Portrayals of Coming of Age in Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and David Copperfield, Copyright ©  1997by Pauline T. Newton.

This is a masterful study of Dickens' bildungsromane done as a thesis during the author's last year at Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia.

In the Foreword, Newton writes,

"The summer before my freshman year in high school, my mother pulled a dusty, leatherbound copy of Great Expectations from a remote area of her bookshelves, and I recoiled in horror when she promised I would like it. I read it during several bus trips we took that summer, and I hated every page of the book. I would never have imagined that several years later I would write my college thesis on Dickens. I fell in love with Dickens when I picked up a copy of David Copperfield. I wanted to get a little taste of London life before I arrived there. While in London, I read several other British novels, such as Frankenstein and Jane Eyre, but none of the others kept me spell-bound. I could not put Oliver Twist down, and read passages several times because I was so amazed by the power of Dickens' words. I also reread Great Expectations, and enjoyed the tale thoroughly. As I walked through the streets of London, I could hear Pip's voice and saw Fagin in cruel-looking men that brushed by me. When I visited the writer's house, I pictured David sitting with Agnes at night."

"Dickens' coming-of-age novels did not impress me merely because of my experiences in London. First, I have always loved literature in which the child is the hero. Child development fascinates me, and I wished to study the different roles adults play in children's lives. Finally, the social ills that existed in England during [Dickens'] time are thought-provoking. Dickens includes all of these themes in his bildungsromane."

In the Introduction of her 178 page book, the author very interestingly addresses the ideas that Dickens explores in his coming-of-age novels.  Newton raises questions such as "How do people develop from naive children into moralistic adults?", "If youngsters have no mother or father, can they still be nurtured properly?", and "Can peers and adoptive parents provide children with proper nourishment?"

Newton further enumerates other concerns which she says Dickens addresses, such as "How do these youths learn to discern right from wrong?", "What role do society and educational institutions play in shaping them?", "What do they need to know in order to become self-supporting?", and finally "Does marriage mark the final phase of development?"