A stylistic analysis study of morality and ethics in relation to class conflict in Dickens’s David Copperfield

Abstract EN

This paper closely examines the stylistic impact of social division in Charles Dickens's novel David Copperfield.

Due to the social division in Britain during the Victorian Era, there appeared a class of writers who called for puffing the society into a better form and condition, improving the social conditions by alteration of the mindset, correction of many errors, and removal of social defects.

One figure of those writers was Charles Dickens who expressed the crisis of the social division in the British society and the issue of morality and ethics pertaining to it.

The focus of this research is to explore the social conflict and how each class takes and follows the moral values via the use of language.

This is made accurately by Dickens throughout the representation of different styles of characters in the novel, especially by providing a full portrait and description that determine the moral value of human conduct.

Christine Mallinson (2007) confirmed the linguistic classifications among the social classes throughout the work of " Social Class , Social Status and Stratification " which was the basic foundation of this work .

Throughout the novel, Dickens divides the classes as upper, middle and lower.

By observing the role of each character, the lower-class characters are given much more sympathy and admiration by the author.

In contrast, most of the upper-class characters are represented as characters that lack integrity and are debased morally.

Liffimer, Steerforth's personal attendant who does most of his services and Heep, the secretary and Wickfield's close companion, are an exception of the lower-class characters that are purposefully shown as immoral characters in order to frame Dickens's concept of morality— where it is not defined as not being based on the class and background but on the ways, a person acts, especially from the standpoint of morality and ethics, and how could the linguistic style serve in this issue.