Oliver Twist 341young Magwitch; he was born to have no expecta-
tions at all. When Pip shows him kindness in the
churchyard, he responds by devoting his life to its
repayment. The degradation that was Magwitch’s
life has not destroyed his character, while the high
privilege that was Miss Havisham’s life did nothing
to build hers. She spends her life bent on revenge for
one act of cruelty done to her.
Pip and Estella are perhaps the most interesting
characters in the novel in terms of how social class
forms their respective characters. Both are rescued
from the limitations into which they have been born.
Estella, presumably, would have spent her life as a
thief and a criminal, much as her father did. Mr. Jag-
gers places her with Miss Havisham in the hope that
she will have a better life, but Miss Havisham raises
her without values, demonstrating that class and
character do not go hand in hand. Pip is raised from
a working-class life into the life of a London gentle-
man. But this idle, responsibility-free life hurts
him, damping the goodness inherent in him. When
Magwitch says, “I lived rough, that you should live
smooth; I worked hard, so that you should be above
work,” he does not realize that this removal from all
responsibility, from all obligation, has been bad for
Pip. Ironically, when he realizes that Magwitch is
his responsibility, he comes back to himself, to the
good person that he is, and he does the right thing.
For Dickens, the prevailing notion in 19th-century
England of virtue and good character depending on
social class was inherently wrong. The class one is
born into does not determine character, and to sug-
gest that it does is morally wrong.
Jennifer McClinton-Temple
DICKENS, CHARLES Oliver
Twist (1837–1839)
Charles Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist stands out as
a superb exploration of the effects of institutions
upon people, especially the working-class children
who were among the most vulnerable groups in early
19th-century British society. It was published serially
in 1837–39 when the tragic effects of Britain’s Poor
Law Amendment Act of 1834 were calling forth the
loudest protests from the poor and their supporters.
The novel’s plot is based on the story of Oliver
Twist, a child of unknown parentage, born in a
workhouse and brought up under cruel conditions of
deprivation. After an unhappy apprenticeship, Oliver
escapes to London and falls in with a gang of child
thieves headed by Fagin, a devious old criminal who
tries to convert Oliver into a thief. Other notorious
members of the group are the Artful Dodger; Bill
Sykes; and Bill’s mistress, Nancy. Temporarily res-
cued by the kindly Mr. Brownlow, Oliver is snatched
by the gang at the orders of Fagin. Forced to go on
a burglary heist with Sykes, Oliver is wounded and
nursed by the benevolent Mrs. Maylie and her ward,
Rose. Nancy tells Rose about Monks’s scheme to
obliterate Oliver’s parentage, and Sykes murders
Nancy for her betrayal. Sykes accidentally hangs
himself when a mob pursues him. Fagin is executed
and the gang rounded up. Monks is pursued and
confesses that he is half brother to Oliver, whom
he has tried to ruin in order to inherit their father’s
entire property; he eventually dies abroad in prison.
Rose is revealed as the sister of Oliver’s mother, and
Oliver himself is adopted by Mr. Brownlow.
Dickens’s treatment of the themes of child-
hood, survival, and work are among his greatest
accomplishments in this work. Oliver Twist was the
first British novel to focus on the character of a child
and to give the English pauper child a voice. It thus
has a special status in the history of British literature
and culture.
Diana ChlebekcHildHOOd in Oliver Twist
In Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens offers a particu-
larly sympathetic insight into the condition of child-
hood by focusing his story on the tribulations of a
young pauper boy struggling to survive in early Vic-
torian England. The novel’s melodramatic opening,
with its shocking description of Oliver’s traumatic
birth in a workhouse where his mother has taken
refuge and where she dies after bearing her illegiti-
mate son, begins the nightmare of abandonment,
exploitation, and terror that constitute the orphan’s
early life. Even the hero’s name, “Oliver Twist,”
becomes a symbol of his anonymity and isolation
from society since it is randomly assigned to this
orphan of unknown origins by inhumane workhouse