Lots of children from poor classes and working classes who escaped from poverty, were obliged either to work in factories and mines, or as domestic servant. Sometimes some of them became criminals.

Some governments acts like THA, tried to improve children’s working conditions by limiting the hours worked by women and children.

⇒ Dickens was obsessed with children, whom he presented them as innocents and corrupted by adults.

He expressed those feelings in his novels, with some nostalgia for is passed condition, and to denounce and stress the idea that they were oppressed.

The most important setting is London, which is depicted at three social levels:

Dickens attacked the social evils of his times, such as poor houses, unjust courts and the underworld. In particular he wants to denounce harsh condition of life in workhouses: lack of food, squalid and miserable condition of work and life just because masters in workhouses think that poverty was the consequence of laziness and that the terrible conditions would inspire poor people to improve their lives.

Many writers, reformers, theorists denounced the social evils and contributed to make people aware of the necessity of reforms. One of the most important writers who denounced the hypocrisy of society was C.Dickens.