Liberal Humanism in Dickens’s Representation of Animal and Human Relations

This article analyzes and seeks to explain the relationship between human and their animal companion in Dickens’s novels. Dickens’s main objective, throughout his novels, was to find an answer to the vital question of how to live especially in that moment of crisis. This answer will not be found unless; one is able to define the characteristic of a good citizen. Almost in all of his novels, this consistent message emerges that creating a community becomes an essential virtue in achieving equilibrium. To divulge Dickens’s worldview, the Liberal Humanism as a critical approach is used. Dickens was a major and widely read novelist of his own era. Dickens’s popularity is chiefly due to his intense human sympathy; his unique emotional and dramatic power; and his aggressive humanitarian aspiration for the reform of all evils and abuses, whether they weigh upon the oppressed classes or helpless individuals. Based on his personal familiarity with the life of the poor and apparently of sufferers in all ranks, in his novels, he gave voice to them. Through his works, readers come to perceive the virtues of love and the pleasures of home in a defected, flawed, and indifferent world. Despite the bleakness of his view of society and the fierceness of his criticism of it, his novels always end with a sentimental assertion of the virtues of heart and home.