is view, the cause of social ills is taken as the squalor of society itself. Dickens's sure knowledge of this is consistent with that aspect of scientific method that obliges scientists to use the evidence before them to draw conclusions. It becomes Dickens's special crusade as a novelist to suffuse the observations of physical squalor with moral imperative. This search for a moral solution to moral or physical problems may be compared to the conclusions drawn from scientific observation and experiment.
There are two issues of novelistic objectification at work in David Copperfield: the scandal of the workhouse atmosphere and child abuse in general. Dickens draws an objective, closely observed portrait of how the world of Victorian England operated--and of course how Dickens believed it ought to have been changed. What happens to David provides Dickens the opportunity to discuss in fictional form social problems plaguing contemporaneous England, and the emotional impact of David's experience at Murdstone and Grinby's supply house is heavy with a cr
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