Adult-child duality in Victorian literature: the image of a precocious child as a mode of social and cultural critique of adulthood in the works of Ch. Dickens

The purpose of the article is to consider the image of a precocious child in Ch. Dickens’ works due to several reasons: 1) in the novels of the writer the earliest examples of the precocious child’s image are represented, which gained an enormous popularity after the author’s death in the English literary tradition 2) there is an appreciable difference between both soon ripened boys and girls. An ambivalent attitude to the children’s precocity is a consequence of the growing anxiety in Victorian society, focused on the topic of financial well-being.