Presentation Schedule
Literary Witness to Hidden Labour: Amy Dorrit and the Legacy of Young Caring Roles (104590)
Session Chair: Yi-chin Shih
This presentation will be live-streamed via Zoom (Online Access)
Wednesday, 13 May 2026 11:30
Session: Session 1
Room: Live-Stream Room 5
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
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This presentation examines the parallels between Amy Dorrit in Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit (1855–1857) and contemporary young carers, illuminating how a Victorian literary figure can deepen our understanding of current caregiving experiences of children and adolescents. Amy’s quiet endurance, economic precarity, emotional labor, and premature assumption of adult responsibilities resonate strikingly with the realities faced by young carers today, who support parents or siblings in contexts shaped by disability, illness, or poverty. By placing Dickens’s characters in dialogue with contemporary sociological and psychological studies on young caregivers, this project highlights the novel’s enduring relevance in exposing systemic failures that compel young people to assume disproportionate responsibilities. The aim is to uncover the historical continuity of caregiving roles assigned to the young, and demonstrate how Victorian fiction can serve as a critical framework for analyzing social issues that persist in modern welfare states. This comparison underscores the necessity for interdisciplinary approaches to literature, drawing on social policy, childhood studies, and care ethics to enrich literary interpretation and broaden its societal implications. Methodologically, this study combines a close textual analysis with comparative thematic mapping, drawn from recent empirical research on young caregivers. The focus is on recurring motifs—self-effacement, resilience, moralized responsibility, and restricted life opportunities—and the narrative strategies employed by Dickens to evoke sympathy and critique institutional neglect. By integrating literary and contemporary evidence, this presentation argues that Little Dorrit provides a powerful cultural lens through which to reconsider the visibility and support of young carers today.
Authors:
Akiko Takei, Chukyo University, Japan
About the Presenter(s)
Professor AKIKO TAKEI is a at Chukyo University in Japan
See this presentation on the full schedule – Wednesday Schedule
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