Abstract
Most great writers are concerned with social relationships and principles of human behavior, and Dickens was no exception. But while Dickens's literary predecessors such as Homer and Shakespeare portrayed principles of human behavior through "psychology" based on systems of ethics or primitive biology, Dickens himself made a striking literary departure by basing his portrayal of character on a coherent, modern theory of human motivation and needs. In his second novel, Oliver Twist (1837), through the behavior of his characters Dickens delineated a theory of motivation that corresponds point for point with the theories of Abraham Maslow. In so doing, Dickens, like Maslow, sought to humanize the social policy of his time and to improve the quality of human life.
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