FinalResearchPaper

Blake Thompson Final Research Paper December 8th, 2015
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The Inherent Twist of Oliver
When I was young, probably in about 5th grade, my parents took me to a
theatrical performance in downtown Houston, Tx. I had never seen anything like it. I
remember the building looking like a palace. Red carpet, beautifully expensive décor,
drinks, food in abundance, people dressed in their most expensive clothes talking about
things I couldn’t even understand. It felt as if wealth was oozing from the very walls,
oozing from the very existence of the place and the people residing within. I remember
being amazed at the stage, and the boxes up the side of the theatre for those individuals
who were either wealthier or more connected, to be literally ‘raised’ above the rest. I was
surrounded by wealth, and in hindsight I’m sure I was probably in the very room with
some of the city’s most powerful that night. I was confused about who we were for a
while after that. Were we rich? Were we supposed to be there? Should I act different?
Does this change who I am? In my own childhood innocence I saw us as ‘wealthy’
because my parents were good people, and they worked really hard for what we had.
That was just my experience. My parents sheltered me in a way that allowed me to
develop that philosophy before the realities of the world were revealed to me. You see,
around this time my father’s career really took off. It did affect our lifestyle, but my
parents never allowed it to change us. They had come from humble beginnings, my
father from the farmland and my mother from the isolated small-towns of the Rocky
Mountains. They struggled to make ends meet in college, and in their early adulthood
they really relied on each other. Their life was something they had built together and
they were very proud of that, but they were more proud of ‘the journey’ they had to make
to get there. They made sure that no matter our circumstance, my sister and I’s identity

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remained our own to mold into the kind of people we wanted to be. They didn’t force us
to be someone; they just guided us to be someone good. Above all, no matter the
circumstance, doing the ‘right thing’ was most important. That was drilled into us from a
very young age. My father was the protector and the law, and my mother was the saint.
He preached to always protect the weak and do the right thing, and she always preached
to always help others no matter what. We were strong in who we were as a family, no
matter what life presented us with it always provided us with a core sense of identity. So
you can imagine my frustration sitting in a room with some of the wealthiest individuals
in one of the largest cities in the nation. I was confused. Why did these people have so
much more? Were they better than my parents? Did they do something good to earn this
too? Why were those people up in the booths looking down at me? Why does such a
place exist when we drove through ghettos to get here? Who are we, really? It was the
first time in my early adolescence that I was presented with a confliction of identity. I
was overwhelmed. Then, before I even knew what was happening and in the moment
that I needed him most, Oliver walked onto stage.
The 19th century was a polarizing time for many nation-states around the world.
The French Revolution had just recently come to a close, and many of the liberal ideas
that had spearheaded the revolution were slowly making their way to other parts of the
continent. For Great Britain it was a century of social and political reform, as well as
industrialization. For a majority of the 19th century London would become the largest
city in the world, and the capital of the British Empire. The population grew from
roughly 1 million in 1800 to 6.7 million near the end of the century. London was a center
for world politics, economy, and trade. However the quick expansion of the empire,

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accompanied by a number of other events from the time period, led to a host of
inadequacies and issues for the British public, particularly those viewed to be in the
middle and lower classes. Examples of such conditions are overpopulation, slums,
workhouses, unsanitary living, rampant class disparity, poor labor laws and conditions,
restricted individual rights, and massive immigration. The only people allowed to vote in
Parliament were the elite and royalty. This barred the other classes from proposing or
voting on any legislation that would help to improve their conditions. Society and class
are one of the more central themes in most Dickens novels. He believed that class
structures are very superficial, and that each person is equal regardless of the social class
into which they are born. For example, in Oliver Twist the themes of social class, social
equality, and poverty are intertwined into the very settings, conditions, and characters.
Dickens’s focus was on elevating the status of the deserving poor and helpless, I believe
that he planned the plot in a way that it logically moves through societal class structures
and institutions in order to portray what he felt were some of the largest ‘holes’ in society
during the time period. There was a fundamental break in ideology between the highest
and lowest classes of society that was brought about by the intense class (more
specifically economic) disparity of the period. The break in ideology created a one-way
perception in which the ruling class did not empathize with the lower or working classes.
The purpose of Oliver Twist was to bridge that ideological gap and hopefully offer the
Victorian elite and middle class with some means to explore their sympathy or their
empathy in relation to the lowest classes. This would hopefully eventually reverberate in
both governmental policy and social perceptions to aid in improving the even larger gap
in socioeconomic inequality in Victorian London.

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The largest legal issue of the Victorian period was the implementation of the 1834
New Poor Law; an Act that, for many liberal Victorians seemed to criminalize the
poor. Dickens was a harsh critic of the New Poor Law and he relentlessly attacked the
brutal utilitarian ethics behind it – the belief that the workhouse would act as a deterrent
so fewer people would claim poor relief and thereby the poor rate would reach its
‘correct’ level. In short, the amendment was designed to reduce the cost of looking after
the poor as it stopped money going to the poor except in exceptional circumstances. Now
if people wanted help they had to go into a workhouse to get it. We see in Oliver Twist
that what the New Poor Law actually created was a cycle of poverty, mistreatment, and
oppressed representation within the society’s lowest economic class. Very few
individuals were capable of pulling themselves out of the lower classes because the
established institution prevented them from doing so (1834 Poor Law).
Conditions in the workhouse were often appalling, especially for children.
Boards of Guardians frequently became the legal guardians of orphaned children until
they were old enough to enter employment, usually from the age of fourteen. The great
majority of girls went into domestic service, while boys usually entered into whatever
local employment was offered, in some cases, joined the army or navy. I found a number
of personal testimonies in which the conditions of the workhouses are described. In one
instance, a room called the Infant Nursery is said to house twenty-three children who
appear to be between the ages of two and three. They all sleep in one room, and they
seldom or never go out of this room, either for air or for exercise (Children in the
Workhouse). In Oliver Twist he spends months of his childhood in a room such as this.
The only mention of education in the New Poor Law states, “for three of the working

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hours, at least, every day, be instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, and the principles
of the Christian religion.” Another case claimed that a thirteen year-old girl was beaten
naked with a birch-broom until blood came out. Her offense was that she had committed
was leaving a little dirt in the corner of a room. There are many cases and court rulings
from this time period that deal with the cruelty of children in the workplace. For
whatever reason, a majority of the workhouses operate unchecked, with inadequate
resources and living space for the children. This is the kind of environment into which
Oliver is born, and this is the kind of environment that Dickens absolutely loathes.
Though, as we will discuss, Oliver’s story helps to bring attention to this corrupt
institution (Children in the Workhouse).
Oliver was born in a workhouse, presumably in the late 1820’s. We will see that
Oliver’s story was meant to be a representation of the overpopulation, corruption, crime,
and conditions of Victorian London. Charles Dickens seeks to prove how superficial
societal class structures really are, all while making Oliver’s experiences seem relatable,
righteous, and necessary. Society and class are one of the more central themes in most
Dickens novels. He believed that class structures are very superficial, and that each
person is equal regardless of the social class into which they are born. For example, in
Oliver Twist the themes of social class, social equality, and poverty are intertwined into
the very settings, conditions, and characters. We see this from the first pages of Oliver
Twist. Early in the novel Oliver’s mom is found dead in the street. The circumstances
surrounding her death are somewhat hidden to us since we are viewing the scene through
a child’s perspective, but through close reading we can surmise that it was some type of
prostitution-gone-wrong or perhaps a rape or murder. In either example, it was meant to

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point out the overt criminal activity that was taking place in low-class London during the
period. After his mom is found dead, Oliver is left at the mercy of the parish authorities.
While this makes obvious sense within the storyline, I think it was also a means by which
Dickens describes how many people in the lower classes were often left at the ‘mercy of
the system’, meaning that they had no way to alter the system so that they may alter their
circumstances. The institution of aristocratic government created the cruel and harsh
conditions for the lower classes, and since the middle and lower classes had no
representation in government they had no opportunities to influence reform or new law.
There is the famous scene in the workhouse in which Oliver asks if he can have some
more gruel, and the overseer takes offense. He declares that Oliver ‘will be hung’. I
think this famous scene has a larger implication for the poor of London during this time
period. I believe that Dickens was using this scene to describe how the policymakers
(aristocracy, ruling elites, and royalty) of the time commonly responded when the less
fortunate classes asked for ‘more’; in this scenario ‘more’ stands in for ideas such as
equality, reform, representation, labor laws, and so forth. The political structure of the
time period was very infatuated with themselves and their lifestyles. The wealth in
London was very concentrated, and they were on the ‘right’ side of that, often to the point
that they discredited the conditions of the lower classes, or just paid little or no attention
to them at all. They were self-satisfied, and believed that the policy systems they had in
place to take care of the lower classes were both the most efficient and the most humane.
The workhouses are just the physical manifestation of how the poor are being treated; the
suffering of the Victorian poor can be seen far outside the walls of the workhouses.

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Oliver’s childhood was spent in workhouses and baby farms. He was
institutionalized to be poor and helpless. He was mistreated, objectified, and barely fed.
He was sold as an apprentice to a chimney sweep, and he was sold underpriced because
he ‘wouldn’t last that long’. This was the norm in London at the time. It was a difficult
and bleak existence, and the lower class had been institutionalized to accept it as life. We
can begin to see here why the liberal ideas posed by the French Revolution were so easy
for the English public to make their own. Charles Dickens himself actually lived only
nine doors away from a workhouse, on Norfolk Street. His dad lost all their money
gambling and was thrown in a debtors’ prison and Dickens had to work in a factory,
which scarred him for life, hence the sympathy for the unfortunate and a sense of the
injustice of the laws. Ruth Richardson states that, “the influence of Norfolk Street, the
surrounding area and the workhouse can be found in much of Dickens' literature and
particularly at the heart of Oliver Twist”. She discusses the New Poor Law Act of 1834
and how that Act, paired with the ideology of the ruling elites, made life so brutal for
those forced to turn to the authorities for support (1834 Poor Law).
Scholars in the field largely uphold my claim that Oliver’s experience in the
workhouse is meant to serve as a metaphor for the experiences of the poor in Victorian
London. However, in my research I found an article in the Journal of British Studies that
attempted to undermine the message being relayed by Dickens. Ian Miller claims that the
workhouse diet fulfilled the basic nutritional needs of ‘inmates’. He believes that the
idea that workhouse dietary regimes were inadequate is the result of ‘mythology’ created
by Dickens and other contemporaries. Miller claims that the famous scene in which
Oliver asks for more gruel is an exaggerated rendering of workhouse life. I do not agree

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with Miller, and I’m fairly positive neither would a majority of other literary scholars.
However, for the sake of intellectual debate I entertained his claim. I’m not quite sure
where he got his facts, because there are numerous historical accounts and testimonies in
which the poor conditions of Victorian London are both explained in detail and recorded.
Dickens didn’t conjure a social movement; he made himself part of what was already
happening. He provided common experiences and discussion points that would aid in
driving the reform debate (Miller).
One of the largest issues that Oliver deals with, more specifically in the beginning
of the novel, is hunger. He and most of the people he encounters that are from his same
social class are slowly starving to death. It’s mentioned time and time again. Oliver asks
for more gruel not for himself, but to prevent another orphan boy from starving to death.
On the first night after Mr. Sowerberry takes Oliver as his apprentice he feeds him the
leftovers that even the dog would not eat. Oliver eats them. Now, perhaps this particular
scene could have been a bit of an exaggeration to help Dickens make a point, but
nonetheless people were starving to death in Victorian London. On Oliver’s first day on
the job with Mr. Sowerberry he is again confronted by hunger; the pauper’s wife whose
burial they have come to prepare has died of starvation. The husband exclaims that he
once tried to beg for her, only to be sent to prison for the ‘offense’. This is an example of
what I mean when I say that culturally, and in some sense legally, it was considered a
criminal act to be poor.
Arlene Andrews refers to Dickens as ‘the advocate for people who were poor and
oppressed’. She claims that Dickens aided social work in a number of ways, including
the tireless promotion of compassionate social norms with regard to the poor and

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oppressed, advocacy for social policy reform, and the development of community
programs. He did all of this through his literature. He even mocked Victorian laws
through the eyes of his characters. For example, in chapter eight Oliver is plagued by
hunger, cold and fatigue as he is walking over seventy miles to London. Along the way
signs warn that beggars will be thrown in jail. The reader sympathizes with Oliver, and
becomes aware of just how ridiculous the situation is. Oliver is an orphan. He’s hungry,
cold, and tired as he’s walking over seventy miles to London. He needs help, but he can’t
ask for it because he may be accused of begging and detained by the authorities. So what
is he supposed to do? I’m sure this situation was relatable to poorer economic classes in
Victorian London. The institution punished the poor for asking for help. The poor
remained silent to avoid further ill treatment. Dickens was a voice for the poor. Oliver
Twist was meant to focus public attention on current socioeconomic issues, as well as
invite the public to sympathize with the poor. (Andrews)
In many of his novels the protagonist ‘refuses to accept the poor hand the world
has given them’. This is also true for Oliver. Mohamed Khamis states that, “in Oliver
Twist, Dickens’ main aim is to expose the social defects in his age and the vices which
afflict his society” (Khamis). He claims that Dickens is a social reformer, showing
that the industrial and urban growth creates enormous social problems. The nation as a
whole was at a peak of prosperity, but it was a façade that concealed the depth of poverty.
The changes brought about by the industrial revolution reached even into the social
sphere. It had fundamentally changed the way that English society functions. Dickens
would have argued that in response to this change we must reform the laws that have long
since established a ‘caste’ system, and work to elevate England from its state of social

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corruption. In part, Oliver Twist helped to imbue the British public with certain values,
ideas, and dispositions necessary to mobilizing towards these kinds of socio-political
reformatory ideas in the early 19th century. Dickens was mainly concerned with the flaws
that afflicted all parts of the society in which he inhabited. Thus, he has Oliver go through
the different levels of society that he is concerned with: the workhouse, the criminal
world and the middle class. Dickens attacks social injustice to the poor and the people
who consider poverty a crime. I believe that in the end Dickens was reaching out to the
middle class in some way. He was searching for other voices of moderate privilege, like
himself, who had the resources to stand up to such an institution.
As I stated, Dickens has Oliver move through these different levels of society. So
far we have discussed the role and larger implications of the workhouse in both Victorian
London and Oliver Twist. I will now turn to Dickens’ portrayal of the ‘criminal world’.
We experience the necessities of a life of crime in the lower classes through Oliver’s
experiences with Fagin and the other boys. Upon running away to London Oliver joins
up with a crew of thieves who make a living stealing on the streets. He has trouble
conceptualizing that the other boys are stealing the things that they are bringing back.
I’m sure this is simply a plot event meant to remind us that even though Oliver’s
circumstances are becoming increasingly dire on the street, he is still a child. He is
mentally, spiritually, and physically unprepared for life on the streets in London. The
workhouses had given him no real ‘skills’ that he could use outside of it, both
highlighting the failed institution and the extremes that the lower classes felt pushed to in
order to earn a living. Through an unfortunate series of events Oliver ends up accused of
pickpocketing, and by extension is faced with the consequences of a life of crime early

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on. You can read Oliver’s innocence as sort of a comical aside, or you can read into it as
an extended metaphor for the ‘lost children’ that were forced to call the London
underworld home. I’m sure this was a common trope among young children at the time.
They fall on hard times, find a group of seemingly like-minded individuals, and become
far too enthralled before they really understand what is going on. Such is not always the
case as this logic could be used to excuse some of the character’s adverse behavior,
although I would argue that their condition of life itself might excuse some of their
behavior. In any case, Oliver ends up in front of a magistrate.
In England, they have what the legal fields refer to as a civil law system, or
alternatively the investigative or the inquisitorial system. Lawyers are present but they
represent to a judge or a panel of judges, not a jury of peers. You are guilty until proven
innocent, and there is no use of precedent and no plea-bargaining. In modern practice,
given improved legal oversight, this system actually operates quite effectively. However
in Victorian London the judges often acted quite autonomously, making decisions on a
largely case-by-case basis. We see this through Oliver’s sentencing, as well as how
Oliver’s perceived class cast further doubt upon his innocence. In the eyes of the court
he was just a poor street urchin, so of course it was him who was the pickpocket. Even
when Mr. Brownlow speaks out and says he does not wish to press charges Oliver is still
thrown into a cell. It is only when Mr. Brownlow comes before the magistrate and
explains that he believes Oliver was chased, and is in fact innocent that Oliver is
acquitted. Oliver is portrayed as being weak due to the conditions of the county jail cell
that he had been staying in. In court, he faints. The magistrate claims that he is faking,
and sentences him to three months hard labor. Oliver isn’t even conscious. He has the

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victim, who is also a member of the middle class, speaking out on his behalf and the
magistrate still seems convinced that Oliver is just a delinquent street urchin. At this
point it starts to look like the rest of Oliver’s story will take place in a cell, until a Good
Samaritan bookseller comes in to the court (no background check, or questioning to see if
he is in fact a legitimate witness) and clears Oliver’s name.
Oliver’s entire experience with the court system is skewed, illogical, and unfair.
I’m sure this would have been the lower class’s common interaction with the court
system. The popular thinking concerning the poor during the time period cast them as
criminals, and it is no more apparent than it is in this scene. Oliver’s life was almost
spent in a prison for no other reasons than he was poor and in the wrong place at the
wrong time. Once again, I believe this is Dickens’ testament to court proceedings of the
time. Typically to defend a client a lawyer will seek to cast doubt on the client’s guilt,
not necessarily seek to prove their innocence. There was plenty of doubt surrounding
Oliver’s guilt, but it took definitive proof for the magistrate to accept his innocence, and
even then he blamed the technicality on Mr. Brownlow. He acknowledged his
misconduct, but he did nothing to be accountable for the false ideologies that led him to
sentence Oliver so swiftly. Dickens is seeking to highlight the same misled institutional
policy and ideology in the court systems that he highlighted in the workhouses, which is
that the poor are implicitly criminals by virtue of being poor. Alternatively, there is
another problem that arises out of this court proceeding: the real culprits got away, and an
innocent poor boy was almost charged instead. I would argue that Dodger and Charley
actually enjoyed watching an innocent boy being arrested for their crime. During the
initial chase that led to Oliver’s capture it seemed as if they were joining the crowd in

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egging it on. Child arrest rates were extremely high during this period because many of
the street urchins saw it as a means to survive. Not only were the courts in Victorian
London preventing true justice, but thus were also perpetuating the criminal underworld
that they claimed to be fighting against. They were so concerned with ‘eradicating
crime’ that they could not consider that the system they had in place to control it could be
the very institution that created it. Although my focus is more concerned with Dickens
socioeconomic and ideological influences, it is also important to note that roughly twenty
years after the major reforms of the 1840’s there will also be major court reforms. The
largest of these is being the decision to ban public executions, which was a stepping-
stone towards the UK’s eventual ban on capital punishment. Dickens’ influence can be
argued for in a number of reforms during the century. Although his focus was on
elevating the status of the poor and helpless, I believe that he planned the plot in a way
that it logically moves through societal class structures and institutions in order to portray
what he felt were some of the largest ‘holes’ in society during the time period.
Mr. Brownlow decides to take Oliver home until he has recuperated from the
incident in court. He is given a ‘chance’ to prove his honesty by running an errand for
Mr. Brownlow. While running the errand he takes a wrong turn, and runs into both
Nancy and Sikes. They more or less kidnap him back into the life of crime, and return
him to Fagin. No amount of optimism or determination seems to be able to elevate
Oliver from his situation. Throughout all of these events it is important to remember that
Oliver is being perceived as the ‘bad guy’, but is actually the ‘good guy’. The overseer
assumed he wanted more gruel for himself, the crowd thought he was the pickpocket but
he was actually running away from the pickpockets, the magistrate thought he was guilty,

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and now Mr. Brownlow will perceive him as the irresponsible urchin that Grimwig
argued he was. However, there is arguably nothing Oliver could do to prevent any of
these ill perceptions. They were either cast upon him by the ideology of the institution or
prescribed to him through misfortunes caused by this cyclical process. The way in which
the reader perceives Oliver in relation to how the plot views Oliver is very important to
the claims Dickens is trying to make about the state of society in Victorian London. If
the ‘bad’ consistently outweighs the ‘good’, then the system has lost sight of the people.
Either that or the elite has marginalized a section of society, in this case the lowest
classes, and ideologically affected what society sees as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ within that.
Leaving action out of necessity the only option for the oppressed group, hence the overt
crime that plagued the poorer neighborhoods. If the system loses sight of the people then
it serves the powerful, and if the powerful are corrupt or ideologically blind then the
resulting policy will reflect that and eventually begin to infringe on the rights of the
people. We have seen this since the dawn of civilization, we have seen it in our own
society, and we still see it today. It is not specific to a certain ‘type’ of institution or
ruling system. Thus it comes as no surprise that this was the case in Victorian London,
and by extension the case in Oliver Twist.
Returning to the plot we once again find our ‘good guy’ in a ‘bad situation’. It is
legitimately Fagin’s plan to ‘trap Oliver in a life of crime’. Even given Nancy’s dissent,
he seems to be getting his way. His strategy is to isolate Oliver until he becomes so
grateful for and reliant on human contact that he will do whatever Fagin asks. I believe
there is a much larger implication in this scene, particularly focusing on the ‘grateful’
aspect of Fagin’s strategy. Particularly in the sense that I believe this was the same

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‘strategy lens’ through which the elite were viewing the lower classes. In making that
claim I am not making the assumption that they did this maliciously either. For the most
part, I believe that the elite class truly believed that the workhouse would act as a
deterrent so fewer people would claim poor relief and thereby the poor rate would reach
its ‘correct’ level. It has also been both theorized and statistically proven, from antiquity
through modernity, that there is a positive correlation between poverty rates and crime
rates. In a recent study by the Bureau of Justice, the Household Poverty And Nonfatal
Violent Victimization of 2008–2012, it was proven that Persons in poor households at or
below the Federal Poverty Level had more than double the rate of violent victimization as
persons in high-income households (Berzofsky). Therefore the Victorian elite believed
that by ‘gifting’ the workhouses to the lower classes they would reduce poverty rates, and
thus also reduce crime rates. The problem was that there were no incentives or
regulations that determined how these workhouses operated, and once ‘boots were on the
ground’ the workhouses collapsed into the very cycle that they were intended to fix.
Naturally, the lower classes probably began to express this subtly. However from the
elite perspective, whose boots were not ‘on-the-ground’, their gracious gifts meant to
improve the conditions of the lower classes were being spat on and rejected. Thus we see
the criminalization of the poor in the elite mindset. To them the ‘greedy’ poor just
wanted to steal and stab their way to the top of society. There was a fundamental break
in ideology between the highest and lowest classes of society that was brought about by
the intense class (more specifically economic) disparity of the period. The break in
ideology created a one-way perception in which the ruling class did not empathize with
the lower or working classes. As you contemplate the political implications and effects

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of the body politic I have just described it becomes easier to retroactively see the system
being oppressive in some of the previous claims I have made concerning the plot of
Oliver Twist. If you look at the novel through this lens it becomes easier not only to
understand plot and motive, but also to understand the overall implication of both in the
larger picture of what Dickens is trying to express about Londoner socioeconomic
interrelations during the time period.
Before I delve into the conclusion of the novel it is important to discuss Dickens’s
concept of identity, because identities are constantly being shifted and assigned in the
concluding 20-some chapters of the book. It can be a little difficult to follow, and
increasingly more difficult to try and assess what Dickens is trying to convey through
these twists. As we have already somewhat touched on, the elevated classes believed that
the poor were often ‘criminals from birth’. This is important to Dickens’s notion of
social structures because it means that he believed that in the Victorian era
socioeconomic status was largely assigned at birth, or hereditary, if you will. Most of the
plotlines concerning what the reader pervieves as the ‘good guys’ in the story are often an
outspoken critique to this societal style (Oliver, Nancy, Charley, etc.). However, there
are also characters that fit the typical Victorian ‘criminal from birth’ stereotypes (Sikes,
Fagin, Mr. Bumble, Monks, etc.). The critiques are there, obviously, to critique the
functioning of socioeconomic heredity in Victorian society. The stereotypical characters
could be perceived to stand for a number of different concepts. I chose to take the
approach that they were not in the plot to reinforce stereotypes, but they were there to
portray that some of what the upper classes perceived as ‘going on’ in the poorer classes
was actually justified. Dickens wasn’t out to pardon the entire poor and desolate

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population of London. He was out to prove that among that poor, desolate, and
criminalized population it was possible for deserving and ‘good’ individuals to develop,
and it was the middle/elite class’s responsibility to seek out said individuals and aid them
in their journey into a ‘better life’. Dickens would have been the ‘change your stars, no
prophecies’ kind of guy. He believed that our hereditary socioeconomic status might
determine our circumstances at birth, but those assigned circumstances do not determine
the kind of individual we will ultimately become, or our ‘identity’. I believe that he
portrays these beliefs through a number of different endings and justices that are
delivered in the final chapters. The individual character conclusions happen very
quickly, and a lot of them happen in relation to one another. There are so many different
discussions and directions one could take using the material from roughly about the end
of chapter 37 to the conclusion of the novel. For the purpose of my discussion I have
decided to focus on individual character endings and how they relate to my thesis. My
hope is that by the time I actually reach my paper’s conclusion you will have an
individualized concept of the novel’s conclusion that really helps to focus my final
discussion around how specific character endings relate to a specific claim that Dickens
is portraying. Obviously there will be some overlap, but frankly there’s a lot that
happens at the conclusion of Oliver Twist and this is the most manageable way I could
find for me to discuss it and for that discussion to still be easily understandable to a
reader. As you might have guessed, Oliver is the ‘big one’, so I’ll be saving him for last.
We’ll start with Nancy. Although she met a tragic end, she did it doing the right
thing. I believe it to be the noblest ending of any of the characters, and a true testament
to the idea that circumstances do not determine identity or choice. Nancy is killed by Bill

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Sikes because she reveals Monks’s plan to wrest his deceased father’s inheritance from
his half-brother Oliver, but to understand what makes her ending so ‘noble’ requires a
little more critical thought about her character and her relationships. Nancy is stuck in a
cycle of abuse. Love is what she perceives as keeping her tethered to her way of life.
Albeit it a misplaced love, but a love nonetheless. She remains where she is, abused and
objectified, because she loves Sikes. It is only when Sikes begins to abuse Oliver when
he is staying with them that she starts to even minutely question her affection for him, but
it is enough to compel her to make the choices she does. She is offered numerous times
in the concluding chapters a way to ‘get out’, but she always states that she is ‘stuck in
her circumstances’ and that she loves Sikes too much. So for her to betray what she
views as the only reason for her existence in order to ‘make things right’ for Oliver was
huge. Whether she knew what she was doing in the moment or not, she effectively gave
her life to set things right for Oliver. She elevated herself out of circumstance and found
her true identity: a loving, forgiving, and moral woman. She was a true critique of how
misplaced the Victorian elite’s perceptions of the poor population really was. In a way,
Nancy is my favorite character. No one else showed the fortitude or virtue that she did,
even when facing down all of her demons and ultimately her death in the final chapters.
It could be argued that it was that same fortitude and virtue that got her killed, but I
choose to view Nancy as the character who elevated herself from an abused woman to a
heroine. Perhaps she was a heroine all along, she just didn’t realize and capitalize on it
until her poor circumstances presented her with a chance to prove that part of her identity
to herself. In any case Nancy is truly a ‘good’ character, and Dickens presents both her
plot and her ending in a way that prove circumstances do not determine character.

19
Next I’ll move onto discuss Fagin, Sikes, and Monks. While they are different in
their approaches and in their endings they all serve as a representation of the ‘real
criminals’, thus I have decided to discuss them together. First off let me start by saying
that Fagin is extremely obsessive, to the point that we catch brief glimpses of him
throughout the novel in places he just shouldn’t be. It’s alluded that this is because
Oliver is worth a lot of money to him, but I think realistically Fagin enjoys acting the way
he does. He enjoys turning children into criminals, terrorizing them, and then profiting
from their misfortune. For example, a couple times throughout the novel he is spotted
just as Oliver is waking up. Somewhere in between Oliver being asleep and being
awake, and it is never really revealed to the reader whether he was actually there or not. I
choose to think he was. I viewed Fagin as the true villain. Sikes and Monks are violent
to the point that they’re predictable, but Fagin is slimy, intelligent, and unpredictable. He
embodies everything that Dickens would’ve wanted out of a vile Victorian villain. Fagin
found a way to use circumstance to control identity and status, a direct personification of
all that Dickens viewed wrong with Victorian society. He literally trains street urchins to
do crimes for him, and then he lets them take the fall when they are caught. The point is
he’s evil, and not just because he’s ‘the Jew’, but what that says about Dickens’s anti-
Semitism is a discussion best left for another time. Seriously though, that was an
interesting tidbit for an author who preaches about the freedoms of the oppressed.
Anyway, I digress; Fagin is the ‘high class’ of the ‘low class’, the ghostly and the
untouchable. He used the poor circumstances of Victorian London to commit a sect of
low society to his gang and by extension his own selfish aspirations. Fagin is ultimately
caught and sentenced to be hung by the neck until dead. Our final visions of Fagin are of

20
a man locked away in a cell. He is slowly losing his mind attempting to come to terms
with his identity, the things he had done, and the lives he had ruined. His final scene
fades as a crowd cheers on his hanging. Sikes was also wrestling to come to terms with
his actions after he killed Nancy. He was, unknown to him, on the run from something
he couldn’t outrun: his conscience. The betrayal of Nancy forced his conscience into
play, and upon realizing what he had done and who he was he broke down. He ran away
from London, and for a moment we thought he too might ‘change his identity’. For
whatever reason he decided to return to London and once there Charley recognizes him.
While he was climbing a rope to escape from the mob that was chasing him he had a
vision of Nancy, and he falls into an accidental noose and hangs himself. Monks’s
ending is a little more drawn out and subtle but no less deserving. After his plot is
revealed and it is also revealed that he is Oliver’s brother he travels to the New World
and squanders away his part of the inheritance, lands himself in jail, and dies; a fitting
end for the first son. The endings of the three villains are important because they portray
the inevitable consequences of the actions of all three villains. They could also be
viewed as the representation of the two types of ‘justice’: the one you can run from (the
systemic justice) and the one you can’t (the spiritual and the conscience). They are also
perfect examples of the Victorian conundrum that Dickens is trying to critique: that high
society uses circumstance and heredity to delegate who is in what class, and the severe
ideological disparity between the two classes forced the elite to perceive, or ‘assign’,
identity to the lower classes. The villain’s characters didn’t have the ability to see this,
and because of this they totally bought into their socioeconomic status and their ‘assigned
identity’. Well it could be argued that Fagin realized this and modeled his super-

21
successful ‘crime syndicate’ after this relationship between low class and high class, but
Sikes and Monks were clearly oblivious to this relationship within Victorian London.
They just bought into their assigned identities when they entered into that portion of
society. I think that was the purpose of the scene where Sikes tries to put out the house
fire. It shows that away from the corruption of London these characters would’ve had a
chance, but the identities and influences they entertained while a part of Victorian
Londoner society prevented any chance of evolving out of their hideous ways. They
were the hereditary criminals, the hereditary poor, and possibly even hereditary victims.
However you choose to perceive it, in their world being a criminal was okay because it
was already expected of you, and in low class Victorian London getting involved in a
gang provided sustenance and camaraderie. That was just life for them. It was only
when circumstance removed them from society that they were forced to come to terms
with themselves, and in all three cases that realization led them down three separate paths
of justice and ultimately to their demise.
Mr. Bumble also received a just punishment. After he admits to his part in
concealing Oliver’s identity Mr. Brownlow, apparently having the authority to do so out
of hi status, tells him that he will never again hold public office. Throughout most of the
novel Mr. Bumble holds his position in middle society. He is viewed as a villain at times,
but the least harmful of the lot. In certain moments we even see emotion from him. For
example, in the scene where Oliver pours his heart out on the way to Mr. Sowerberry’s
we see that he does in fact sympathize with Oliver. He doesn’t identify with him, and he
never truly acts on that sympathy. In his ending Mr. Bumble falls into the same cycle of
poverty that he sought to control, and on top of that he is in an unhappy marriage. Mrs.

22
Bumble took his position as master of the workhouse from him and beat him. Eventually
they both spiral into living in the same workhouse they once controlled. Mr. Bumble’s
character was the epitome of hypocrisy, and I felt that his ending represented that. I also
believe that Mr. Bumble’s character was meant to represent the middle class. He was a
bit criminalized to represent Victorian middle class as a whole, but I think that was
merely a storytelling mechanism. He saw first hand what was going on, and he
understood it. Yet the fear of losing his social status was more important to him than
doing something about it. The important part of his character is that he didn’t act on his
moments of sympathy. Circumstance provided him with a somewhat veritable situation
at the expense of a lesser class and instead of doing something about it he chose to stay
silent and ‘take his place’ in the system. Yet he, from the very start, could have simply
told the truth about Oliver and prevented all of the misfortunes from thereon out. I
believe that this was Dickens critiquing the middle class. He thought that the middle
class held the key to bridging the ideological disparity between the elites and the poor.
He thought that if anyone could get the elites to begin to sympathize with the poor and to
initiate changes in the system it would be the middle class. However, the system put the
middle class in a tough position. They often had to choose between maintaining their
position in society and ‘doing the right thing’; whatever the circumstances might
determine that to be. Mr. Bumble, the middle class, had the key from the very start. His
silence led to a series of misfortunes that plagued everyone from low class to high class.
I don’t think it is that far of a stretch to say that he was using this as a way to critique the
Victorian middle class’s silence in relation to the condition of the London poor. They

23
had the power to get the elites to notice, but their silence further perpetuated the cycle of
hereditary poverty.
Mr. Brownlow serves to represent the better half of the middle-upper classes. He
was important not only to Oliver’s ending, but also to his moral development throughout
the novel. Who knows where Oliver’s story may have ended up if Mr. Brownlow had not
intervened at the courthouse? He becomes Oliver’s first benefactor and mentor, and I
really think that Mr. Brownlow epitomized the ‘good’ in high society. He influenced
Oliver at a crucial point in his development throughout the story. He helped to break him
from the cycle, and to find his true and moral identity. Mr. Brownlow was yet another
critique of the ‘power’ held by certain individuals in Victorian high society, who had the
means to initiate change but did not proceed to do so until it became of interest to them.
Through his sympathy for Oliver and his resources Mr. Brownlow was able to mentor
Oliver through some of the circumstances that may have ‘returned him to the cycle’, such
as that day in the courthouse when his testimony acquitted Oliver. He was a really
important supporting character, both to Oliver’s success and to Dickens’s conception of
Victorian society. His ending is a bit idyllic. He, Oliver, Grimwig, and Losberne move
to a rural church far from the reach of London. It may seem a bit misplaced given a story
that tells the story of the harsh and unfair London underground, but I think that particular
ending can just be chalked up as a trope of Victorian literature (Victorian Literature). In
any case, the important ending is that he adopted Oliver as his son. He was important to
Oliver’s evolution, his ending, and he was linked to Oliver’s past through his engagement
to Oliver’s deceased father’s deceased sister. He was the relationship that brought all of
Oliver’s disjointed identities together. The ending for the perceived ‘good guys’ of

24
Oliver Twist is often critiqued for not necessarily fitting with the rest of the plot. It can
seem a bit unrealistic and ‘fairy-tale’ like. It was a traditional Victorian-style ending, but
I think it still serves Dickens’s purpose of portraying the elites as the class that had both
the means and the authority to do something to elevate this astounding number of
generations that have been stuck in a cycle of hereditary poverty, just as Mr. Brownlow
interfered in the cycle to pull Oliver out of it.
Dickens would have us believe that Oliver is inherently good. He is born into the
same cycle that has corrupted so many around him. The Parish oppressed him, he was
criminalized by the system, kidnapped and locked up by Fagin, abused by Sikes, and left
in a ditch to die during a robbery he didn’t even agree to be a part of. He had every
reason to turn his back on society, so why didn’t he? If Oliver is inherently good, then
doesn’t open up for the discussion for characters to be inherently bad? This idea destroys
my thesis, so I thought it necessary to address my perception of Oliver and his place in
the story. I do not believe that Oliver was inherently good, or that he was incorruptible.
Normal circumstance does not determine identity or choice, but Dickens’s entire point is
that Victorian London isn’t normal circumstance. At some point it becomes the goal of
both the system and certain characters to specifically corrupt and criminalize Oliver. For
whatever reason, Oliver is able to fight this assigned identity until Mr. Brownlow
intervenes at the court and allows him the means to develop his ‘true identity’. I’m not
attributing Oliver’s entire evolution to Mr. Brownlow. I am simply stating that given
enough time, Oliver would have been corrupted and turned. Fagin’s reputation for doing
it to other orphans was notorious, and Nancy is proof that you can only hold out against
Sikes’s abuse for so long before it takes control of you. Mr. Brownlow intervened at a

25
crucial point in Oliver’s adverse circumstances and allowed him to perceive, and in some
ways gave him, ‘a different way’. It was through this that Oliver established a sense of
hope for humanity. So when he was kidnapped back into the London underworld that
hope sustained both him and his innocence. His innocence blinded him, but in many
ways also shielded him until help arrived. I don’t really feel that Oliver had much of an
influence in any of this; he was just the subject of it. Many of his circumstances
throughout the novel are dictated by events and decisions far outside of his control. The
conditions for his inheritance were determined based on the actions of his older brother,
he unknowingly accompanied pickpockets and was arrested for it, the courts entrusted
him to Mr. Brownlow, Nancy kidnapped him, Fagin locked him up and gave him to
Sikes, Sikes abused him and forced him to go on a robbery where he was left for dead in
a ditch. Where in this plot did Oliver actually make any concrete decisions to elevate
himself or even have any sort of goal to elevate himself? He’s being tossed around by
politics, actions, and decisions he can’t even understand because he still has hold of his
childhood innocence. It is only when Mr. Brownlow, the elite, takes interest that Oliver
begins to evolve out of the cycle of false hereditary social status that has been assigned to
him. Truthfully, it is only when characters begin to find out about Oliver’s true identity
that they actually care about the injustices enacted upon him by other individuals of status
and the system as a whole. His ‘elevated status’ suddenly seems to make it matter more,
which I suppose is another critique of Victorian high society in itself. Oliver was largely
just the vehicle by which Dickens tells his story and stakes his claims, but he ends up
being a representation of the indifference between societal classes. The corrupt social
system and the idea that hereditary poverty and criminality not only drove outwardly

26
conflict between all of the characters, but also inwardly. As such the central conflict in
the novel is Oliver’s true identity, both in a material way and a spiritual way. In essence,
I don’t think the nature of Oliver’s true identity really matters. In my opinion Oliver
found his true self through ‘the journey’, and not the ending. What matters is the fact that
the ideological disparity between the social classes was broken, and they found a way to
coexist, cooperate and ‘make things right’ for a common interest, a child who had his
world unfairly wretched from him before he was even given the chance to prove that he
was worthy of it.
The problem I’ve found with attempting to dissect Oliver Twist is that your
beliefs as a reader really affect your perception of the conclusion of the novel. Even as
I’m writing this I find myself wanting to question whether the novel really has a ‘good
and fair’ ending. Did the characters really learn any lessons, or did Oliver’s discovered
status just all of a sudden make him wealthy and important? In any case, I stand by the
idea that you are born into circumstance. You are not born into class or identity.
Choosing to interpret the novel from this point of view it is my belief that Dickens was
trying to bridge the ideological gap between social classes by presenting the elites and the
middle class with a novel that would compel them to view the Victorian poor in a
different light. He felt that the ideological gap led the elites to form false perceptions and
stereotypes of the poor. Oliver Twist was meant to show that those stereotyped
individuals were out there in London, but that there was also a majority of good-willed
and moral people in the lower class who were just living according to circumstance. This
would have been crucial to the mindset of the Victorian elite. A sympathetic perception
of the poor would motivate the powerful elites to take action. They would have started

27
forming laws to help the ‘victimized poor’ instead of the ‘criminalized poor’. It wasn’t
until 1929 that the workhouse system was finally abolished in London, and it wasn’t until
1948 that the Poor Law System as a whole was abolished (Spicker). So obviously it is a
little bit of a stretch to say that Oliver Twist was the sole effector in the shift in elite
perceptions of the poor. However I do think it was a literary piece that helped to lay the
foundation for that shift. It offered a rare perspective for its time period: life through the
story of a ‘good and innocent’ poor boy. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that this shift in elite
perception of the poor is somewhat challenged by Oliver’s true identity, but I think
ultimately Oliver’s story as a whole is a means to allow and invite the Victorian elite to
see the poor in a more circumstantial and individual way. It is the smallest changes in
how we view the world that can affect what we do in that world. In even minutely aiding
in that ideological shift Dickens has contributed to the both the progression of English
society and the progression of world society as a whole.
Critical thinking often implies that we take theories we have learned elsewhere
and apply them in new ways to address new problems. It is about being so open that you
become sympathetic to both sides of an issue, and by extension that knowledge and
evidence, so that you can find the best solution even if it disproves your own
(Willingham). There are clearly social classes in modern America, just as there were in
Victorian London. While our own socioeconomic disparity has not quite reached that
level of that severity and we have nothing near the atrocities of the workhouse, there is
still clearly a growing gap in socioeconomic identity and ideology concerning ‘the other’.
A report released by the EPI this year claims that economic inequality has been
increasingly unequal since the fall of income levels during the Great Recession (Price).

28
Often we see the poor being portrayed as fat, lazy, ignorant, free riding, and wasteful.
We also see whole regions, areas of a city or population, and sometimes even racial and
ethnic groups being criminalized by the elite by the actions of the ‘problem causers’ in
their groups. This line of thinking is often perpetuated in order to push policy that
defunds government assistance for the poor. In reality, there is a portion of our nation’s
poor that are truly stuck in a cycle of material and ideological poverty, just like the
characters in Oliver Twist. There are people that work two jobs seven days a week and
are still having trouble providing for their families. There are people who take advantage
of that system, just like the characters in Oliver Twist. We found out through the events
of Oliver Twist that the majority should not be stereotyped and punished based on belief
of the elite and the example of the criminal. So I think it’s reasonably safe to say that the
same philosophy applies in modern America, and that we can move towards fixing the
problem by shifting elitist perception. In the Salvation Army’s 2012 Poverty Report it is
stated that roughly 40% of Americans are living below the poverty line, and an
astounding statistical majority of Americans claim that they want to help the poor
(Perceptions of Poverty). However, it never seems to happen? Why? Because the system
isn’t set up for them to. Often we give money to charities and we’re not really sure
where our money goes, we’re just told it goes to ‘help’. The ways in which we can
directly help are often inconvenient and costly, especially on an individual level. The
common man has no concrete and easy way to provide for the lesser man because at 40%
of our population living below the poverty line the ‘common man’ is not too far from
being there himself; just as we saw from the fall of Mr. Bumble in the novel. Our
policymakers need to see our poor as the victims, and not the criminals. It is only then

29
that they will become sympathetic to the lower class and begin to reflect that into their
policy and ultimately into society. By extension it is up to the ‘Mr. Bumble’, or the silent
middle class, to reveal their ‘concealed information’ that allows the elite to see the poor
in a different light. There are obvious differences between Victorian London and modern
America, but I am beginning to see the same disparity that tore through the heart of
London in the 19th century. I believe the solutions to modern problems can be found in
the unlikeliest of places, perhaps even at the heart of a story about a good-willed orphan
boy. Dickens aided in the shift in elite perception that freed the Victorian poor from a
hereditary cycle of both poverty and identity confliction. Everything starts with an idea,
and sometimes an idea can come in the form of a story. Oliver Twist proves that the
perceptions of the powerful often dictate the circumstance of the poor, so Dickens has
told us exactly how to solve our problem. You cannot solve being poor. There will
always be poor. In a society driven by scarcity there will always be a group at the
bottom, however you can solve the perception of the powerful, and if the perception of
the powerful favors the poor then it will be reflected in policy, law, and ideology. The
circumstance of the poor will improve, and the gap in socioeconomic disparity will begin
to shrink. The social theory is all there, hidden among the beautiful imperfections of
Dickens’s characters and the violent and unfair circumstances thrust upon them by the
decisions of a few and the perceptions of the powerful.
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