Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist was 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.
After the other boys bully Oliver into asking for more gruel at the end of a meal, 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. When the undertaker’s other apprentice, Noah
Claypole, makes disparaging comments about Oliver’s mother, 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 gentleman, Oliver is horrified and runs off. He is caught but narrowly escapes being
convicted of the theft. Mr. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen, takes the feverish
Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health. 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. 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.

The novel’s protagonist. Oliver is an orphan born in a workhouse, and Dickens uses his situation
to criticize public policy toward the poor in 1830s England. Oliver is between nine and twelve
years old when the main action of the novel occurs. Though treated with cruelty and surrounded
by coarseness for most of his life, he is a pious, innocent child, and his charms draw the attention
of several wealthy benefactors. His true identity is the central mystery of the novel. 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 their prejudices.

A conniving career criminal. Fagin takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for
him. He is also a buyer of other people’s stolen goods. He rarely commits crimes himself,
preferring to employ others to commit them—and often suffer legal retribution—in his place.
Dickens’s portrait of Fagin displays the influence of anti-Semitic stereotypes. 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.

Nancy - A young prostitute and one of Fagin’s former child pickpockets. Nancy is also Bill
Sikes’s lover. Her love for Sikes and her sense of moral decency come into conflict when Sikes
abuses Oliver. Despite her criminal lifestyle, she is among the noblest characters in the novel. In
effect, she gives her life for Oliver when Sikes murders her for revealing Monks’s plots. 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.

Rose Maylie - Agnes Fleming’s sister, raised by Mrs. Maylie after the death of Rose’s father. A
beautiful, compassionate, and forgiving young woman, Rose is the novel’s model of female
virtue. She establishes a loving relationship with Oliver even before it is revealed that the two are
related.

Mr. Brownlow - A well-off, erudite gentleman who serves as Oliver’s first benefactor. Mr.
Brownlow owns a portrait of Agnes Fleming and was engaged to Mr. Leeford’s sister when she
died. Throughout the novel, he behaves with compassion and common sense and emerges as a
natural leader.

Monks - A sickly, vicious young man, prone to violent fits and teeming with inexplicable hatred.
With Fagin, he schemes to give Oliver a bad reputation. Bill Sikes - A brutal professional burglar
brought up in Fagin’s gang. Sikes is Nancy's pimp and lover, and he treats both her and his dog
Bull’s-eye with an odd combination of cruelty and grudging affection. His murder of Nancy is
the most heinous of the many crimes that occur in the novel.

Mr. Bumble - The pompous, self-important beadle—a minor church official—for the workhouse
where Oliver is born. Though Mr. Bumble preaches Christian morality, he behaves without
compassion toward the paupers under his care. Dickens mercilessly satirizes his self-
righteousness, greed, hypocrisy, and folly, of which his name is an obvious symbol.

Agnes Fleming - Oliver’s mother. After falling in love with and becoming pregnant by Mr.
Leeford, she chooses to die anonymously in a workhouse rather than stain her family’s
reputation. A retired naval officer’s daughter, she was a beautiful, loving woman. Oliver’s face
closely resembles hers.

Mr. Leeford - Oliver and Monks’s father, who dies long before the events of the novel. He was
an intelligent, high-minded man whose family forced him into an unhappy marriage with a
wealthy woman. He eventually separated from his wife and had an illicit love affair with Agnes
Fleming. He intended to flee the country with Agnes but died before he could do so.

Mr. Losberne - Mrs. Maylie’s family physician. A hot-tempered but good-hearted old bachelor,
Mr. Losberne is fiercely loyal to the Maylies and, eventually, to Oliver.

Mrs. Maylie - A kind, wealthy older woman, the mother of Harry Maylie and adoptive “aunt” of
Rose.

Themes

Failure of Government

Much of the first part of Oliver Twist challenges the organizations of charity run by the church
and the government in Dickens’s time. The system Dickens describes was put into place by the
Poor Law of 1834, which stipulated that the poor could only receive government assistance if
they moved into government workhouses. Residents of those workhouses were essentially
inmates whose rights were severely curtailed by a host of onerous regulations. Labor was
required, families were almost always separated, and rations of food and clothing were meager.
The workhouses operated on the principle that poverty was the consequence of laziness and that
the dreadful conditions in the workhouse would inspire the poor to better their own
circumstances. Yet the economic dislocation of the Industrial Revolution made it impossible for
many to do so, and the workhouses did not provide any means for social or economic betterment.
Furthermore, as Dickens points out, the officials who ran the workhouses blatantly violated the
values they preached to the poor. Dickens describes with great sarcasm the greed, laziness, and
arrogance of charitable workers like Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Mann. In general, charitable
institutions only reproduced the awful conditions in which the poor would live anyway. As
Dickens puts it, the poor choose between “being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by
a quick one out of it.”

The Folly of Individualism

With the rise of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, individualism was very much in
vogue as a philosophy. Victorian capitalists believed that society would run most smoothly if
individuals looked out for their own interests. Ironically, the clearest pronunciation of this
philosophy comes not from a legitimate businessman but from Fagin, who operates in the illicit
businesses of theft and prostitution. He tells Noah Claypole that “a regard for number one holds
us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company.” In other words, the
group’s interests are best maintained if every individual looks out for “number one,” or himself.
The folly of this philosophy is demonstrated at the end of the novel, when Nancy turns against
Monks, Charley Bates turns against Sikes, and Monks turns against Mrs. Corney. Fagin’s
unstable family, held together only by the selfinterest of its members, is juxtaposed to the little
society formed by Oliver, Brownlow, Rose Maylie, and their many friends. This second group is
bound together not by concerns of selfinterest but by “strong affection and humanity of heart,”
the selfless devotion to each other that Dickens sees as the prerequisite for “perfect happiness.”

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.

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. Dickens’s portrait of
rural life in Oliver Twist is more approving yet far less realistic than his portrait of urban life.
This fact does not contradict, but rather supports, the general estimation of Dickens as a great
urban writer. It is precisely Dickens’s distance from the countryside that allows him to idealize it.

Institutional Cruelty

The cruelty of institutions and bureaucracies toward the unfortunate is perhaps the preeminent
theme of Oliver Twist, and essentially what makes it a social novel. Dickens wrote the book
largely in response to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which represented the
government's both passive and active cruelty to the poor and helpless. Although institutions show
both passive and active cruelty in Oliver Twist, active cruelty is more prevalent, a move that
serves to exaggerate and thus satirize this cruelty and make it seem intentional. The cruelty of
these institutions, however, is not separated from the cruelty of individuals. Although the
parochial board that decides Oliver’s future carelessly and without sympathy is largely
anonymous, the man in the white jacket generally voices the specific cruel sentiments, so that
they are not presented as having come from nowhere, or just from laws, but from the individuals
in power. Similarly, Mr. Bumble is often directly involved in the institutional unkindness that
Oliver faces. This cruelty is not nameless or faceless, it is just so prevalent that not all the
perpetrators can be named.

Mob mentality

The horrifying power of mob mentality is also an important theme in Oliver Twist, and one that
is closely related to that of institutional cruelty. Institutional cruelty can be seen to be an example
of a specific kind of mob mentality—not literally, but a mob in which individuals are not held
accountable for their actions, and so can be as heartless as they like, with the blank face of the
bureaucracy to cover them. Similarly, the mobs in Oliver Twist all take on lives of their owns, so
that the individuals within them can display their cruelest character. We see mobs act against
Oliver, the most striking example of which is when he is accused of stealing Mr. Brownlow’s
handkerchief. We also see mobs act against the antagonists in the novel. Bill Sikes becomes a
victim of a mob, and although we know that he is guilty, as opposed to Oliver, there is still an
eerie similarly between Sikes’s mob and Oliver’s, that reminds us how easily such a mob can
turn against anyone, whether or not that someone is truly guilty. Thus even when the mob is on
the side of justice, and is "correct", Dickens illuminates the danger of the mentality.

The importance of upbringing

Proper upbringing, posited as essential throughout the novel, is illuminated best in the scene
where Nancy and Rose first meet. In this scene, Dickens juxtaposes the prostitute Nancy to the
angelic and utterly perfect Rose. Nancy’s potential for goodness is clear, made so by her very
presence there among other things, but from youth she has been surrounded by liars and thieves,
and although she transcends their ranks morally, she cannot escape from them, nor become the
person she could have had she had any of the advantages that Rose did. Rose, too, comes from a
rather ignominious background, but from an early age she was raised by the kind and loving Mrs.
Maylie, who also offered her all the resources she could desire - and so she became an example
of the "perfect" female. Oliver manages to rise above his upbringing. Surrounded by selfish,
ignorant and cruel people for most of his childhood, given no love, care, or tenderness, he still
manages to maintain his kind disposition, and never gives into the low morals of those around
him. He is, however, meant to be the exception that proves the rule. The fact that his happy
ending is so very miraculous proves how important it is to be loved and cared for in childhood.
The powerlessness of children

Dickens is deeply interested in the plight of the powerless in Oliver Twist, and children are the
primary symbol of this. Oliver is continually reliant on and overpowered by others—Mr.
Bumble, Fagin and Sikes, the mobs and people in the street, even Nancy. Although he works
hard to survive, it is only because he is taken in by wealthy and powerful adults that he is able to
escape the immoral and dangerous world into which he is born. This powerlessness is not just
represented in Oliver being physically overtaken or forced into things, but in his constant failure
to communicate with adults. Until he meets Mr. Brownlow, the adults who have total control of
Oliver in his life seem to fail completely to understand him. This is exemplified in the court
room scene, where Oliver loses his ability to speak, and so is given a name arbitrarily, but there
are countless examples of adults either ignoring or misunderstanding what seem to be clear and
direct statements. This powerlessness, however, is not insurmountable, as once Oliver has kind
and intelligent people who are willing to listen to him he gains agency.

The powerlessness of women

Like children, women, too, are presented as at the mercy of the more powerful in society. This is
especially exemplified in Nancy, who ends up giving her life in her attempt to act against the
men who hold power over her. When Nancy is put in charge of taking Oliver to Sikes, she tells
him that she would help him if she could, but she doesn’t have the power. This ends up not being
completely true—she does help Oliver in going to Rose, but even then Rose must turn to Mr.
Brownlow and Mr. Losberne to accomplish anything. It is telling to consider that Nancy must
give her life for just this small show of agency.

The limits of justice

Justice and its various forms are very important in Oliver Twist. By the end of the novel, almost
all of the characters have faced justice, in one way or another. Mr. and Mrs. Bumble are in a
workhouse, Oliver, Rose, and all of the good characters live happily and comfortably, and Sikes
and Fagin have both been hanged. Yet, Dickens does not seem completely comfortable with the
way that justice has been meted out. Although the good characters clearly deserve the happiness
they get, and the bad characters certainly have done plenty to deserve their own ends, the novel
seems ambivalent about the methods and degree of justice involved. The reader is already wary
of the justice system because of how close Oliver comes to becoming an innocent victim of it.
Thus, although Fagin’s guilt is clear, the court room is mobbed in such a way as to make the
justice system seem to blend with the mob mentality of the audience. This brings up the question
of who has the right to deliver justice, as well as whether any system mired in bureaucracy and
relying on human purity should have such extreme power as that of life and death.

City versus countryside

In Oliver Twist, the city and the countryside each take on symbolic meaning, and stand in clear
dichotomy. The city is corrupt, dirty, and seedy, while the country is pure, clean, and healthy. It is
in the city that Oliver is forced into immorality, while it is in the country that Oliver is able to
recover his health, to get an education, to find peace and happiness, and to live morally.
Repeatedly Dickens describes the seediest parts of London using wholly negative language,
while in scenes of the country, even the poor are presented as clean and pleasant to be around.
This dichotomy is likely related to the danger of the mob mentality that is so prevalent in the
novel. In the city, where everyone is so close together, it seems to always be the immoral
contingent that wins out and drowns out the few moral voices - just as in a mob the voice of
reason is always overwhelmed. In the country, conversely, the people are not a mob, but a
community