Name:- Rayjada Mitalba J. Paper:- Victorian Literature
Enrollment No:-2069108420190040. Roll No:- 20
Submitted to:- S.B.Gardi Department of English, Maharaja krushnkumarsinhji University, Bhavnagar.
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens:-
Charles John Huffam Dickens born 7 February 1812 death 9 June 1870. He was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are still widely read today.Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Oliver Twist characters:-
Oliver Twist - The novel’s protagonist. Oliver is an orphan born in a workhouse.
Brownlow - A well-off, erudite gentleman who serves as Oliver’s first benefactor.
Monks - Oliver hif brother A sickly, vicious young man, prone to violent fits and teeming with inexplicable hatred.
Mr. Bumble - The pompous, self-important beadle—a minor church official—for the workhouse where Oliver is born.
Fagin - A conniving career criminal. Fagin takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him.
Nancy -A young prostitute and one of Fagin’s former child pickpockets. Nancy is also Bill Sikes’s lover.
Bill Sikes - A brutal professional burglar brought up in Fagin’s gang.
Noah Claypole - A charity boy and Mr. Sowerberry’s apprentice.
Mr. Sowerberry - The undertaker to whom Oliver is apprenticed.
Mrs. Sowerberry - Sowerberry’s wife. Sally - elderly pauper who serves as the nurse at Oliver’s birth.
Agnes Fleming - Oliver’s mother. Rose Maylie - Agnes Fleming’s sister.
Story:-
Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse in 1830s England. His mother, whose name no one knows, is found on the street and dies just after Oliver’s birth. Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in a badly run home for young orphans and then is transferred to a workhouse for adults Oliver, who toils with very little food, remains in the workhouse for six months. One day, the desperately hungry boys decide to draw lots Mr. Bumble for gruel with his famous request: "Please, sir, I want some more".Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle, offers five pounds to anyone who will take the boy away from the workhouse. Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish chimney sweep and is eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry.
takes Oliver into his service.
Mr. Sowerberry is in an unhappy marriage, and his wife looks down on Oliver and loses few opportunities to underfeed and mistreat him. He also suffers torment at the hands of Noah Claypole, an oafish and bullying fellow apprentice and "charity boy" who is jealous of Oliver's promotion.
Wanting to bait Oliver, Noah insults the memory of Oliver's biological mother, calling her "a regular right-down bad 'un". Oliver attacks him and incurs the Sowerberrys’ wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away at dawn and travels toward London.
Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter in the London house of his benefactor, Fagin. It turns out that Fagin is a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him. After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing mission with two other boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an elderly gentlemanMr Brownlow and promptly flee.
When he finds his handkerchief missing, Mr Brownlow turns round, sees Oliver running away in fright, and pursues him, thinking he was the thief. Others join the chase, capture Oliver, and bring him before the magistrate. Curiously, Mr Brownlow has second thoughts about the boy – he seems reluctant to believe he is a pickpocket. To the judge's evident disappointment, a bookstall holder who saw the Dodger commit the crime clears Oliver, who, by now actually ill, faints in the courtroom. Mr Brownlow takes Oliver home and, along with his housekeeper Mrs Bedwin, cares for him.
Mr. Brownlow is struck by Oliver’s resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home, but two young adults in Fagin’s gang, Bill Sikes and his lover Nancy, capture Oliver and return him to Fagin.Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named Monks are set on recapturing Oliver.
Meanwhile, it is revealed that Oliver’s mother left behind a gold locket when she died. Monks obtains and destroys that locket. When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagin’s designs, but a member of Fagin’s gang overhears the conversation. When word of Nancy’s disclosure reaches Sikes, he brutally murders Nancy and flees London. Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently hangs himself while trying to escape.While Sikes is fleeing the mob, Mr Brownlow forces Monks to listen to the story connecting him, once called Edward Leeford, and Oliver as half brothers, or to face the police for his crimes.
Their father, Edwin Leeford, was once friends with Brownlow. Edwin had fallen in love with Oliver's mother, Agnes, after Edwin and Monks' mother had separated. Edwin had to help a dying friend in Rome, and then died there himself, leaving Agnes, "his guilty love", in England. Mr Brownlow has a picture of Agnes and had begun making inquiries when he noticed a marked resemblance between her and Oliver. Monks had hunted his brother to destroy him, to gain all in their father's will.
Meeting with Monks and the Bumbles in Oliver's native town, Brownlow asks Oliver to give half his inheritance to Monks to give him a second chance; Oliver is more than happy to comply.
Monks moves to "the new world", where he squanders his money, reverts to crime, and dies in prison. Fagin is arrested, tried and condemned to the gallows. On the eve of Fagin's hanging, Oliver, accompanied by Mr Brownlow in an emotional scene, visits Fagin in Newgate Prison, in hope of retrieving papers from Monks. Fagin is lost in a world of his own fear of impending death.
Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts Monks and wrings the truth about Oliver’s parentage from him. It is revealed that Monks is Oliver’s half brother. Their father, Mr. Leeford, was unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair with Oliver’s mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks has been pursuing Oliver all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived of his share of the family inheritance. Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to sign over Oliver’s share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered that Rose is Agnes’s younger sister, hence Oliver’s aunt. Fagin is hung for his crimes. Finally, Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside.
Themes:-
1. Purity in a Corrupt City :-
Throughout the novel, Dickens confronts the question of whether the terrible environments he depicts have the power to “blacken [the soul] and change its hue for ever.” By examining the fates of most of the characters, we can assume that his answer is that they do not. Certainly, characters like Sikes and Fagin seem to have sustained permanent damage to their moral sensibilities. Yet even Sikes has a conscience, which manifests itself in the apparition of Nancy’s eyes that haunts him after he murders her. Charley Bates maintains enough of a sense of decency to try to capture Sikes. Of course, Oliver is above any corruption, though the novel removes him from unhealthy environments relatively early in his life. Most telling of all is Nancy, who, though she considers herself “lost almost beyond redemption,” ends up making the ultimate sacrifice for a child she hardly knows. In contrast, Monks, perhaps the novel’s most inhuman villain, was brought up amid wealth and comfort.
2.Society and Class :-
one of the central themes of most Dickens novels. In Oliver Twist, Dickens often shows how superficial class structures really are—at the core, everyone’s really the same, regardless of the social class into which they’re born.Dickens also exposes how callous and uncaring Victorian society was—folks just ignored the plight of the less fortunate because they were so self-satisfied, and so convinced that the systems they had in place to take care of the poor were the best and most humane systems possible.
3. Poverty :-
Workhouses, filthy quarters, despair: Dickens is very concerned with showing just how miserable the lower classes really were in 19th Century London. With Oliver Twist, he doesn’t shy away from depicting the conditions of the poor in all their misery with gritty realism..
4. Criminality :-
Crime was a huge problem in London in the 1830s, when Dickens was writing. Novels and plays about crime were hugely popular. Some novelists wrote about crime because they had a particular point to make about the source of criminal behavior, or possible solutions to the crime wave. Other novelists wrote about crime just because they knew it would sell.Oliver Twist was hugely popular, but Dickens definitely had a point to make: he wanted to show how criminals really lived, in order to discourage poor people from turning to crime. He also wanted to show how external influences created criminal behavior as much or more than natural criminal urges.
5. The Countryside Idealized:-
All the injustices and privations suffered by the poor in Oliver Twist occur in cities—either the great city of London or the provincial city where Oliver is born. When the Maylies take Oliver to the countryside, he discovers a “new existence.” Dickens asserts that even people who have spent their entire lives in “close and noisy places” are likely, in the last moments of their lives, to find comfort in half--imagined memories “of sky, and hill and plain.” Moreover, country scenes have the potential to “purify our thoughts” and erase some of the vices that develop in the city. Hence, in the country, “the poor people [are] so neat and clean,” living a life that is free of the squalor that torments their urban counterparts. Oliver and his new family settle in a small village at the novel’s end, as if a happy ending would not be possible in the city. It is precisely Dickens’s distance from the countryside that allows him to idelize it.
Enrollment No:-2069108420190040. Roll No:- 20
Submitted to:- S.B.Gardi Department of English, Maharaja krushnkumarsinhji University, Bhavnagar.
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens:-
Charles John Huffam Dickens born 7 February 1812 death 9 June 1870. He was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are still widely read today.Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Oliver Twist characters:-
Oliver Twist - The novel’s protagonist. Oliver is an orphan born in a workhouse.
Brownlow - A well-off, erudite gentleman who serves as Oliver’s first benefactor.
Monks - Oliver hif brother A sickly, vicious young man, prone to violent fits and teeming with inexplicable hatred.
Mr. Bumble - The pompous, self-important beadle—a minor church official—for the workhouse where Oliver is born.
Fagin - A conniving career criminal. Fagin takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him.
Nancy -A young prostitute and one of Fagin’s former child pickpockets. Nancy is also Bill Sikes’s lover.
Bill Sikes - A brutal professional burglar brought up in Fagin’s gang.
Noah Claypole - A charity boy and Mr. Sowerberry’s apprentice.
Mr. Sowerberry - The undertaker to whom Oliver is apprenticed.
Mrs. Sowerberry - Sowerberry’s wife. Sally - elderly pauper who serves as the nurse at Oliver’s birth.
Agnes Fleming - Oliver’s mother. Rose Maylie - Agnes Fleming’s sister.
Story:-
Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse in 1830s England. His mother, whose name no one knows, is found on the street and dies just after Oliver’s birth. Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in a badly run home for young orphans and then is transferred to a workhouse for adults Oliver, who toils with very little food, remains in the workhouse for six months. One day, the desperately hungry boys decide to draw lots Mr. Bumble for gruel with his famous request: "Please, sir, I want some more".Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle, offers five pounds to anyone who will take the boy away from the workhouse. Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish chimney sweep and is eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry.
takes Oliver into his service.
Mr. Sowerberry is in an unhappy marriage, and his wife looks down on Oliver and loses few opportunities to underfeed and mistreat him. He also suffers torment at the hands of Noah Claypole, an oafish and bullying fellow apprentice and "charity boy" who is jealous of Oliver's promotion.
Wanting to bait Oliver, Noah insults the memory of Oliver's biological mother, calling her "a regular right-down bad 'un". Oliver attacks him and incurs the Sowerberrys’ wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away at dawn and travels toward London.
Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter in the London house of his benefactor, Fagin. It turns out that Fagin is a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him. After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing mission with two other boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an elderly gentlemanMr Brownlow and promptly flee.
When he finds his handkerchief missing, Mr Brownlow turns round, sees Oliver running away in fright, and pursues him, thinking he was the thief. Others join the chase, capture Oliver, and bring him before the magistrate. Curiously, Mr Brownlow has second thoughts about the boy – he seems reluctant to believe he is a pickpocket. To the judge's evident disappointment, a bookstall holder who saw the Dodger commit the crime clears Oliver, who, by now actually ill, faints in the courtroom. Mr Brownlow takes Oliver home and, along with his housekeeper Mrs Bedwin, cares for him.
Mr. Brownlow is struck by Oliver’s resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home, but two young adults in Fagin’s gang, Bill Sikes and his lover Nancy, capture Oliver and return him to Fagin.Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named Monks are set on recapturing Oliver.
Meanwhile, it is revealed that Oliver’s mother left behind a gold locket when she died. Monks obtains and destroys that locket. When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagin’s designs, but a member of Fagin’s gang overhears the conversation. When word of Nancy’s disclosure reaches Sikes, he brutally murders Nancy and flees London. Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently hangs himself while trying to escape.While Sikes is fleeing the mob, Mr Brownlow forces Monks to listen to the story connecting him, once called Edward Leeford, and Oliver as half brothers, or to face the police for his crimes.
Their father, Edwin Leeford, was once friends with Brownlow. Edwin had fallen in love with Oliver's mother, Agnes, after Edwin and Monks' mother had separated. Edwin had to help a dying friend in Rome, and then died there himself, leaving Agnes, "his guilty love", in England. Mr Brownlow has a picture of Agnes and had begun making inquiries when he noticed a marked resemblance between her and Oliver. Monks had hunted his brother to destroy him, to gain all in their father's will.
Meeting with Monks and the Bumbles in Oliver's native town, Brownlow asks Oliver to give half his inheritance to Monks to give him a second chance; Oliver is more than happy to comply.
Monks moves to "the new world", where he squanders his money, reverts to crime, and dies in prison. Fagin is arrested, tried and condemned to the gallows. On the eve of Fagin's hanging, Oliver, accompanied by Mr Brownlow in an emotional scene, visits Fagin in Newgate Prison, in hope of retrieving papers from Monks. Fagin is lost in a world of his own fear of impending death.
Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts Monks and wrings the truth about Oliver’s parentage from him. It is revealed that Monks is Oliver’s half brother. Their father, Mr. Leeford, was unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair with Oliver’s mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks has been pursuing Oliver all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived of his share of the family inheritance. Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to sign over Oliver’s share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered that Rose is Agnes’s younger sister, hence Oliver’s aunt. Fagin is hung for his crimes. Finally, Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside.
Themes:-
1. Purity in a Corrupt City :-
Throughout the novel, Dickens confronts the question of whether the terrible environments he depicts have the power to “blacken [the soul] and change its hue for ever.” By examining the fates of most of the characters, we can assume that his answer is that they do not. Certainly, characters like Sikes and Fagin seem to have sustained permanent damage to their moral sensibilities. Yet even Sikes has a conscience, which manifests itself in the apparition of Nancy’s eyes that haunts him after he murders her. Charley Bates maintains enough of a sense of decency to try to capture Sikes. Of course, Oliver is above any corruption, though the novel removes him from unhealthy environments relatively early in his life. Most telling of all is Nancy, who, though she considers herself “lost almost beyond redemption,” ends up making the ultimate sacrifice for a child she hardly knows. In contrast, Monks, perhaps the novel’s most inhuman villain, was brought up amid wealth and comfort.
2.Society and Class :-
one of the central themes of most Dickens novels. In Oliver Twist, Dickens often shows how superficial class structures really are—at the core, everyone’s really the same, regardless of the social class into which they’re born.Dickens also exposes how callous and uncaring Victorian society was—folks just ignored the plight of the less fortunate because they were so self-satisfied, and so convinced that the systems they had in place to take care of the poor were the best and most humane systems possible.
3. Poverty :-
Workhouses, filthy quarters, despair: Dickens is very concerned with showing just how miserable the lower classes really were in 19th Century London. With Oliver Twist, he doesn’t shy away from depicting the conditions of the poor in all their misery with gritty realism..
4. Criminality :-
Crime was a huge problem in London in the 1830s, when Dickens was writing. Novels and plays about crime were hugely popular. Some novelists wrote about crime because they had a particular point to make about the source of criminal behavior, or possible solutions to the crime wave. Other novelists wrote about crime just because they knew it would sell.Oliver Twist was hugely popular, but Dickens definitely had a point to make: he wanted to show how criminals really lived, in order to discourage poor people from turning to crime. He also wanted to show how external influences created criminal behavior as much or more than natural criminal urges.
5. The Countryside Idealized:-
All the injustices and privations suffered by the poor in Oliver Twist occur in cities—either the great city of London or the provincial city where Oliver is born. When the Maylies take Oliver to the countryside, he discovers a “new existence.” Dickens asserts that even people who have spent their entire lives in “close and noisy places” are likely, in the last moments of their lives, to find comfort in half--imagined memories “of sky, and hill and plain.” Moreover, country scenes have the potential to “purify our thoughts” and erase some of the vices that develop in the city. Hence, in the country, “the poor people [are] so neat and clean,” living a life that is free of the squalor that torments their urban counterparts. Oliver and his new family settle in a small village at the novel’s end, as if a happy ending would not be possible in the city. It is precisely Dickens’s distance from the countryside that allows him to idelize it.
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