Date of Award
2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Classical Studies
Thesis Advisor
Dr. Alisa DeBorde
Committee Professor
Dr. Julie Anderson
Abstract
As a young child, Charles Dickens attached securely to his family. Through his strong literary relationship with his mother, Dickens learned to read well yet experienced a period of parental separation during his blacking factory employment, providing many opportunities to meet and interact with abandoned children, who pervade his novels. Baruch Hochman and Ilja Wachs describe the negative impacts of orphanhood in Dickens: The Orphan Condition. While Hochman and Wachs address the social and economic difficulties faced by Dickens’s literary orphans, they did not connect the orphan condition to impaired cognitive development. Experiencing an excellent literary relationship with his mother, Dickens connects the need for secure attachment to literary learning in his orphan characters. This project analyzes his nineteenth-century orphans through the lens of modern research on childhood maltreatment. While Dickens is known for his prescient representation of psychological conditions, the modern research contradicts the experiences of most of his orphans. The abuse and neglect that his orphans endure does not permanently impede their ability to learn, yet this comparison demonstrates that Dickens understood the role of secure attachment in literacy development. In The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Oliver lives neglected in a workhouse for over a decade, yet he does not portray a delay in language development like the modern research indicates. In David Copperfield, David securely attaches to his mother in infancy and childhood yet loses his mother, becoming an orphan. The Murdstones emotionally abuse him during his academic lessons. Their emotional abuse does not impact his ability to read well, for reading remains a comfort. In Great Expectations, his sister physically abuses Pip, but he does not suffer cognitively due to the early and chronic abuse. In Nicholas Nickleby, Smike suffers memory problems. In the analysis of these orphans, he is the only character to demonstrate the negative effects of childhood maltreatment in terms of cognition. Nonetheless, all four characters, Oliver, David, Pip, and Smike, learn extremely quickly once they connect to a secure adult. Ahead of his time, Dickens unlocks the key to learning, awakening the mind through secure attachment. Since Dickens securely attached to his mother and learned to read well, his literary orphans are confined by his early personal experiences, for they do not fully represent the cognitive consequences of child maltreatment.
Recommended Citation
Gray, Alaina, "Awakening the Mind: How Secure Attachment Impacts Language Acquisition in Charles Dickens's Literary Orphans" (2026). Master of Arts in Classical Studies. 24.
https://firescholars.seu.edu/classicalstudies/24