This is my presentation on the novel Oliver Twist of 2nd paper- Victorian Literature and my topic is Child Labour in Oliver Twist.

1. Name- Budhiditya Shankar Das
Course- M.A. (English)
Paper No.- 06
Roll No.- 07
Email Id- budhiditya900@gmail.com
Submitted to- Smt.S.B.Gardi
Department of English
M.K.Bhavnagar
University

4. Oliver Twist as a novel
-> 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.
-> After the other boys bully Oliver, Mr. Bumble, the parish
beadle, offers five pounds to anyone who will take the boy
away from the workhouse.

5. -> Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets
Jack Dawkins, a boy his of own age. Fagin is a career
criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him.
-> Oliver is sent on a pick pocketing mission with two other
boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an
elderly gentleman he runs away.
-> Mr. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen,
takes the feverish Oliver to his house.
-> Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose grow
fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in
the countryside.

6. -> Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the
Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the
countryside.

8. Oliver Twist as Child Labour
-> Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish
chimney sweep and is eventually apprenticed to a local
undertaker, Mr. Sowerberrys.
-> 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 pick pocketing 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.

9. -> In the novel Oliver Twist, we found the situation of child
labour through the mouthpiece of the characters of the
novel as,
“What a fine thing capital punishment is!
Dead men never repent, dead men
Never bring awkward stories to light
The prospect of the gallows, too
Makes them hardy and bold as, it’s
A thing for the trade! Five of
Them strung up in a row and none
Left to play booty or turn white
Livered! ”

10. ->The situation of children in a work house was very
poor that they could not even ask for some more
food as when Oliver said-
“Please sir, I want some more”
-> It created surprise for all because there children
were not allowed to ask for more food.
-> When Oliver sent to stay with Mr. Bumble, they
behaved with Oliver as he was a dog, they gave him
food of dog.

13. -> Child labour is the horrific abuse to which children, whose
crime was of being poor only.
-> In the Victorian Ideology of childhood, the child was
conceived as naturally innocent but also profoundly
susceptible to the forces of moral, criminal and sexual
corruption.
-> Indeed, Victorian cult of the innocence of childhood, in
which Dickens was certainly some sort of high priest, was all
the more intense an as much as innocence was seen as
terrifyingly precarious.

15. Similarity between Oliver Twist and
Udaan
-> Oliver and Chakor (the protagonist of Udaan) is dragged
in the ditch of child labour at a very early age.
-> Oliver is enforced by the society for becoming a child
labour, whereas Chakor is enforced by her parents for
becoming a child labour that too before her birth.
-> Oliver entered this ditch to earn his livelihood, whereas
Chakor also entered this ditch for the same reason unlike
Oliver but she also had another intention that is too make
every single child of her village educated rather than
becoming labourers.

17. ->At last both Oliver and Chakor win against their crucial
masters. Oliver gets free from Fagin and Chakor gets free
from Bhaijis rule.
-> Oliver lives a better life with Mr. Brownlow and Chakor
along with others gets educated which was her dream.

18. THANK YOU