Although I do not particularly consider myself a Charles Dickens fan, Oliver Twist is one of the most impactful novels I have ever read. I can vividly remember being horrified the first time I read it in high school. Dickens powerfully describes some of the most gruesome conditions faced by the poor in nineteenth-century London, and by doing so, his novel provides modern-day readers at a glimpse of how dehumanized the lower classes were in England at the time. Dickens develops a realistic tale, and through his vivid descriptions, the horrific results of extreme social stratification are highlighted as a key theme.
The representations presented in Oliver Twist substantially relate to the British Poor Laws of the nineteenth-century. These laws forced families in poverty into workhouses, which were comparable to prisons. Despite a decent size of the English population experiencing poverty, the general gap between classes created a lack of understanding which created the laws of the time. Dickens is sure to create a bold distinction between the classes through his characters. As represented in the novel, Dickens believed workhouses amplified the worst attributes in people of power. This is illustrated by characters like Sowerberry and Mr. Bumble. The power is used by them to hold the lower classes hostage. Descriptions of Sowerberry do not necessarily paint him as inherently evil, but rather as a character who is insensitive to people grieving and he does nothing to help those who he watches to suffer. This makes him a very human character and relates him to many readers of both then and now. Sowerberry thinks of Oliver in terms of profit rather than thinking of what would best help Oliver. Mr. Bumble likes power and outwardly uses it to manipulate people. As he reigns over the workhouses, he does so in an inhumane way. He meets his fate at the end of the novel, but he ultimately represents the hypocritical “charitable” institutes.
In contrast, Dickens paints a more sympathetic image of those experiencing poverty and those who have no other choice, this is mainly developed through Oliver. Oliver’s spirit remains although he is forced to live on unsustainable amounts of food and sleep in shameful sleeping quarters. Dickens highlights Oliver’s spirit and innocence in a manner that illustrates the good nature of the poor, despite the cruel treatment from the other classes. When Oliver is born, the narrator says he could be the “the child of a nobleman or a beggar.” When the authorities intervene and wrap him in the identity-erasing parish clothes he is “badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once—a parish child—the orphan of a workhouse.” This illustrates clearly that Oliver had no chance against the authorities, and they stepped in when he was vulnerable to force him into a life where he has no other choice. Oliver develops into a realistic symbol for those suffering in poverty at the time, and he serves as a symbol of nineteenth-century poverty for modern-day readers.
Dickens also does not glorify the conditions the boys in Oliver Twist are forced through, rather he describes them for what they were: filthy and miserable. This keeps poverty from looking desirable, and it shows the desperate need for change, pulling on the hearts of nineteenth-century readers. From the beginning of the book, readers are set with the conditions when they read about how the children are treated. Dickens writes parish children
“had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world.”
Although this is only one of the many descriptions Dickens provides of the conditions in Oliver Twist, and it speaks to the nature of poverty in London at the time. Dickens does not shy away from showing the grueling nature of these conditions, highlighting the raw reality of poverty through his use of characters representing social classes and grueling descriptions of workhouse conditions.
Works Referenced:
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. 1838. <http://literatureproject.com/oliver-twist/index.htm>.
Richardson, Ruth. Oliver Twist and the Workhouse. 2014. Web. <https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/oliver-twist-and-the-workhouse>.
Yes, this novel in particular illustrates how Dickens used fiction to highlight social conditions. There’s a lot of debate about Dickens’s characterization–are his characters “flat” and merely caricatures for particular types of people and institutional and social conditions, or are they psychologically real? If Dickens is using fiction for a purpose (to demonstrate inequality and the ill effects of the Poor Laws, for instance), does that diminish the “worth” of his novels as literature?