Panopticism In Victorian Era

Victorian Era was a long period of prosperity in British history, when Britain first began the transition to modern society, and established the prototype of modern lifestyle for the western world, and even for the whole world. As the most popular English novelist of Victorian era, Charles Dickens recreated the Victorian British way of life.By researching the works of Dickens, we found that the establishment of these rules, relies upon the large modern disciplinary system. Foucault pointed that the domination and control of human society transferred gradually from bare in the medieval ages to hidden in the early modern ages, while the implementation converted from physical to psychological phase, comparing the modern society as "panopticon" proposed by Jeremy Bentham. This theory might be used in Dickens's novels with the prisons, workhouses and even the communities, to explore the modern disciplinary system and the features in its evolution.In Foucault's theories, modern institutions, including schools, hospitals, factories, armies, and even the whole society, are all in panopticism mode. This article starts with prisons in Victorian Era, then summerizes their characteristics, which are later brought into lower, middle and upper classes, to discuss the disciplinary system in the pre-modern society, as the origin of Panopticism. The Novels of Dickens, who had been concentriated with prison since childhood, have been containing almost the whole society of Victorian Era, concerning about every class of the nation. So Dickens's works might provide a large number of materials for this study. This article will combine information from history and literal works, to conclude how Panopticism was realized in the pre-modern society.