ABSTRACT
Murder and soul murder are recurrent motifs in Charles Dickens's works. Humor and sentimentality are suddenly mixed with violence. Freud frequently wrote of the seductive and destructive effect on the fantasy life of children by the ministrations of servants, especially of bad nurses and nannies. Dickens reports a compulsion to repeat early traumatic impressions of the horrible and the overwhelming that was accompanied for him by the exciting and fascinating. Dickens's parents appear to have been weak rather than cruel. At crucial, stressful times, they were not able to care enough. As a man, Dickens's writings show that at least in his memory he had been much fonder of his financially irresponsible father—he is the model for Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield. In Little Dorrit, Dickens examines several instances of emotional deprivation and demonstrates how the "undeveloped heart" of the parent can warp the character and inhibit the ability to love in the child.
