Abstract

In the havoc of Victorian London, and the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, Charles Dickens depicted marginalized people who suffered in what was called the golden age of the British Empire. Among the victimized characters in Dickens’ novels is Estella in “Great Expectations” (1862) who resembles another female character, Johanna, in Hugh Wheeler’s twentieth century play, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” (1979). The play is regarded as a staging of Dickens’ novel as it appears as a rewriting of that era with the vision of a twentieth century writer. This tendency is known as neo-Victorianism which is an aesthetic movement that amalgamates Victorian aesthetic sensibilities with modern principles and ideas. A large number of neo-Victorian literary works have reinterpreted, reproduced, and rewritten Victorian culture. A close inspection of Dickens’ novel and Wheeler’s play reveals that there are so many common points between the two works concerning characters, themes, and setting. As far as we know, no real attempt to evaluate these two characters and to compare them has been made by any scholar. This study is a neo-Victorian evaluation of the play as related to Dickens’ novel. The paper focuses on studying the female characters in Wheeler’s and Dickens’ works, it also tries to find connections and differences regarding the female characters Johanna and Estella especially the characteristics of modern female which Wheeler grants to Johanna.