Workhouse

Workhouse. Orphanage in which Oliver Twist is confined when the novel opens. Located approximately seventy-five miles north of London, the workhouse plays an important role in the mood, atmosphere, and plot of the story. The dingy, poor, hard-edged conditions of the workhouse and town make these places appear to be characters in their own right. Oliver spends many of his early years in the workhouse as a frail, malnourished lad in worn work clothes. His condition represents the conditions in the workhouse and the town. In English society, the workhouse and its inhabitants were at the lower end of the class scale.

The caretakers of the workhouse, Mrs. Mann and Bumble, are above the workhouse children in status. They are oblivious to the hardships and death around them in the workhouse. Alcoholism, a part of the life of poor English people, is rampant in the workhouse. Furthermore, the weather in the town is very dramatic, ranging from hail, freezing rain, snow, and bracing winds to the occasional bright sunshine. These extremes symbolize the changes that occur in Oliver’s life. Because of the adverse conditions of the workhouse, Oliver finally runs away and walks for seven days before reaching the outskirts of London.

*London

*London. Capital and greatest city of Great Britain. After arriving in a suburb of London, Oliver meets Jack Dawkins, known as the Artful Dodger, who leads Oliver to the east side of London. Before long, Oliver finds himself part of the London underworld, a world overseen by the sinister Fagin. The deserted streets, alleys, old dirty buildings, dark back streets, dim rooms, smoke, fog, and pitch-black nights of east London provide the proper atmosphere for Fagin’s gang of thieves. They lurk in the crumbling ruins, which are symbolic of the political injustices of English society. The numerous evidences of neglect and decay in the surroundings closely correspond to the decadent human qualities that were running rampant in the hearts of the people. As in the workhouse environment, slime and filth prevail in much of London.

The general mood of terror and extreme brutality that exists in London can be directly correlated with the frequent rain and extremely cold weather. Rooftops and corridors that interconnect the dirty, crumbling buildings provide Fagin’s thieves with escape routes that reflect the squalor of their occupation. Bill Sikes, the leader of Fagin’s band of trained pickpockets, is a lower-class alcoholic, who makes his living by robbing people at night. A significant portion of the action in the novel occurs during the nighttime, a time for darkness, criminals, and corruption.

*Chertsey

*Chertsey. Quiet village along the River Thames. Oliver is exposed to a completely different world when he is rescued, first by Mr. Brownlow, and later by Mrs. Maylie and her adopted daughter. It is only in these settings that brightness and sunlight occur for any length of time in the novel. This setting expresses hope in moral values that make a positive difference in the quality of human life. Mr. Brownlow and Mrs. Maylie live in country homes in Chertsey, a community providing a pleasant, mellow atmosphere, where well-heeled members of English society lived. When Oliver moves to Mr. Brownlow’s home, his worn, tattered, second-hand clothing is exchanged for a new woolen suit. The transition represents the progress Oliver has made from a harsh, unpleasant life of poverty to a comfortable, peaceful lifestyle. From the abuse and social injustice of the workhouse and the world of Fagin, Oliver has escaped, having relied on his moral character to bring him up from dire circumstances to find happiness and peace in Chertsey.

Dickens sets Oliver Twist in early nineteenth-century England, a period when longstanding ideas and beliefs were intensely questioned. The profound transformations triggered by the Industrial Revolution, religious doubts, scientific progress, and political and social upheavals led many Victorians to reevaluate various aspects of their society and culture.

Industrialization drove numerous farmworkers into urban areas, where poor working conditions and substandard housing consigned many to poverty. The rapid increase in city populations created new and overwhelming challenges related to sanitation, overcrowding, poverty, disease, and crime in the vast slums inhabited by destitute workers, the unemployed, and the unfortunate. The London slums cultivated the kind of crime Dickens depicts in Oliver Twist.

The novel is set against the backdrop of the New Poor Law of 1834, which introduced a system of workhouses for those unable to support themselves due to poverty, illness, mental disorder, or age. Young Oliver Twist, an orphan, spends his first nine years in a "baby farm," a children's workhouse where only the strongest survive. When Oliver moves to London, he unknowingly becomes involved with a gang of young thieves and pickpockets led by the vile criminal Fagin. Dickens provides a powerful and largely realistic depiction of this criminal underworld, capturing all its sordidness and sin. He later contrasts the filth and cruelty of the workhouse and city slums with the tranquility and affection Oliver experiences in the countryside at the Maylies' home.

Shifting Narrative Voice

Throughout the novel, Dickens utilizes a fluctuating narrative voice. As James R. Kincaid observed in Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter, "It is impossible to define the characteristics or moral position of the narrators in this novel, for they are continually shifting." Sometimes, the narrator adopts a detached and verbose tone, such as in the opening paragraph where he vaguely mentions that he will not disclose the town or workhouse where a certain "item of mortality" was born. At the same time, he mocks the conventions of many contemporary novels, which often begin with an elaborate and self-satisfied description of the protagonist's birthplace and family.

The narrator does not consistently maintain this distant yet sarcastic voice. At times, he shifts to ironically commenting on the supposedly wonderful treatment of the poor, highlighting the supposed kindness. Other times, the narrator appeals to the reader's empathy: "We all know how chilled and desolate the best of us will sometimes feel." As Kincaid noted, "We can never count on being in any single relationship with the narrative voice for long. Just as we relax. . . . We are pushed away."

Dark Humor

The novel is rich with dark humor, ranging from Mr. Bumble and Mr. Sowerberry joking about the surplus of small children's coffins to Dickens's satire of the self-importance and pomposity of the parish board members. He also exposes the cowardice and greed of Noah and Charlotte and the antics of the Artful Dodger during his trial. This humor sharpens the desperate sufferings of Oliver and the other characters. Although readers may laugh while reading, they often remember the underlying sadness once they've finished the book.

Characterization

Dickens employs "flat" characters; his characters typically do not evolve throughout the story. Oliver, who starts off good, remains good, never becoming wiser. He never shows any understanding that the thieves are genuinely evil or any significant disgust at Fagin's lifestyle. His fear of the thieves stems from the potential harm they may cause him, not from an awareness of their corrupt nature. Fagin, who starts as evil, remains evil. Many characters are easily identified by specific "tags" of behavior or speech: Mr. Grimwig habitually thumps his cane and declares, "I'll eat my head!"; Fagin is always in pursuit of money; Mr. Brownlow is unwaveringly good; Monks is obsessively evil. Mr. Bumble is consistently pompous and shallow, while Noah Claypole remains a coward and a bully throughout the novel.

In contemporary fiction, characters of this nature are often seen as a sign of weak writing. However, during Dickens's era, readers were not troubled by such one-dimensional portrayals. Additionally, since the novel was serialized and required readers to recall all the characters over an extended period, it was essential for writers to create characters that were easy to remember and classify.

Oliver Twist is Dickens's second novel, written when he was in his mid-twenties. Although it doesn't exhibit the brilliance in character development, thought, form, and language seen in his later works, the novel still has much to offer. Dickens's realistic depictions of London's criminal underworld are both captivating and effective. He creates vibrant characters and scenarios, skillfully choosing words to devastate a character, emphasize a point, or craft irony and humor. His social criticism continues to spark lively discussions about similar issues that persist today, and the moral questions Dickens raises are likely to remain relevant.

Some readers criticize Dickens's use of coincidences to advance the plot of Oliver Twist. He relies on unlikely connections that many modern writers avoid; Dickens himself reduced his dependence on coincidences in his later works. It's important to understand that even more surprising coincidences were common in other novels of that era, and Victorian readers were used to suspending their disbelief to some extent. Dickens and his contemporaries aimed for artistic balance in their plots, striving to make everything fit together seamlessly. More importantly, Dickens wanted to illustrate that, despite the attempts of the comfortable classes to deny their connection to—and responsibility for—the poor, all people are inherently and unavoidably interconnected. In his later novels, such as Bleak House, Dickens conveys this theme more effectively without relying as heavily on coincidences as he does in Oliver Twist.