Charles+Dickens'+A+Walk+in+the+Workhouse

Charles Dickens' article “A Walk in a Workhouse” was written in 1850 and published in the magazine //Household Words//. The article was meant to raise awareness about the sufferings of the London poor and the deficits of the system which supposedly helped them. In classic Dickensian style, the article is written in a highly-descriptive tone with strong use of literary devices such as metaphor, hyperbole, and dialogue. Dickens's unique style draws a dreary and emotive scene while simultaneously providing rich descriptions and vivid imagery. Compared to Dickens' novels, which center around similar themes such as class disparity and the horrors of poverty, “A Walk in a Workhouse” is far less exaggerated and provides a more level-headed account of the workhouse and its ills; however, as will be further explored, it is not completely objective.

//Household Words// was a weekly magazine that was published from 1850-1859. Dickens wrote, edited, and even had partial ownership of the publication. The heading proudly displayed the words “As Conducted by Charles Dickens” upon its cover (Slater 14). The publication cost 2 d. which made it aimed at a lower middle-class and middle-class audience. //Household Words// was considered a family-friendly publication and so it avoided the obscene, lewd, or offensive. This did not stop Dickens from publishing things which might at times disturb. He would often provide glimpses of the trials of the working class for his middle-class audience; another prominent example of this was in Dickens' exploration of the so-called “Ragged Schools” in his 1852 article, “A Sleep to Startle Us” (Donovan & Rubery 54-62).

//A Walk in a Workhouse// begins with Dickens describing the scene at a workhouse on a Sunday. Rather than simply stating that the majority of the poor gathered in the workhouse are women, the narrator uses vivid description to paint the scene with words, saying that “the children sat in the galleries, the women in the body of the chapel, and in one of the side aisles; the men in the remaining aisle” (Leighton & Surridge 116). The narrator doesn't stop there, he continues to characterize a portion of those gathered, using terms such as “evil-looking” and more colourfully “beetle-browed” – a term used to characterize bushy browed people with a negative connotation in the Victorian age – to describe some of the more nefarious looking of the poor (Leighton & Surridge 116). This characterization grows more pronounced in the descriptions of the elderly who Dickens describes as “mumbling, blear-eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame; winking in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in through the open doors” (Leighton & Surridge 116). These descriptors add a flair of the dramatic, but they are capped-off with Dickens making use of metaphor to describe poverty as a dragon, but it is not the kind of terror we may think, it is an impotent dragon that Dickens says is “hardly worth chaining up” (Leighton & Surridge 116).

Dickens article does not meet today's standard of journalism, it is not an exact reporting of the facts. Often the writing reads very similarly to fiction or at the very least as a story rather than a news article. This is because the article was designed partially to shed light but also to entertain its audience and was intended for a magazine. To modern day readers this may seem off-putting, mostly because we are so used to the public scrutiny of journalism and reporting which calls for objectivity above all else, but it is important to reflect on context when reading this article. In the time when this article was written journalism was not as fact-based or objective as we find in modern convention. Dickens is focusing in on that which will most tug at our heart strings, and he knows it. In one particularly moving scene Dickens speaks of a nurse or wards woman and the recent loss of an orphan boy who is simply described as the “dropped child” (Leighton & Surridge 116). The dropped child is a poor orphan who has been under the care of a nurse and ward but has most recently died, just in time it seems for the narrator to meet with the woman who tended him. The sobbing of the woman and the recent loss of the young life are employed to reach the readership and stir a sense of tragedy.

Despite the use of description and tragedy to convey the horrors of workhouses, Dickens does address the good that they can do. This is seen later in the article when Dickens recalls a brief conversation he has with some of the poor that are in the workhouse and recalls inquiries on if they have enough to eat the people reply “Oh yes gentlemen! Bless you gentlemen!” (Leighton & Surridge 117) This interjection serves to not only illuminate the good of the workhouses, but also to hint at Dickens’ own standing as a gentleman and the social obligation that brings. Later, Dickens notes that the children, although their toys are perhaps a little shabby, look “robust and healthy” (Leighton & Surridge 117). Although Dickens is not objective this acknowledgement of the good that the workhouses do separates his work from that of sensational reporting, making it border somewhere between a completely fact-based account and one that has been hyper-exaggerated for the purposes of entertainment.

Ultimately, Dickens was hoping to stir sympathy and perhaps cause some change through the writing of this article, as well as entertain the readers of his magazine. He walks the line between fabrication and fact and is not afraid to embellish or dramatize. He recalls an experience with an old man who is infirmed and as the reader one wonders if the event did in fact happen, or if perhaps Dickens tailored it to suit his message. The old man's words, “I am greatly better in my health... but what I want... is a little fresh air” (Leighton & Surridge 118), seem perhaps a tad too convenient. These words waylay nicely into the final summation and finishing point where Dickens speaks -with Dickensian dramatic flair- on behalf of a burnt boy laying in a bed who's eyes “pleaded, in behalf of the helpless and the aged poor, for a little more liberty – and a little more bread” (Leighton & Surridge 118). BB/Engl387/UVic/Fall2014

**Works Cited**

Donovan, Stephen, and Matthew Rubery, eds. //Secret Commissions: An Anthology of Victorian Investigative Journalism.// Toronto: Broadview Press, 2012. Print.

Leighton, Mary E., and Lisa Surridge, eds. //Victorian Prose 1832-1901.// Toronto: Broadview Press, 2012. Print.

Slater, Michael. “Dickens, Charles John Huffam (1812–1870)”. //Oxford Dictionary of National Biography//. Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2014. Web. Accessed 1 Oct 2014.