In Charles Dickens’ novels, there is a vast world of Christianity revealed by character interactions, rich themes, and character roles, reframing childhood and family dynamics in a new light. Each novel provides us with a child hero archetype who navigates character roles that contrast with dark worlds and social systems. By virtue of being a selfless and diligent example of Christianity, the child hero escapes significant dangers and spreads the Word primarily through actions rather than words, influencing other characters and the audience. These child hero characters were probably inspired by Dickens’ own trauma while working at Warren’s Blacking Factory, where he formed a quasi-heroic personality and developed a visceral desire to escape and change his situation, just as his child hero characters have the courage to do. Additionally, Dickens’ posthumously published and less well-known book The Life of Our Lord functions as a “measuring rod” (Revelation 11:1) for Christianity through which his characters may be analyzed and evaluated, the metrics of which were also inspired by his past.
The child hero is someone who perseveres against unenviable circumstances, in which the character is compelled to become an adult-like laborer at a relatively young age and/or lacks a stable family or work situation (hereafter referred to as “dark themes”). The character later spreads Christianity, mainly through actions aimed at benefiting other people or interrupting societal problems, downplaying mere words. For these storylines of brave children overcoming ghastly events, preserving their innocence and kindness against all odds, and making themselves useful to be thematically rich, Dickens utilizes darker adventure themes in which the child is at the center. Notably, a common obstacle motif affecting the child is being treated like a cog. The people mistreating the child represent sinful ideologies that motivate them to victimize these children and keep them trapped as cogs, weighed down forever. However, the aforementioned cog always changes from a broken gear into a brave hero. Achieving God’s enlightenment, the cog character changes in composition to become a quasi-angelic character, as angelic as a human could ever hope to be, much like Paul’s “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). In Christian teaching, a human starts out as “a slave to sin” (Romans 7) and is quite clearly a cog to sin, but gains a new purpose—a “new creation”—upon following Christianity. The child hero is representative of Christianity, doubtless to bestow a similar purpose upon the character.
Oliver Twist was Dickens’ first novel to deploy the universal child hero plot and obstacle motif. In Oliver Twist, Oliver’s dark theme is that he is always on the run, targeted by other people, and escaping from danger, from being treated like a cog. Rotund Mr. Bumble spends all his time dehumanizing and deploying his thin foundlings, intending to use them as cogs in a machine. En route to the loudmouth Mrs. Mann, Mr. Bumble even kicks her creaky gate, forcibly swinging it open. He believes that he does not have the time to carefully open it or treat it with respect, referencing how he kicks and throws Oliver around and treats him like an automaton. Callous Bumble is always ready to maim, whip, starve out – or just about kill – them for the smallest shortcoming. From Bumble’s foolhardy reasoning, Oliver disobediently states, “Please sir, I want some more," his peers’ direct retribution against him for losing the lots game to ask for more food, and instantly stops doing the tasks that the parish programmed him for. The punishment for Oliver’s mistake is solitary confinement and finally being thrown on the parish porch, sold for five pounds, like a trashed cog. Bumble direly wants someone to just take the helpless burden. Oliver, maybe because of his unnaturally small size, is considered from birth to be no more than a defective cog. Due to his especially powerless state and not receiving a heroic situation at the beginning of his story like Little Dorrit and Jenny Wren where he is in charge of someone (Oliver Twist is the exception to the rule), Oliver is not yet able to influence anyone and certainly cannot defeat Bumble at this time. Oliver is even considered a criminal and worthless cog when he is expected by the board to “pick oakum" without giving any consideration to “Someone in the medical system had the gall to call Twist’s mother “Mrs. Thingummy," implying she gave birth to only a cog. During Oliver’s compulsory origin story, he is intending to be good but it is not working out for him. Bumble’s sinful ideology of self-importance weighs Oliver down.
The thieves also think of Oliver as a cog, so to speak, despite Charley and the Dodger being strikingly carefree with him: “He is so jolly green!” “Why, a beak’s a madg’strate!” and Fagin labeling all the operatives “my dear,” bamboozling them into esteeming him as sincerely friendly. The whole gang embodies still more tricksters and gaslighters in Oliver’s situation, leading him into criminality and threatening him with transportation to Australia; Oliver is turned into a pawn for their schemes. Oliver apparently means nothing to half of the people he meets other than someone to use for selfish plans, or a mechanical thing, as if Oliver’s destiny is to be a cog. Fagin and his boy employees steal “wipes” (handkerchiefs) and “work” by picking the owners’ initials out with a needle. Always the overly gushy boss, Fagin means to indoctrinate Oliver into believing that the handkerchief exercise is training him to “be the greatest man of the time,” but Oliver is only meant to be a cog in this ruse also. Oliver’s dark life, wherein he only represents a cog, starts there.
All Dickensian child heroes begin life as cogs with different versions of a dark adventure, and quite a few children start their stories as overly parentified cogs. Their status is different from Oliver Twist, who does not have parents and is instead objectified by the parish. They are confined by poverty to a cog situation as role-reversed children acting like adults, looking after their parents. They ordinarily do not get to do anything natural for children; Jenny therefore states that she is expected to “work, work, work” and “slave, slave, slave” in sweatshop labor. The text addresses her as a “child in years, woman in trial and self-reliance." Amy has never been outside of the Marshalsea Prison; she is not permitted to observe nature. Her father is essentially her child, akin to Jenny Wren’s father, but he is ignorant of her clothes’ threadbare nature. As the Little Dorrit text states: “All this time he had never once thought of her dress, her shoes, her need of anything. No other person had been so unmindful of her wants save herself." Amy “Little” Dorrit’s dramatic adventure is that she runs on dark streets, back and forth alone, from grim Mrs. Clennam’s house for needlework business to the metal, muted Marshalsea Prison. From her bombastic, washed-up father being unable to pay debts, Little Dorrit is compelled to be self-sufficient from a very tender age. Another mature little girl, Jenny Wren (from Our Mutual Friend), is portrayed as a doll’s dressmaker who works long hours and, regrettably, is paralyzed on one side of her body. Because of circumstances beyond anyone's control, she remains in cheap child labor to provide for her drunken father. Spending hours in a workroom sewing dolls’ dresses by herself, Jenny functions like a cog, similarly to Oliver, even though the work does not break either of their resourceful spirits. “Punctual as ever,” Amy clocks in and leaves work at the agreed-upon times. She also appears cog-like, but Mrs. Clennam does not treat her nearly as badly as Oliver and Jenny’s bosses (Bumble, Sowerberry, and Fledgeby, respectively). Mrs. Clennam simply broods, where the other bosses menacingly threaten. No matter their bosses’ actions, these two overly mature and parentified girls, experiencing dramatic lives as cogs from which they develop the ability to serve others, remain significant Dickensian origin story types; their parents’ sinful mindset of laziness weighs them down.
For the Dickensian child heroes to gain more empathy and compassion from the public so they motivate more readers into questioning systems that endanger children, they conventionally start out in life confronted by gritty circumstances and cog-style treatment, pushing them to be more self-sacrificial yet self-sufficient. In Dickensian texts, Christ is the Guiding Force charting the hero’s journey, and the novels are pointedly rich with biblical allusions. As selflessness, or others-centeredness, becomes more habitual for the child characters, it forms their lives’ calling, playing a guiding role in the hero’s journey. The typical child hero will always obey the spirit of Christianity, edifying others in some capacity, no matter the cost. The hero is brave; the child might get sick or die easily from work-related injuries or street fights, yet he/she tolerates the dangers to provide for the family. Therefore, the heroism is a moral choice. For instance, Jenny Wren could easily get infected by poking herself with a sewing tool, as infections were easier to contract in that era. She still works for her father, with the motive being to care for him; therefore, this character's goal is morally upright. The child hero is brave and consistently maintains morally upright motives. The dark origin story is a requirement for the character to hone his or her skills, likely serving as a test of character or a subtle object lesson.
