CHARLES DICKENS AND XENOPHOBIA

Students of English literature and readers of fiction writings have heard a
lot about Charles Dickens (1812-1870), one of the greatest nineteenth century
English novelists and his remarkable contribution in English literature. This paper
offers a re-evaluation of Charles Dickens's writings. Over the years, Dickens has
been dismissed as a gritty and unrelenting racist and xenophobic that is vindicated
apropos some of his writings from the 1850s until the end of his life. It is a known
fact that he despised Indians and made a scathing racial attack against them on the
backdrop of the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ of 1857 during the British occupation in India. What
provoked him to make such nasty, obnoxious racial remarks?