I talk about some of this stuff too, in my book. The difference between what I was surrounded by in England and what I see in the Netherlands is so surreal that I had to avoid thinking about England for a little while. Why? My mind had trouble reconciling the two. It’s too surreal, how different it is.
When I read that there’s a Dutch woman who organizes a Dickens festival each year in which people dress up as if they are in Dickensian times, I felt a lot of anger well up. Dickensian times were times of great poverty, such that the term “Dickensian” refers to great deprivation. Nothing romantic about it. (Dickens was born in Portsmouth, by the way.)
I let go of the anger because the woman means well, but I still find it very sad. I think Dickens refers to this poverty in his work, too, though I am not at all familiar with it.
