Through the Eyes of a Child: Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
by Marilyn Green Faulkner
In 1837 two figures whose influence would change the world rose to power in England. The diminutive Queen Victoria was crowned, and Charles Dickens published Oliver Twist, his second novel and the first to be serialized in his own publication. Its immediate popularity catapulted Dickens to fame. Along with The Christmas Carol it is still the most familiar of his novels, because its melodramatic plot has been adapted into numerous plays and musicals. The story of the little orphan who is reunited, then separated from, then reunited with his benevolent grandfather caught the imagination of Victorian society and has remained a favorite ever since.
Oliver Twist was the first English novel to take a child as its protagonist. Up until Dickens’s day, novels were written about people with money, education, and usually good breeding. Dickens chose to view the world through a lens that was unfamiliar to those who bought books; he looked through the eyes of a bright, though helpless child, trapped in a terrible situation. It was a viewpoint he remembered well. Dickens himself was sent by his parents at the age of twelve to work in a blacking factory in the middle of London, when his father became so mired in debt he was forced to take the child out of school. Charles lived alone in a rented room and nearly starved on the meager wages he earned for standing in the window of the factory, pasting labels on bottles of shoe polish. Though within a year his father was able to bring him home again, the terror and humiliation of that experience was so great that Dickens kept it a secret from everyone (even his wife and children) all of his life. He dealt with it instead through his fictional children, particularly Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, and through them awakened a generation to the plight of the dispossessed.
Filled with restless energy, Dickens walked the streets of London by night, sometimes covering fifteen to twenty miles in one walk. He peered into the back streets and was intimately familiar with the primitive living conditions of the poor. What he saw was heartbreaking. The London that Dickens perambulated had no social services, no public sanitation, and was rife with crime and social unrest. It is estimated that over 40,000 prostitutes walked the streets. Graveyards, unregulated and overfilled by their greedy proprieters, literally overflowed, causing a noxious stench to fill the surrounding streets. Children, unprotected by law, were forced to work long hours in factories, clamber up blackened chimneys as sweeps, or risk their lives in the mines. Unwanted and illegitimate children were sent north to schools where they were abused and underfed. Though his remarkable talent brought Dickens early and lasting success, his humble beginnings caused him to relate with these, the lowest classes of society. He was their champion and their voice, through characters like the plucky, innocent Oliver.
Still in his twenties and largely self-educated, we can see Dickens teaching himself to write in this second novel, finding his voice and unique style. After the light comic tone of The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist is surprising for its dark irony. (Dickens was actually writing the end of one as he began the other, and would follow a similar pattern for decades, overlapping and interweaving the comic and the serious, the sardonic and the sentimental.) Writing in a distanced, often comical tone, Dickens introduces us to the newborn Oliver, who is the emblem of everything good and innocent cast into everything that is wicked and selfish. Abandoned and abused, he survives the first few years out of sheer determination. The most famous scene in the book illustrates the way in which a Dickens character can become an emblem for an entire class. Oliver, new to the workhouse, is nudged and encouraged by his fellow boys to do the unthinkable: he asks for more food. The Poor Law of 1834 actually mandated the pitiful amounts of food allowed to indigent children, and as Oliver struggles to his feet and holds out his empty bowl, Dickens puts a nation on alert that society has gone awry:
Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity: ‘Please, Sir, I want some more.’
Of course, Oliver’s simple plea is treated as a criminal act, and he is branded as a troublemaker. His ejection from lawful society, where he has been neglected and abused, is followed by his introduction to the underworld of London, where he is fed, welcomed and even loved. Dickens’s point is clear: if society does not care for its own, it will pay the price in increased crime and social unrest. We can be assured that Fagin and his boys have relevance to us when we view the proliferation of the gang culture in our inner cities, where fatherless children find a family of sorts in criminal groups. This morning my local paper reported on the terrorist organization Hamas; they feed and care for the widows and fatherless among them, and receive loyal support in return, underscoring again that this is a fairy tale with a message for any age.
Oliver Twist is a good introduction to the hilarious, sentimental, dramatic, ironic, brilliant world of Charles Dickens. You might want to follow it with David Copperfield, to see how his genius reaches its height, then Great Expectations, to feel how the wisdom and disappointments of age affect his writing. All three are stories of boys who are cast upon a difficult social sea and somehow make their way, illustrating above all Dickens’s faith in the resilience and tenacity of the human spirit.
Though I suppose he is not for everyone, if I were stranded on a desert island I would ask for a Bible and the works of Dickens and I could be content. I hoard his books, rationing myself to about one per year. That way I can fully enjoy his genius and know that by the time I get around to the second reading of each novel I will have forgotten most of it and can enjoy it afresh! If you are interested in learning more about Dickens, I recommend Jane Smiley’s remarkable work, Charles Dickens, published through the Penguin Great Writer’s series in 2002. She gives, in my opinion, the best overall view of the mixture of the man and his work. Two other great resources are Peter Ackroyd’s stupendous biography, Dickens (1500 pages – beware!) and Norrie Epstein’s delightful The Friendly Dickens. The latter is a great resource for teenagers encountering the great man for the first time in school.
Oliver Twist is the June selection for the Best Books Club, an informal group of like-minded readers who enjoy the classics together and discuss them via the internet. Our selection for June is the wonderful Watership Down, by Richard Adams.
Readers shared some interesting perspectives on our May selection, Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton:
Having been born & raised in South Africa, to me, this book has always symbolized the sad & painful, yet hopeful soul of South Africa. I have read it many times since English Lit. inhigh school (too many years ago, and yes, in South Africa!), and each time, the sobs rise in my throat & my heart contracts as I envision the people, the places, and the tragedies that were the victims of apartheid.
I remember well the people I knew and lost, as well as those in the pages of the book that are symbolic of the nation that can be. I know I will read this book many more times, it is one of my prized possessions. Thank you for this moment of revisiting a literary treasure and the memories of my beloved country. Your critique is poignant.
Coral Anna Foster
Thank you so much for this review on a book I read many years ago.
While you never really forget any book as marvelous as this one, the details do escape you with age, and it is so good to be reminded. I wept in my thirties/forties when reading this book, and I wept again reading your review.
The inhumanity of man to his fellow man is bad enough – but the inhumanity to ourselves, from ourselves is even worse.
Having now reached the age of almost eighty, I see many things that were not visible to me earlier in my life. I was so busy with so many things – family, a business, teaching, all kinds of things. Now I have time for intospection, meditating, and pondering LIFE.
I weep over the obvious – to me – mistakes of our children, grandchildren and others I love. I recall my own stupidities and errors, and wonder how in the world our Heavenly Father can bear all that goes on in the world. I’m having a hard time bearing the tiny section and people in it I feel somewhat responsible for.
Yet, through it all is a transcendant joy for the beauty of the countryside in which we live, the goodness of friends and neighbors. And most of all, the joys of the Gospel.
Thank you again for reminding me of this book. Think I’ll stoip at the libarary while I am out today and get a copy to re-read. It is worth it!
Sincerly, Ruth
Finally, I received this delightful sonnet from a member. It made my day:
The following is from the Washington Post Style Invitational contest that asks readers to submit “instructions” for something (anything), but written in the style of a famous person. The winning entry was The Hokey Pokey (as written by W. Shakespeare)
Shakespeare’s version of “Do the Hokey-Pokey”
by Nina Williams-Mbengue
O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heaven’s yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke — banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, ’tis what it’s all about.
Our website: www.thebestbooksclub.com
2003 Meridian Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
