Why Historical Context Matters: Dickens, Class, and the World We Live in Today

After a really rich and thought provoking lesson with one of my Monday students, I’ve found myself still turning ideas over in my head long after the classroom door closed. That’s usually a good sign that something meaningful has happened. The kind of teaching moment that doesn’t just stay in a lesson but spills out into wider thinking. We were exploring A Christmas Carol, as we often do in GCSE English, but this time our discussion moved beyond quotations, techniques and exam skills. Instead, we found ourselves working through the context of the novella, talking about why Dickens wrote what he did, who he was writing for, and what kind of society he was responding to. And that’s where things got interesting. Studying historical context can sometimes feel like an added extra in English. A box to tick before we ‘get to the good stuff’. But it is the key that unlocks so much of what makes Dickens’ work powerful, relevant, and, surprisingly, modern. In Victorian Britain, class divisions were stark. Wealth sat alongside poverty in uncomfortable proximity. Industrialisation had created enormous prosperity for some, while leaving others in desperate conditions. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens doesn’t just tell a story about a miser who learns to be kind. He critiques a society that allows people like Tiny Tim to suffer while men like Scrooge hoard their wealth. The novella becomes a moral argument: that we have a responsibility to one another. Similarly, in Great Expectations, class is not just a backdrop. It is the engine of the story. Pip’s shame, ambition, and eventual disillusionment are all rooted in the rigid class system that tells him he is “less than” because of where he comes from. Dickens exposes the illusion that wealth automatically equals worth. What struck me most in my conversation with my student this morning was how naturally this led us to think about today’s world. We may not live in Victorian England, but class, inequality, and power are still very much with us. The language has shifted. We talk about capitalism, socialism, and sometimes communism, but at the heart of these systems are the same fundamental questions Dickens was asking: How should wealth be distributed? What do we owe to one another as human beings? Does money determine a person’s value? Who benefits from the systems we live in? Capitalism, which underpins much of modern society, shares uncomfortable similarities with the world Dickens criticised. A system that can drive innovation and prosperity, but also deepen inequality. Socialism, by contrast, echoes some of the compassionate principles Dickens promotes in A Christmas Carol: the idea that society should care for its most vulnerable members. Even communism, often discussed in abstract or political terms, raises questions about collective responsibility that feel surprisingly relevant when we consider characters like Bob Cratchit and his family. What historical context gives us, then, is not just background information, it gives us perspective. It helps students (and all of us) see that literature is not created in a vacuum. Dickens was responding to real suffering, real injustice, and real social debates. And when we place his work alongside our own world, we can begin to see patterns, parallels, and, importantly, possibilities for change. For me, that is why teaching context matters so much. It transforms novels from “old stories” into living, breathing conversations about power, fairness, and humanity. And it reminds us that, just like Dickens, we are all part of a bigger story about the kind of world we want to build.