What do you think of when you imagine Victorian children? Demure little things who are seen and not heard? This is certainly not true of the child characters of the great Victorian novelists. In Jane Eyre and David Copperfield, Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens show us how trauma can influence character development as well as spelling out the responsibilities adults have towards children. George Eliot and our own Elizabeth Gaskell give us rounded, observant and intelligent young girls
