by Lindsay Mix
Charles Dickens’ 1850 piece “A Walk in a Workhouse” takes the reader on a tour through a Victorian workhouse. According to Dickens, these workhouses were filled with evil-looking young women, aged people, and depressed and subdued faces, and he describes the scene as “Pauperism, in a very weak and impotent condition” (116). In this piece, it is clear that Dickens finds the status of the lower class very problematic. He describes his walk through the workhouse using heart-wrenching descriptions of the old, and states that these people would be better off in jail. I find this very interesting in that literature of the time was concerned with this problem, showing that it was very relevant to people from all classes. This piece speaks to the progression that the majority of people thought should take place to better every class. I found a piece entitled “The Female School of Design” from an 1851 issue of Household Words that is comparable to Dickens’ piece in a number of ways. It was written just one year later, and shows how progression was still a major goal of many people. However, there are some differences between the two, the most significant being an emphasis on the increasing opportunities for women and the lower class in the work force in the second article.