Oliver Twist is an extreme
criticism of Victorian society’s treatment of the poor. The workhouses that
figure prominently in the first few chapters of the novel were institutions
that the Victorian middle class established to raise poor children. Since it
was believed that certain vices were inherent to the poor and that poor
families fostered rather than discouraged such vices, poor husbands and wives
were separated in order to prevent them from having children and expanding the
lower class. Poor children were taken away from their parents in order to allow
the state and the church to raise them in the manner they believed most
appropriate.
In the narrative, the workhouse
functions as a sign of the moral hypocrisy of the working class. Mrs. Mann
steals from the children in her care, feeding and clothing them inadequately.
The Victorian middle class saw cleanliness as a moral virtue, and the workhouse
was supposed to rescue the poor from the immoral condition of filth. However,
the workhouse in Dickens’s novel is a filthy place—Mrs. Mann never ensures that
the children practice good hygiene except during an inspection. Workhouses were
established to save the poor from starvation, disease, and filth, but in fact
they end up visiting precisely those hardships on the poor. Furthermore, Mr.
Bumble’s actions underscore middle-class hypocrisy, especially when he
criticizes Oliver for not gratefully accepting his dire conditions. Bumble
himself, however, is fat and well-dressed, and the entire workhouse board is
full of fat gentlemen who preach the value of a meager diet for workhouse
residents.
The assumption on the part of the
middle-class characters that the lower classes are naturally base, criminal,
and filthy serves to support their vision of themselves as a clean and morally
upright social group. The gentlemen on the workhouse board call Oliver a
“savage” who is destined for the gallows. After Oliver’s outrageous request for
more food, the board schemes to apprentice him to a brutal master, hoping that
he will soon die. Even when the upper classes claim to be alleviating the
lower-class predicament, they only end up aggravating it. In order to save
Oliver from what they believe to be his certain fate as a criminal, the board
essentially ensures his early death by apprenticing him to a brutal employer.
The workhouse reproduces the
vices it is supposed to erase. One workhouse boy, with a “wild, hungry” look,
threatens in jest to eat another boy. The suggestion is that workhouses force
their residents to become cannibals. The workhouse also mimics the institution
of slavery: the residents are fed and clothed as little as possible and
required to work at tasks assigned by the board, and they are required to put
on a face of cheery, grateful acceptance of the miserable conditions that have
been forced on them. When Oliver does not, he is sold rather than sent away
freely.
Dickens achieves his biting
criticism of social conditions through deep satire and hyperbolic statements. Throughout
the novel, absurd characters and situations are presented as normal, and
Dickens often says the opposite of what he really means. For example, in
describing the men of the parish board, Dickens writes that “they were very
sage, deep, philosophical men” who discover about the workhouse that “the poor
people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer
classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay. . . .” Of course, we know
that Oliver’s experience with the workhouse is anything but entertaining and
that the men of the parish board are anything but “sage, deep,” or
“philosophical.” But by making statements such as these, Dickens highlights the
comical extent to which the upper classes are willfully ignorant of the plight
of the lower classes. Since paupers like Oliver stand no chance of defeating
their tormenters, Dickens takes it upon himself to defeat them with sly humor
that reveals their faults more sharply than a serious tone might have. Though
Oliver himself will never have much of a sense of humor, we will eventually
meet other boys in his situation who will join Dickens in using humor as a
weapon in their woefully unequal struggle with the society that oppresses them.
Noah Claypole’s relationship with
Oliver illustrates Victorian England’s obsession with class distinctions. The
son of destitute parents, Noah is accustomed to the disdain of those who are
better off than he. Thus, he is relieved to have Oliver nearby, since, as an
orphan, Oliver is even worse off than he is. Dickens characterizes Noah’s
cowardice and bullying as “the same amiable qualities” that are “developed in
the finest lord.” Dickens shows that class snobbery is a universal quality,
characteristic of the lowest as well as the highest strata of society.
Moreover, snobbish behavior seems a component of class insecurity. The poor
mercilessly taunt those who are poorer than they, out of anxious desire to
distinguish themselves from those who are even worse off in life.
In protesting the parish’s treatment
of Oliver, Dickens criticizes the Victorian characterization of the poor as
naturally immoral, criminal, and filthy. His principal character, Oliver, after
all, is virtuous, good, and innocent. Although we might expect a criticism of
the popular conception of the lower classes to describe many lower-class
characters who are essentially good, honest, and hardworking, Dickens does not
paint such a simplistic picture. The character of Noah, for example, exhibits
the same stereotypes that Dickens satirizes in the first several chapters.
Noah, the son of a drunkard, seems to have inherited all of the unpleasant
traits that his father presumably has. Big, greedy, cowardly, ugly, and dirty,
Noah is the quintessential Victorian stereotype of the good-for-nothing poor
man.
Part of Dickens’s motivation for
writing Oliver Twist was to expose the horrid conditions in which the lower
classes were expected to live, and, as a result, much of the narrative focuses
on the sensationally disgusting settings in which the poor live their lives. At
one point, Oliver and Sowerberry travel to a squalid section of town to
retrieve a dead pauper’s body. The neighborhood is full of shop fronts that are
“fast closed and mouldering away.” The people of this neighborhood have apparently
been left behind by the economic expansion of the Industrial Revolution, which
was in full force at the time of Oliver Twist’s publication. The bereaved
husband’s wife does not starve to death as a result of her “natural”
laziness—she starves to death because of the economic realities of the society
in which she lives.
Oliver’s attack on Noah is an
important moment in the development of his character. Most of the time, he is
portrayed as sweet, -docile, innocent, and naïve—sometimes to the point of
seeming somewhat dim. Indeed, it might seem that Dickens, in his fervent desire
to exact his Victorian audience’s sympathy for the poor orphan, exaggerates by
making Oliver angelic. Oliver’s fit of rage, however, makes him seem more
passionate and human, like an ordinary child. Oliver, raised in the workhouse,
has never seen a functioning family except for the Sowerberrys, who are
childless. His sense of familial love and duty is strong enough to compel him
to violently come to his mother’s defense. Dickens implies that loyalty to kin,
and the desire for the love of a family, is an impulse with which children are
born, not one that needs to be learned and nurtured.
Oliver’s trip to London parallels
the migration of the poor to the urban centers of England during the Industrial
Revolution. His hungry, exhausted condition is a result of the laws forbidding
begging, and it leaves him vulnerable enough to accept the questionable charity
of a band of thieves. Dickens clearly blames the crimes committed by the poor
on the people who passed the draconian Poor Laws. Thus, in order to survive,
Oliver must accept the aid of Fagin’s band. Oliver’s stay with Fagin’s band
represents the first truly domestic experience in his life. Although Fagin’s
house is filthy and derelict, it contains a relatively idyllic dinner scene,
with plenty of food laid out in pewter dishes and no one to begrudge Oliver his
full share of the food.
From today’s perspective,
Dickens’s characterization of Fagin through Jewish stereotypes is one of the
more uncomfortable aspects of Oliver Twist. Dickens characterizes Fagin as a
“very old shrivelled Jew” with a “villainous-looking and repulsive face.”
Victorians stereotyped the Jews as avaricious gold worshippers, and in
accordance with that stereotype, Fagin’s eyes “glisten” as he takes out a
“magnificent gold watch, sparkling with jewels.” True to the anti-Semitic
stereotype, his wealth is ill-gotten—Fagin obtains it by having others do the
thieving for him, and some of those others have even been hanged for doing
Fagin’s bidding. Dickens’s narrator continually refers to him as “the Jew” or
“the old Jew,” seemingly making Fagin into a representative for all Jews. When
a Jewish acquaintance later took Dickens to task for his portrait of Fagin,
Dickens responded that it reflected nothing other than the fact that a sizable
number of the leaders of London thieving rings at the time were Jewish. Despite
this answer, it is difficult to accept that his portrayal of Fagin does not
involve a certain degree of bigotry.
Fagin also represents a harsh
parody of the Protestant work ethic. Oliver is “anxious to be actively
employed” because he notices that Fagin’s “stern morality” manifests itself
when Charley and the Dodger return home empty-handed. Fagin rails about the “misery
of idle and lazy habits” and punishes them by denying them dinner. Victorians
castigated the poor for laziness, but the work ethic they preached was in some
ways responsible for creating the perversion of that ethic that Fagin
represents. As a result of the “stern morality” of charitable institutions,
paupers have to choose between the harsh conditions of the workhouses and the
harsh conditions of the streets. Because begging is a punishable offense, those
who stay outside the workhouses are often forced to turn to crime in order to
survive.
Oliver’s experience in the
courtroom highlights the precarious position of the poor in the eyes of the
law. Mr. Fang is an aptly named representative of the English legal system. The
law has fangs ready to devour any unfortunate pauper brought to face “justice.”
Without hard evidence or witnesses, and despite Brownlow’s testimony that he
does not believe that Oliver is the thief, Mr. Fang convicts Oliver and
sentences him to three months of hard labor. In Oliver’s weakened condition,
the sentence is really a sentence of death.
Oliver’s inability to speak at
his trial, caused by his exhaustion and sickness, metaphorically suggests the
lower class’s lack of political power and ability to voice its own concerns in
a public forum. In 1830s England, the right to vote was based on wealth, so the
poor had no say with respect to the law. Moreover, the upper classes project
their own conceptions of the poor upon them—to the point of blithely redefining
poor people’s identities with no regard for the truth. Oliver cannot even say
his name due to exhaustion and terror, so a court officer gives him the false
name of “Tom White.” This process of inaccurate renaming occurs throughout the
hearing, as Oliver is falsely named a “young vagabond” and a “hardened
scoundrel” before he is eventually falsely declared “guilty.” But the name
“Oliver Twist” is, in fact, no more authentic, as Mr. Bumble invents this name
when Oliver is born. As these examples demonstrate, Oliver’s identity has been
determined by other, more powerful people throughout his life.
Oliver enters a new world when
Brownlow takes him home. The English legal system and the workhouses represent
a value system based on retribution, punishment, and strict morals. The
Brownlow household, in contrast, operates on a basis of forgiveness and
kindness. After a life of false names and false identities imposed by others,
Oliver comes into contact with a portrait of a woman he closely resembles. With
this event, the novel’s central mystery—Oliver’s true identity—is established.
In contrast to the courtroom, where a multiplicity of incorrect identities are
forced upon Oliver, in the Brownlow home, Oliver’s resemblance to the woman’s
portrait suggests the elusive nature of his true identity.
These chapters establish a
relationship between clothing and identity. The disguise that Nancy wears when
she enters the police station reveals key differences between the middle and
lower classes in Victorian society. The crowning touch to her disguise is a
plainly displayed door key, which marks her as a member of a property-owning
class. Because she disguises herself as a middle-class woman, the legal system,
in the form of the police station, recognizes her as an individual worth
hearing. In the attire of the middle class, she gains both a social voice and
social visibility. She becomes an individual rather than a member of the
penniless mob.
Just as Nancy assumes a
middle-class identity by changing her clothing, Oliver sheds his identity as a
orphan pickpocket when he leaves behind his pauper’s clothes. Brownlow
purchases an expensive new suit for him. Oliver thus assumes the identity of a
gentleman’s son by wearing the clothing of a gentleman’s son. After he dons his
new clothing, Mr. Brownlow asks him what he might like to be when he grows up.
At the workhouse, the authorities never even bother to ask Oliver his opinion
on the matter of his apprenticeship. In Victorian England, even more than
today, an individual’s profession determined a large part of his or her
identity. The fact that no one at the workhouse asks for Oliver’s opinion
regarding his apprenticeship shows, once again, how much he is denied the right
to define himself. Oliver’s situation symbolically represents the silence of
the poor. The poor cannot define their social identity—instead, the empowered
classes define the identity of the poor for them. Oliver and Nancy both gain a
voice the moment they shed their pauper clothing.
Class identity is correlated not
only with clothing, but with history as well. Once Oliver dons his fine
clothes, Brownlow asks him to give his own version of his life history. Earlier
in the novel, when Oliver wears pauper’s clothing, other people control his
history and, therefore, his identity. When he is Sowerberry’s apprentice,
Oliver attempts to assume control of his identity by denying Noah’s insults to
his mother, but instead he receives a beating for trying to assert the correct
version of his past. Once he sheds his pauper status, however, Oliver’s right
to explain his past is firmly established. The fact that Oliver is an orphan
further underscores his lack of connection to his past. Whereas the upper
classes, and particularly members of the aristocracy, are able to establish
their identities by tracing their genealogies, Oliver seems to have no
genealogy.
Nancy imposes another false
identity on Oliver in order to kidnap him: she calls him her “dear brother.”
This statement is not entirely a fabrication—those who are denied families in
the novel often seek out a family structure or are placed within family
structures against their will. While a member of Fagin’s clan, Oliver is a
figurative brother to Nancy, since both are subject to the paternal authority
of Fagin and are dependent upon him for their food and shelter. Through Nancy’s
regret at returning Oliver to Fagin, Dickens suggests that such a family, while
providing companionship and a means for survival, is not ultimately nurturing
or morally healthy. Nancy knows that for the rest of society, Oliver confirms
the worst stereotypes of the poor as a member of Fagin’s pickpocket band.
Oliver’s assumption of the identity of a thief comes with his assumption of the
very same pauper’s rags he had worn before. Donning his old clothing, the most
obvious indicator of his poverty, marks him as a representative of vice for
-Victorian society.
Although most major characters in
Oliver Twist are either paragons of goodness, like Oliver and Mr. Brownlow, or
embodiments of evil, like Mr. Bumble, Fagin, and Sikes, Nancy’s behavior spans
moral extremes. Dickens’s description of her manner as “remarkably free and
agreeable,” combined with her position as a young, unmarried female pauper,
strongly implies that she is a prostitute, a profession for which Dickens’s
Victorian readers would have felt little sympathy. In his preface to the 1841
edition of the novel, Dickens confirms this implication, writing that “the boys
are pickpockets, and the girl is a prostitute.” She also spearheads the scheme
to bring Oliver back into Fagin’s fold. But her outburst against Sikes and
Fagin for seizing and mistreating Oliver demonstrates her deep and passionate
sense of morality. Most other “good” characters we meet are good because they
have no firsthand experience with vice and degradation. Nancy knows degradation
perfectly well, yet she is good. Her character is a forum for the novel to
explore whether an individual can be redeemed from the effects of a bad
environment.
At the same time, some critics
have suggested that Nancy’s speech, in which she announces her regret for
having returned Oliver to Fagin’s care, hints that the boys might also be
involved in prostitution. Nancy, pointing to Oliver, declares, “I have been in
the same trade, and in the same service for twelve years since.” The fact that
Nancy points to Oliver even as she speaks about herself implies an absolute
identification between the two characters. About this detail, as about Nancy’s
own identity as a prostitute, the narrative is purposely vague—Victorian
sensibilities mandated that explicit references to sexuality were largely
avoided.
Oliver’s domestic relationship
with Fagin and his gang contributes to the novel’s argument that that the
environment in which one is raised is a greater determining factor on one’s
character than biological nature. The need for companionship, Dickens suggests,
drives people to accept whichever community accepts them in return. As Oliver
begins to find humor and joy in the companionship of the thieves, it becomes
evident how easy it is for Fagin to corrupt Oliver. With the institution of the
oppressive Poor Laws, it is no wonder that penniless, friendless children will
adopt as family any person who is generous to them and will readily adopt that
person’s values. The Artful Dodger and Charley Bates are, aside from their
crimes, quite likeable characters. As his name implies, the Dodger is highly
intelligent, and Charley is given to bursts of uncontrollable laughter at
little provocation. Both, one imagines, could have thrived in legitimate society,
were that society willing to admit them to its ranks.
The fact that Oliver speaks and
carries himself with a demeanor that is much more sophisticated than that of
the rest of Fagin’s boys suggests that Dickens is using Oliver to show that
even when people are born into squalid conditions, they can appreciate goodness
and morality. When the Dodger and Charley pick Brownlow’s pocket, and again
when Sikes and Crackit order Oliver into the house, Oliver reacts with shock
and horror at the idea of stealing. It is unclear where he has acquired such
moral fastidiousness. He could not have learned it amid the life or death
struggles of the workhouse. The Dodger and Charley speak in the slang of street
children, using expressions like “scragged,” “rum dog,” “peaching,” and “fogles
and tickers.” But Oliver does not understand what such expressions mean. He
himself speaks in proper King’s English: “I would rather go,” “you’re one, are
you not?” Because even Mr. Bumble speaks with a comical vulgar accent, Oliver could
not have picked up his refined speech patterns from him. It seems that Oliver’s
careful speech is a symptom of his innate moral goodness.
Yet the suggestion that Oliver is
innately good complicates Dickens’s argument that corruption is bred by the
horrible living conditions of the lower classes, rather than inherently born
into their characters. Descriptions of Oliver’s face, in fact, seem to suggest
that morality can be born into character. Mr. Sowerberry enlists Oliver to
serve in funerals on account of the “expression of melancholy in his face.” The
usually unperceptive Toby Crackit notes that Oliver’s “mug is a fortun’ to
him,” meaning that his innocent-looking face is worth money to the thieves. Mr.
Brownlow sees clearly the resemblance between Oliver and the woman in the
portrait, thus providing both himself and us with the first hint that the
workhouse-born Oliver has an identity that is worth discovering. Dickens
clearly protests against the idea propounded by Mr. Bumble, that the poor are
born with an affinity for vice and crime. Yet it sometimes seems as if Oliver
has been born with an affinity for virtue and love, just as he was born with
his angelic face.
But even Oliver’s captivating
face does not give him immunity against irrational malice, embodied by
characters such as Bumble. Bumble names Oliver as a child born of “low and
vicious” parents, reproducing the stereotype that the poor inherit a criminal
nature. Moreover, Bumble narrates the incident of Oliver’s attack on Noah
Claypole in the same light. Oliver was “low and vicious” for trying to define
his identity on his own terms. Mr. Bumble shows Brownlow his own identification
papers to prove his statement. His status as the middle-class beadle for a
workhouse gives him the right to speak for Oliver and therefore to define
Oliver’s identity as he sees fit. With his identification papers, Bumble has
the power of the state to back up his word. Oliver only has his own word to
back him up. Outside of the workhouse, Oliver has no legal existence unless he
commits a crime and enters the courtroom. The poor are thus reduced to a public
existence as criminals, corpses, and “idle, lazy” paupers living on state
charity. The state chooses to recognize their existence only when they commit
crimes, die, or enter the workhouses.
By contrasting two kinds of
theft, Dickens shows how his culture is quick to condemn more obvious acts of
theft, but ignores theft that occurs in more subtle ways. After presenting
Sikes and Crackit’s botched attempt at theft, the novel quickly shifts to the
scene of a very different form of thievery. Mrs. Corney, the middle-class
matron of the workhouse, enjoys far more luxury than the pauper residents. They
are crammed into tiny, unheated spaces, while Mrs. Corney enjoys a room to herself
with a blazing fire during the bitterly cold winter. The amenities of her
apartment, which draw Mr. Bumble’s eyes and heart in her direction, represent
money that would have been more justly spent on the paupers under her care.
Thus, her lifestyle is based on theft, but, because she is robbing those who
have nothing, her theft will never be acknowledged.
The description of Mrs. Corney
implies that the middle class controls conceptions of what is right and wrong,
since church officials, intellectuals, and public officers—who have the
authority to declare what is right and wrong—are all part of the middle class.
With this control, they are able to ignore their own version of thievery—subtly
shortchanging the lower classes—and at the same time condemn the lower-class
version of thievery—stealing physical objects from the rich. The middle class’s
sense of entitlement and belief that the poor are inherently morally wretched
allow its members to easily rationalize the many ways in which they make sure
the poor remain so.
Dickens uses an ironic dialogue
between Mrs. Corney and Mr. Bumble to demonstrate their hypocrisy. Mr. Bumble
remarks that Mrs. Corney’s cat and kittens receive better treatment than the
workhouse paupers. The cats bask in front of a blazing fire while the paupers
freeze in inadequately heated dormitories. Mr. Bumble remarks that he would
drown any cat that was not grateful to live with Mrs. Corney. Mrs. Corney calls
him a cruel man for saying that he would drown a cat. Mrs. Corney, of course,
ignores her own great cruelty to the paupers, yet bristles at the implication
of a drowned cat. By treating the paupers worse than animals, these so-called
charitable officials violate their basic rights as human beings.
Mr. Bumble’s proposal to Mrs. Corney
is a parody of a certain kind of middle-class marriage. Mr. Bumble whispers
sweet nothings to Mrs. Corney, but for all of his romantic pretensions, his
proposal is really inspired by Mrs. Corney’s material wealth. When she leaves
the room, he verifies that her dishware is made from silver and that her
clothing is of “good fashion and texture.” He assesses the exact condition of
her furniture and ascertains that her small padlocked box contains money. At
the end of this extensive inventory, he decides to go through with his
proposal. During the Victorian era, many marriages were primarily economic
arrangements, especially for people of middle-class status and above. Dickens,
however, was a die-hard romantic. In Oliver Twist, he champions the romantic concept
of marriage based on love. This idea will become increasingly important during
the latter half of the novel.
With the introduction of Monks,
the novel begins to take on the clear attributes of a detective story,
especially because we are unsure of who the man is and why he might be
interested in Oliver. Even Dickens’s description of Monks as “a dark figure”
who lurks “in deep shadow” is mysterious. Furthermore, the chapter implies that
Monks will be involved in the protracted unveiling of Oliver’s identity, and,
after Monks’s conversation with Fagin, our curiosity seeks satisfaction from
the lingering bewilderment. Monks’s claim that he saw “the shadow of a woman .
. . pass[ing] along the wainscot like a breath” introduces a note of suspense
and even of the supernatural, which grows more pronounced as the story
continues.
Through Rose’s reaction to
Oliver, Dickens presents delinquency as a problem determined by culture rather
than by innate character. Upon seeing Oliver, Rose imagines his entire history
at a glance. Unlike most adults who have tried to second-guess him, Rose’s
hypotheses about his past and personality are accurate. She surmises that
Oliver took part in the attempted burglary because he has never “known a
mother’s love” or because he suffered “ill-usage and blows” and “the want of
bread.” She names all the miserable conditions of poverty that may have “driven
him to herd with men who have forced him to guilt.” Like Brownlow, and unlike
the English legal system, the Maylies believe in forgiveness and kindness.
Dickens uses these characters, who believe that Oliver is innately good but
born into a bad environment, to show that vices can be combated by improving
the material conditions of the poor rather than by punishing them. The Maylies
recognize that Oliver’s surroundings have determined his behavior but not
necessarily his nature, and, as a result, for the first time in his life Oliver
is given the chance to narrate his life history on his own terms. This event is
an important step in establishing his identity as separate from his
surroundings.
The Maylie household in effect
simulates a benevolent courtroom, giving Oliver a voice and actually listening
to that voice. In this capacity, the courtroom of the Maylie household is
wholly different from the typical courtroom of the English legal system. In the
courtroom of Mr. Fang, which Dickens depicts in the novel, Oliver is not
permitted to testify on his own behalf. Moreover, even in the absence of
conclusive evidence, the magistrate still convicts him of the crime of
pickpocketing. In the courtroom of the Maylie household, Oliver not only
testifies for himself, but he also admits his part in the attempted burglary.
However, rather than convict him, his testimony exonerates him, since the Maylies
are more concerned with the fact that Oliver can be saved from committing
further crimes than with punishing him for the crime that he committed. For the
Maylies, Oliver’s entire history and personality matter more than any single
action of his.
Losberne’s conversation with
Giles and Brittles elaborates the two kinds of moral authority by which
characters can be judged in Oliver Twist: the moral authority of the English
court system and the higher spiritual authority of God. Losberne appeals to
Giles’s fear of God’s higher authority to keep him from telling the constable
that Oliver took part in the attempted burglary. His question to Giles and
Brittles—“Are you, on your solemn oaths, able to identify that boy?”—asks them
if they are morally able to identify Oliver to the law and live with the
consequences. Losberne implies that Giles will be responsible for Oliver’s
death if Giles’s statement sends him to the English courtroom, since the harsh,
literal-minded authority of the English legal system would sentence Oliver to
death for participating in a burglary. But the novel suggests that the higher,
spiritual authority of God would sentence Giles to hell for complicity in the
death of a child. Even though Giles, Brittles, and Losberne are all certain
that it was indeed Oliver who committed the crime, the three men are in a
position to exercise mercy, while the court system is not. The scene suggests
that mercy is frequently more valuable than justice, especially when crimes or
sins are committed within extenuating circumstances.
The maternal roles that Mrs.
Maylie and Rose play in Oliver’s life place Oliver in a normal family structure
for the first time in the novel, and Dickens’s characterization of the
upper-class family complicates his original intention of giving voice to the
poor. Oliver is the object of women’s kindness when both Mrs. Bedwin and Nancy
step in to offer him some measure of maternal protection. But unlike Mrs.
Bedwin and Nancy, the Maylie women are upper-class, and Dickens’s portrayal of
them reveals an implicit bias toward the upper class that complicates his
explicit attempts to speak for the poor. Blessed with the freedom and leisure
to do nothing all day but read, pick flowers, take walks, and play the piano,
the Maylies lead lives of perfect bliss, in which Oliver is thrilled to take
part. Dickens condemns the money-grubbing tendencies of characters like Fagin
and Mr. Bumble, but his idyllic portrait of the moneyed life almost makes
Fagin’s and Bumble’s avarice seem more understandable.
The idyll of Oliver’s life with
the Maylies is also related to their move to the countryside, and Dickens
suggests that rural life is superior in all ways to city life. In the country,
even poor people have “clean houses,” and woodland “scenes of peace and quietude”
are described as sufficient comfort even for those who lead “lives of toil.”
Dickens’s portrait of rural poverty as perfectly pleasant cannot be entirely
accurate, in light of the vast numbers of peasants who chose to migrate to the
city in his time. His description of the countryside as a site of class harmony
may be a result of Oliver’s sudden migration into the ranks of the upper class
as much as anything else. We already know that the condition of the poor in
cities is horrific, and the extravagant lives of the wealthy people who live
alongside them may look grotesque and downright immoral in contrast. But if the
rural poor lead comfortable lives, there is no call to condemn the leisurely
existence of the wealthy Maylies.
The relationship between Harry
and Rose illustrates that although marriage based on love is difficult, Dickens
values it more highly than marriage based on social station. However, Rose and
Mrs. Maylie both believe that marriage based on love is problematic. Rose
refuses to marry Harry for the same reasons that Mrs. Maylie says she should
not. Rose calls herself “a friendless, portionless girl” with a “blight” upon
her name. As a penniless, nameless girl, she says to Harry that his friends
will suspect that she “sordidly yielded to your first passion and fastened
myself . . . on all your hopes and projects.” In other words, she fears that
outsiders will believe that she slept with Harry outside of wedlock and secured
his hand in marriage in that way. Thus, she demonstrates her awareness of the
tendency of “respectable” society to assume the worst about individuals of low
social standing, a tendency that has almost ruined Oliver’s life time and
again.
Rose’s fear that others would
find her marriage to Harry “sordid” reveals the fundamental irrationality of
the society whose opinion she fears. Victorians who belonged to the middle and
upper classes often married for economic reasons. Individuals usually married
someone from a similar economic and social class because, presumably, marrying
down would harm their social and economic interests. Logically, we might assume
that a marriage between two people of different classes was more, not less,
likely to be based on love and higher spiritual values, since it would violate
the material interests of at least one party. Yet Rose predicts that others
would attribute her marriage to Harry to factors far less honorable than love.
Society’s inclination to assume the worst about those of low social standing is
so strong that it can lead to patently irrational conclusions.
Rose regrets that she cannot
offer Harry an economically profitable and socially acceptable marriage, but
Dickens criticizes socially or economically motivated marriage. Mr. Bumble and
Mrs. Corney demonstrate one such marriage, and the Bumbles lead a miserable
life. They dislike each other intensely. Mr. Bumble regrets marrying for “six
teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a milk-pot; with a small quantity of
second-hand furniture, and twenty pound in money.” He bases his marriage on
class similarities and not on personal compatibility, and the result is a
complete disaster.
Like Nancy and Oliver, Bumble
learns of the influence that clothing exercises upon identity. Bumble has given
up his position as the parish beadle to become the workhouse master. Having
exchanged one identity for another, he now regrets the change. After leaving
his position as beadle, he realizes how important the beadle’s clothing was to
the position. Dickens writes, “Strip the bishop of his apron, or the beadle of
his hat and lace; what are they? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and even holiness too,
sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.”
The power and dignity of privileged roles are not qualities inherent in the men
who occupy them. They are, like clothing, merely purchased and worn, and they
can be taken off as easily as they were put on.
The title of Oliver Twist is
deceptively simple. Although it does nothing more than state the protagonist’s
name, the central mystery of the novel is, in fact, the protagonist’s true
identity. Oliver’s misfortunes have had much to do with the false or mistaken
identities others have thrust upon him. Dickens conceals the solution to the
mystery of his true identity, leaving just a clue here and there in order to
move the plot forward. Various people seek to conceal Oliver’s identity for
their own personal gain. Oliver’s identity is intertwined with Monks’s
identity, and the connection between the two of them has shrouded both their
identities in mystery. Once it becomes clear that Oliver and Monks are
brothers, the novel enters its final stage. We begin to have some idea of who
Oliver might be, but the story continues since Oliver himself has yet to find
out.
The meeting of Nancy and Rose
represents the clash of two very different worlds. Rose has been raised amid
love and plenty, and, as a result, her virtue and kindness are almost unreal.
On the other hand, Nancy has struggled for survival in the streets, and instead
of conventional virtue, her life is full of crime and violence. Yet both were
once penniless, nameless orphans. Rose simply had the good luck to be taken in
by Mrs. Maylie, who offered her a road of escape from her unfortunate position.
Now, Rose offers Nancy a similar road of escape, but it is already too late for
Nancy. Their characters can be seen as part of Dickens’s argument that the
environment in which people are raised and the company that they keep have a
greater influence on their quality of character than any inborn traits. Rose
and Nancy were born in similar circumstances: only the environment in which
each was raised has made them so different.
Nancy’s decision to confront Rose
with information about Oliver stands in opposition to her earlier decision to
drag Oliver back to Fagin. Just as Nancy causes Oliver to become a thief
earlier in the novel by sending him to Fagin, her decision to reveal the
information she holds regarding his inheritance may cause him to become
wealthy. Furthermore, Nancy’s honorable act directly contradicts Victorian
stereotypes of the poor as fundamentally immoral and ignoble. It demonstrates
that there are different levels of vice and that an individual who partakes of
one level does not necessarily partake of the others. Nancy has been a thief since
childhood, she drinks to excess, and she is a prostitute. Despite these
tainting circumstances, however, she is incredibly virtuous where the most
important matters, those of life and death, are concerned. With her character,
Dickens suggests that the violation of property laws and sexual mores is not
incompatible with deep generosity and morality.
In many ways, Nancy, the paragon
of vice, appears here as more virtuous than Rose, the paragon of virtue. Rose
stands to lose nothing by helping Oliver, but Nancy could lose her life.
Fagin’s central threat to keep his associates from acting against his interests
is the threat of legal “justice.” He knows in intimate detail the criminal
activities of everyone in his social circle. Fagin can send Nancy to the gallows
for talking to anyone outside his circle of criminal associates.
Nancy regrets her life of vice,
but she refuses Rose’s offer to help her change it. Nancy sees herself, as Rose
puts it, as “a woman lost almost beyond redemption.” It seems as if she herself
assimilates to the judgments that intolerant characters like Mr. Bumble have
passed upon her. Yet Nancy’s love for Sikes is more crucial to her decision to
return to her old life than any belief that she has strayed too far from the
path of moral goodness. The different light in which society treats Nancy’s and
Rose’s romantic attachments reveals the extent of its prejudices against the
poor. It is considered a virtue when a woman like Rose is unconditionally
faithful to a respectable young man like Harry Maylie. Yet when a woman like
Nancy displays the same fidelity to a dreadful fellow like Sikes, it becomes “a
new means of violence and suffering.” This contrast demonstrates that
socioeconomic status has the power to color all aspects of an individual’s
life, even the private emotions of love and sentiment.
Although Fagin claims to be in
partnership with his associates, protecting them in exchange for their loyalty,
in the end, he manipulates them so that his own self-interest is better served.
He watches the people around him with special care and translates his knowledge
about them into power. A prime example of this strategy is his hope to use
Nancy’s possible lover to control her through blackmail. Even worse, he reveals
Nancy’s betrayal of the band’s code of silence to Sikes in the worst, most
treacherous light possible. He describes her actions in such a way as to
inspire Sikes’s murderous rage. Having Nancy killed is at least as beneficial
to Fagin as to Sikes, but Fagin is unwilling to risk doing the deed himself.
Instead, he uses his knowledge about Nancy and about Sikes’s character to
manipulate Sikes into committing the horrible crime.
Oliver Twist explores different
varieties of justice—that served by the English court system; spiritual or godly
justice; and, with Sikes’s crime, personal justice, or the torments of
conscience. Justice for Sikes’s “foulest and most cruel” of crimes is served
almost instantly, as Sikes’s guilt immediately subjects him to horrific mental
torture. The passages exploring his mental state are among the most
psychologically intricate in the novel. Sikes cannot cleanse himself of Nancy’s
blood, either figuratively or literally. Visions of Nancy’s dead eyes disturb
him greatly, and he fears being seen. During his desperate flight from London,
he feels as though everyone is watching suspiciously. Sikes’s remorse and
paranoia shape and twist the world around him. The traveling salesman who
claims to offer “the infallible and invaluable composition for removing all
sorts of stain,” including bloodstains, is so canny in his offer to help Sikes
remove his stains that the salesman could almost be a figment of Sikes’s
haunted imagination. Likewise, the burning barn, which essentially serves no
purpose in the plot, seems to be a herald of the fires of hell Sikes sees in
his future.
Unlike Oliver, who spends much of
the novel trying to discover his identity, Sikes desperately wishes to hide his
identity. However, his dog, Bull’s-eye, acts as a kind of walking name tag. The
animal follows him everywhere. Indeed, Sikes’s animal even leaves his mark at
the scene of the crime—his bloodstained footprints cover the room where Nancy
is killed. Bull’s-eye often functions as an alter ego for Sikes: the animal is
vicious and brutal, just like its owner. Sikes’s desire to kill the dog
symbolically and psychologically represents a desire to kill himself, the
murderer he has become.
The long story surrounding Mr.
Leeford’s marriage is told to demonstrate the disastrous consequences of
economically motivated marriages. Dickens’s romanticism manifests itself in the
difference between Oliver and his half-brother. Oliver, the child of Leeford’s
love affair, is virtuous and innocent. Monks, the result of an economic
marriage, is morally twisted by his obsession with wealth. This obsession with
money leads him down a long, dark path of nefarious crimes and conspiracies.
Throughout Oliver Twist, Dickens
criticizes the Victorian stereotype of the poor as criminals from birth.
However, after a strident critique of the representation of the poor as
hereditary criminals, he portrays Monks as a criminal whose nature has been
determined since birth. Brownlow tells Monks, “You . . . from your cradle were
gall and bitterness to your own father’s heart, and . . . all evil passions,
vice, and profligacy, festered [in you].” Monks’s evil character seems less the
product of his own decisions than of his birth.
Oliver Twist is full of mistaken,
assumed, and changed identities. Oliver joins his final domestic scene by assuming
yet another identity. Once the mystery of his real identity is revealed, he
quickly exchanges it for another, becoming Brownlow’s adopted son. After all
the fuss and the labyrinthine conspiracies to conceal Oliver’s identity, it is
ironic that he gives it up almost as soon as he discovers it.
The final chapters quickly
deliver the justice that has been delayed throughout the novel. Fagin dies on
the gallows. Sikes hangs himself by accident—it is as though the hand of fate
or a higher authority reaches out to execute him. Mr. and Mrs. Bumble are
deprived of the right to ever hold public office again. They descend into
poverty and suffer the same privations they had forced on paupers in the past.
Monks never reforms, nor does life show him any mercy. True to Brownlow’s
characterization of him as bad from birth, he continues his idle, evil ways and
dies in an American prison. For him, there is no redemption. Like Noah, he
serves as a foil—a character whose attributes contrast with, and thereby
accentuate, those of another—to Oliver’s character. He is as evil, twisted, and
mean while Oliver is good, virtuous, and kind. Oliver and all of his friends,
of course, enjoy a blissful, fairy-tale ending. Everyone takes up residence in
the same neighborhood and lives together like one big, happy family.
Perhaps the strangest part of the
concluding section of Oliver Twist is Leeford’s condition for Oliver’s
inheritance. Leeford states in his will that, if his child were a son, he would
inherit his estate “only on the stipulation that in his minority he should
never have stained his name with any public act of dishonor, meanness,
cowardice, or wrong.” It seems strange that a father would consign his child to
lifelong poverty as well as the stigma of illegitimacy if the son ever
committed a single wrong in childhood. In the same way that the court is
willing to punish Oliver for crimes committed by another, Leeford is ready to
punish Oliver for any small misdeed merely because he hated his first son,
Monks, so much.
One contradiction that critics of
Oliver Twist have pointed out is that although Dickens spends much of the novel
openly attacking retributive justice, the conclusion of the novel is quick to
deliver such justice. At the story’s end, crimes are punished harshly, and
devilish characters are still hereditary devils to the very end. The only real
change is that Oliver is now acknowledged as a hereditary angel rather than a
hereditary devil. No one, it seems, can escape the identity dealt to him or her
at birth. The real crime of characters like Mr. Bumble and Fagin may not have
been mistreating a defenseless child—it may have been mistreating a child who
was born for a better life.
Yet Dickens’s crusade for
forgiveness and tolerance is upheld by his treatment of more minor characters,
like Nancy, whose memory is sanctified, and Charley Bates, who redeems himself
and enters honest society. These characters’ fates demonstrate that the
individual can indeed rise above his or her circumstances, and that an
unfortunate birth does not have to guarantee an unfortunate life and legacy.
Analysis of Major
Characters
Oliver Twist
As the child hero of a
melodramatic novel of social protest, Oliver Twist is meant to appeal more to
our sentiments than to our literary sensibilities. On many levels, Oliver is
not a believable character, because although he is raised in corrupt
surroundings, his purity and virtue are absolute. Throughout the novel, Dickens
uses Oliver’s character to challenge the Victorian idea that paupers and criminals
are already evil at birth, arguing instead that a corrupt environment is the
source of vice. At the same time, Oliver’s incorruptibility undermines some of
Dickens’s assertions. Oliver is shocked and horrified when he sees the Artful
Dodger and Charley Bates pick a stranger’s pocket and again when he is forced
to participate in a burglary. Oliver’s moral scruples about the sanctity of
property seem inborn in him, just as Dickens’s opponents thought that
corruption is inborn in poor people. Furthermore, other pauper children use
rough Cockney slang, but Oliver, oddly enough, speaks in proper King’s English.
His grammatical fastidiousness is also inexplicable, as Oliver presumably is
not well-educated. Even when he is abused and manipulated, Oliver does not
become angry or indignant. When Sikes and Crackit force him to assist in a
robbery, Oliver merely begs to be allowed to “run away and die in the fields.”
Oliver does not present a complex picture of a person torn between good and
evil—instead, he is goodness incarnate.
Even if we might feel that
Dickens’s social criticism would have been more effective if he had focused on
a more complex poor character, like the Artful Dodger or Nancy, the audience
for whom Dickens was writing might not have been receptive to such a portrayal.
Dickens’s Victorian middle-class readers were likely to hold opinions on the
poor that were only a little less extreme than those expressed by Mr. Bumble,
the beadle who treats paupers with great cruelty. In fact, Oliver Twist was criticized
for portraying thieves and prostitutes at all. Given the strict morals of
Dickens’s audience, it may have seemed necessary for him to make Oliver a
saintlike figure. Because Oliver appealed to Victorian readers’ sentiments, his
story may have stood a better chance of effectively challenging heir
prejudices.
Nancy
A major concern of Oliver Twist
is the question of whether a bad environment can irrevocably poison someone’s
character and soul. As the novel progresses, the character who best illustrates
the contradictory issues brought up by that question is Nancy. As a child of
the streets, Nancy has been a thief and drinks to excess. The narrator’s
reference to her “free and agreeable . . . manners” indicates that she is a
prostitute. She is immersed in the vices condemned by her society, but she also
commits perhaps the most noble act in the novel when she sacrifices her own
life in order to protect Oliver. Nancy’s moral complexity is unique among the
major characters in Oliver Twist. The novel is full of characters who are all
good and can barely comprehend evil, such as Oliver, Rose, and Brownlow; and
characters who are all evil and can barely comprehend good, such as Fagin,
Sikes, and Monks. Only Nancy comprehends and is capable of both good and evil.
Her ultimate choice to do good at a great personal cost is a strong argument in
favor of the incorruptibility of basic goodness, no matter how many
environmental obstacles it may face.
Nancy’s love for Sikes
exemplifies the moral ambiguity of her character. As she herself points out to
Rose, devotion to a man can be “a comfort and a pride” under the right
circumstances. But for Nancy, such devotion is “a new means of violence and
suffering”—indeed, her relationship with Sikes leads her to criminal acts for
his sake and eventually to her own demise. The same behavior, in different
circumstances, can have very different consequences and moral significance. In
much of Oliver Twist, morality and nobility are black-and-white issues, but
Nancy’s character suggests that the boundary between virtue and vice is not
always clearly drawn.
Fagin
Although Dickens denied that
anti-Semitism had influenced his portrait of Fagin, the Jewish thief’s
characterization does seem to owe much to ethnic stereotypes. He is ugly, simpering,
miserly, and avaricious. Constant references to him as “the Jew” seem to
indicate that his negative traits are intimately connected to his ethnic
identity. However, Fagin is more than a statement of ethnic prejudice. He is a
richly drawn, resonant embodiment of terrifying villainy. At times, he seems
like a child’s distorted vision of pure evil. Fagin is described as a
“loathsome reptile” and as having “fangs such as should have been a dog’s or
rat’s.” Other characters occasionally refer to him as “the old one,” a popular
nickname for the devil. Twice, in Chapter 9 and again in Chapter 34, Oliver
wakes up to find Fagin nearby. Oliver encounters him in the hazy zone between
sleep and waking, at the precise time when dreams and nightmares are born from
“the mere silent presence of some external object.” Indeed, Fagin is meant to
inspire nightmares in child and adult readers alike. Perhaps most frightening
of all, though, is Chapter 52, in which we enter Fagin’s head for his “last
night alive.” The gallows, and the fear they inspire in Fagin, are a specter
even more horrifying to contemplate than Fagin himself.
