... could only receive government assistance if they moved into government workhouses. Although propitious in theory, the law contained many flaws within its structure, and in return, its detriment towards the British working class inspired many forms of social criticism. Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, and Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist for example, provide a contrast to the portrayal of different people relying on these government institutions, while also staying ... true to the cruelties and struggles they had to face against their authorities. Both Gaskell and Dickens share similari...

• Word Count: 726
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... to relate to the other new class, the factory owners, and how were these industrial classes to engage the power of the landowning aristocracy? Elizabeth Gaskell, writing with the authority of a resident of Manchester, in Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855); Dickens in Hard Times (1854), based on a strike in the north of England; Charlotte Bronte in Shirley (1849); Benjamin Disraeli in ... Coningsby (1844) and Sybil (1845); and Eliot in Felix Holt (1866) all sought to acclimate ... their readers to the new world of industrial capitalism and to present their varied imaginative v...

• Word Count: 6746
• Approx Pages: 27