrates corruptness because people should not have to wake up in the morning fearing their death at their occupation. Charles Dickens himself was sent to work at a factory at a very young age and resented his father for it. He was never allowed the chance at an actual childhood. Dickens demonstrates this corruptness in Great Expectations by leading us to believe early on that Pip is to become a blacksmith. Pip, like Charles Dickens, was expected to work from a very young age and not given the opportunity of a