Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Both in his lifetime and afterwards, Dickens had a reputation as a reformer. Many have credited him with creating the climate of opinion that facilitated the reforms in education, public health, and criminal law that helped to make Britain a safer and less strife-ridden society. He was also well known as a critic of existing structures of power, puncturing the pomposity and self-delusion of politicians and other office-holders. And yet, examined closely, and case by case, it becomes less and less easy to see him straightforwardly as a reformer. There were others with a claim to the title of reformer who had much clearer diagnoses for and solutions to British ills than did Dickens. Dickens stood on shifting and uncomfortable ground amongst such reformers, his responses to situations often seeming to attract the label of “conservative” as much as “radical.” This does not mean that he did not attack abuses in his society, nor that his reputation as a reformer was undeserved; rather, his responses to particular issues were shaped by his abiding concern for decency and humanity, and not by any coherent doctrine of the proper role of the state.Britain during Dickens's lifetime was undergoing changes unprecedented in speed and scope. Brought up in the age of the stagecoach, Dickens lived as an adult in the age of the railway, the telegraph, and the steam vessel. Economic historians are ... log in or subscribe to read full text