One can read the work of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) psychoanalytically or psychohistorically as a compromise formation between conscious intentions and unconscious wishes and guilt feelings. According to Jacoby, the contradiction between the conscious and unconscious influences upon Dickens's narrative writings results from the fact that Dickens experienced a precapitalist childhood, that this childhood proved incongruous with his subsequent ascent into the middle class, and that he therefore rejected it as an adult. The depictions of childhood in the novels represent an attempt to design an image of childhood timely for industrial capitalism. But this image did not fit smoothly into the novelist's own childhood experience.