In Oliver Twist, Dickens presents us with a character so good and pure that nothing can touch him. Despite all of the hardships he experiences and the depravity that he endures, Oliver never turns. Some characters actively try to corrupt him, but they are unsuccessful. Dickens is telling us that Oliver is good and pure, as a child. Dickens had immense faith in the goodness of children.
The first time Oliver Twist is presented with a corrupt world is in the workhouse. He is mistreated incessantly. Though starved and abused, he continues to hope for more. Oliver stands up to the establishment, asking for more gruel. It is not an act of heroism. It is the desperate hope of a hungry child.
After this act of subversion, Oliver is sent to live with an undertaker. Here he again experiences harshness and corruption. The undertaker is an accomplice to the depravity of the workhouse, providing funerals on the cheap for the poor souls who suffer there. He is not actually cruel to Oliver, but his wife and servants are and he makes no move to defend Oliver.
Monks is an embodiment of the corruption of Oliver’s world. Through him, Dickens reminds us that property, name, and character were transmitted from father to son, or parent to child. You were automatically less of a person and an immoral person if you were poor. It is not the desperate actions you turn to, but your very character. Dickens challenges this belief with Oliver, who remains good in vile circumstances. Monks, his half-brother Edward Leeford, attempts desperately to prove that Oliver is a criminal, and goes so far as to hire Fagin to do it.
'I saw it was not easy to train him to the business,' replied the Jew; 'he was not like other boys in the same circumstances.'
'Curse him, no!' muttered the man, 'or he would have been a thief, long ago.' (Ch. 26)
The attempts of Fagin and Monks to turn Oliver into a criminal are useless. He simply does not corrupt. Yet this is an interesting turn of events. Dickens is demonstrating to us that all poor children must begin innocent until circumstances turn them corrupt. Most of Fagin’s boys are desperate, motherless urchins who have nowhere else to go, just like Oliver. Why does Oliver have more strength of character than they do? He is more of a symbol than an actual person. He progresses through the story, but nothing can touch him.
Nancy is another example of corruption's inability to take hold. Although she is a prostitute and likely a thief, she is in her heart a good person. She looks out for Oliver and tries to reunite him with his real family. Dickens had a soft spot for these fallen women. He did not blame them, but felt that society victimized them. This is what he is showing us with Nancy.
Nancy risks everything to get a message to Rose Maylie, but even the servants look down on her.
This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who remarked, with great fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to her sex; and strongly advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly, into the kennel. (Ch. 39)
Nancy begs that they listen to her, because she doesn’t care what happens to her. She only wants to help the child. Rose, the pillar of virtue that she is, is compassionate and listens. Through this interaction, Dickens contrasts Rose and Nancy and reminds us that their character is a result of their class association. They have more in common than readers of Dickens day might want to admit. If not for different circumstances, Nancy might have had a good life.
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