He did not have much especially when his father was always in jail. He had to go to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory at the age of twelve due to the circumstance that his whole family was imprisoned (Cody 1). Charles Dickens was born into a middle class family in Chatham, England being the eldest of all the children. He was always blissful when he was a child, but as he got elder more things started happening. The problems his family had altered the way he looked at certain situations.
It was 1824 and young Dickens was only 12 years old (Coles 564). To help his father out of debt, Charles worked under the horrible conditions of a blacking factory (Collins 15). According to Edmund Spenser, quoted in Phillip Collins' Dickens and Crime, these events "lie behind the loneliness, disgrace, and outlawry which pervade all his novels" (15). Collins concurs: It is a commonplace that his sympathy for suffering and neglected children, which lies at the root of his educational concern, drew much of its strength from the traumatic experience of his own childhood--the period, about his 12th year when the family was in financial straits, ... ... middle of paper ... ...lodge where some fetter were hanging up on the bare walls among the prison rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time, jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent all public wrong-doing .
This obviously caused him to have a lack of appropriate education, so Dickens began to develop on interest into books. He was later sent back to school when his dad got out of jail, but when his parents could again no longer afford to pay for their son’s education, he found work in a law office, then as a newspaper reporter. It was here that Dickens’ taught himself shorthand,” (www.ucsc.edu/dickens/DEA/ACC/dickens.bio.html, Dickens’ Life and The Carol). This began the writing of the many Dickens’ classics we enjoy to this very day. One particular book being, A Christmas Carol, a well-known holiday classic.
John was sent to prison for debt in 1824 when Dickens was twelve years of age. Dickens worked in an unsanitary boot-blacking factory to provide money to his family, leaving school entirely. Although he started earning a fair amount of money at his factory job, he strived for educational
Even when his father was free, there was not enough money to support the family adequately. So Charles was taken out of school at the age of 12 to go to work in a factory pasting labels on bottles. He only had the job for a few months, but the shock affected him deeply. The images of prison life and of mistreated or lost children appeared in many of his novels. Charles attended school off and on until the age of 15 when he left for good.
His experiences in the factory are displayed, in one of his more famous novels. 'David Copperfield', as he described it to be 'the secret agony of my soul'. He worked in the blacking factory until 185, when he showed his hurt and disgust to his parents by saying, 'how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age'. In 1827, Dickens went to work for a firm of solicitors, but he quickly found he didn't like the law, possible because of his father's earlier problems with it, and he found himself being drawn into the literacy world. He got to write instalments of his later classic novels in local magazines and published every fortnight.
After his father went to prison, at the age of twelve, Charles had to go to work for a few months as a warehouse employee, blackening shoes and putting labels on boxes. During this period in his life, (while his father was in jail) was painful for him and is later influenced in some of his writings such as the novel David Copperfield. His father was the inspiration of one of the characters, Mr. Micawber. Charles Dickens never had much of the opportunity to be a child. Many of his novels such as Oliver Twist and Philip Pirrip express the struggles he faced growing up.
Still unable to satisfy his creditors, John Dickens was arrested and sent to Marshalsea Prison. At age 12, Charles found work at Warren's Blacking Factory, where he was paid six shillings a week wrapping shoeblack bottles. The brief time that he worked at the Blacking Factory haunted him all of his life. He spoke of it only to his wife and to his closest friend, John Forster. The rough time he had there would show up in his stories David Copperfield and in Great Expectations.
It was birthed as the result of the life of Charles Dickens, his time period, and his boyhood experiences. Dickens was born in February of 1812 in England. His parents were middle-class, but suffered financially. Dickens was forced to quick school and work in a blacking factory when he was only 12 because of his father, brother, and mother going to jail because of debt. A few weeks after he started working, his father, mother, and siblings were put into debtor’s prison.
This resulted in the family being forced to sell most of their possessions but that still was not enough to satisfy his creditors and he ended up being arrested and put in Marshalsea Prison. His father was apparently the inspiration for the character of Mr Micawber in “David Copperfield” and also within “Great Expectations” the character Magwitch is seen as a father like figure who is a convict. Both characters were created and influenced by Dickens’s past. Once his father was imprisoned the entire family, apart from Charles, were sent to Marshalsea along with their patriarch. Charles was 12 years old when he was taken out of school and sent to work in Warren's blacking factory and endured appalling conditions as well as loneliness and despair.