Charles Dickens’ “Night Walks” and Elizabeth Banks’ “Campaigns of Curiosity” both represent poverty and the working class in that both authors put themselves on the level of the classes they are speaking about. Dickens leaves his house to experience his version of houselessness, and Banks poses as a housemaid to know more about the working class.
In Dickens’ “Night Walks,” Dickens leaves his house to experience houselessness. He says that he does this because he cannot sleep, and he just wished to get through the night. The result is what he calls an “amateur experience of houselessness,” which led him to “sympathetic relations with people.” He would not have encountered these people if it weren’t for his insomnia, and it was not his direct intent to seek them out and empathize with them. However, he begins to equate himself with them as he goes on his walks, and he consistently uses the word “we” in his descriptions of the houseless. Dickens represents those on the street in some gruesome ways, effectively communicating the impact these people had on him. When Dickens discusses the children in Covent Garden, his descriptions of the children were particularly impactful for me. He says that the children sleep in baskets, fight over food, and are thieves. At the end of the passage, he says “A painful and unnatural result comes of the comparison one is forced to institute between the growth of corruption as displayed in the so much improved and cared for fruits of the earth, and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all uncared for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages.” Any description of a person as a savage definitely comes from a place of privilege, but the passage communicates the idea that the city is failing its children, as they are not cared for, and nobody cares if they are taken care of. I think that the nighttime setting is important because the houseless population comes to life, as Dickens describes. Those in the city who are at home, asleep in their safe beds, are paying no mind to the chaos and havoc going on in the streets surrounding them. The idealized version of the city is swept aside for this realistic representation of the people suffering at the hands of their misfortunes, and Dickens appears to be the only privileged man aware of it – and the only one willing to speak of it.
Elizabeth Banks uses a similar place of privilege in order to speak about the working class in “Campaigns of Curiosity.” She is first made aware of her naivete in the first chapter, when she offers the sewing woman a “better” job. The working woman couldn’t be more offended, and she accuses Banks of trying to take away her independence. Banks recoils, confused as to how a working woman could be considered independent. The whole scene was humorous to me, but I admired the way Banks handled the situation: she tried to understand. She sought out a job that would allow her to be an “ordinary servant.” Once she finds a job, she gets a wake-up call. She did not realize how much work would be involved in being a housemaid, and how unlivable their wages were. Annie tries to teach Elizabeth the ways of the house, but she can’t help but laugh when Elizabeth underestimated the work. On page 29, Annie tells Elizabeth that it’s too bad she “took such a hard place for [her] first time in service!” On the same page, Elizabeth says that she pitied herself for all of the work she had to do. She subjected herself to the pains and struggles of the working class, but she was easily able to evade them as she saw fit. She even has to get food from her own home rather than buying it with her earnings. Her privilege is clear in that scene because she evades the confines of the working class and uses her wealth to benefit her, even though she wanted to experience being in the working class to its fullest. Therefore, she brought her own privilege into her experience, and her experience was biased by her greater wealth than the woman she was emulating. Although her intentions may have been just, her methods were not. However, because her wealth is so clearly juxtaposed by the working class, it makes the struggles of the women all the more clear, and it paints them in a very respectable light.
Both Dickens and Banks take themselves out of their places of privilege in order to understand and speak about those in poverty and the working class. Their understanding, then, is influenced by their own wealth and success, and it shapes how they view the people they speak about. There is a barrier created in each of their pieces that both of the authors must overcome, but I would argue that it gives the reader a more thorough understanding of the wealthy and the poor/working class because of that discrepancy. The reader is able to know the authors’ presuppositions, and the reader is able to see how the author shapes him or herself based on what they find out. In taking themselves out of their privileged places, they are able to communicate the struggles of the poor and of the working class, and they serve as witnesses to their experiences. If it were not for them, the reality of poverty and of the working class may not have been as evidently clear.
Works Cited:
Banks, Elizabeth. Campaigns of Curiosity. F. Tennyson Neely, 1894.
Dickens, Charles. The Uncommercial Traveller. ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dickens/charles/d54ut/chapter13.html.
Great points here about how privilege informs these pieces, and what a great comparison! It’s also interesting to note that both Dickens and Banks make use of humor (in Dickens’s case, a more wry, dry irony) as part of their explorations of a London they are exploring from a new perspective. I wonder how that impacts our understanding of their privileged position, particularly given that they are writing with a readership in mind. I’m also intrigued by this sense of needing to give up privilege. In a sense, as you suggest here, it’s precisely their privileged positions that allow Dickens and Banks to *supposedly* set that privilege aside and show their readers a part of London life that might be hidden from view.