Charles Dickens Part I

Charles Dickens was born in Kent in 1812 where his father was working as a minor civil servant.  John Dickens was a clerk in the Royal Navy pay office and was the model for “Mr Micawber” in David Copperfield.   He was a good natured man but not very good at managing money and that meant that the young Dickens knew a great deal of insecurity.  He was at the lower end of the Middle classes.   Because of his father’s lack of common sense and responsibility, the family were much poorer than they should have been and he felt in danger of slipping from the middle class into the working class.   His father got into debt and ended up in a debtors’ prison, where he moved with his family, until the debt was paid off.   As a result of all this, Dickens highly prized the middle class values of honesty about money, prudence in financial matters, and an ethic of hard work and reliability.   As a young man and even in his later years, when he was comfortably off, he worked incredibly hard and was always eager to earn as much as he could, but by producing his work regularly and “giving value for money”. He disliked the upper classes who had a tradition of "not trying too hard" and prizing graceful behaviour and nonchalance over hard work.    He had great sympathy for the poor, but was afraid, having been very poor himself, of falling into the working class and losing the status of being middle class.