Riassunto Oliver Twist, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica Riassunto Oliver Twist e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! OLIVER TWIST 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 into asking for more gruel at the end of a meal, Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle, offers five pounds to anyone who will take the boy away from the workhouse. Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish chimney sweep and is eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. When the undertaker’s other apprentice, Noah Claypole, makes disparaging comments about Oliver’s mother, Oliver attacks him and incurs the Sowerberrys’ wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away at dawn and travels toward London. Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter in the London house of his benefactor, Fagin. It turns out that 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 pickpocketing 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. Mr. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen, takes the feverish Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health. Mr. Brownlow is struck by Oliver’s resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home, but two young adults in Fagin’s gang, Bill Sikes and his lover Nancy, capture Oliver and return him to Fagin. Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named Monks are set on recapturing Oliver. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Oliver’s mother left behind a gold locket when she died. Monks obtains and destroys that locket. When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagin’s designs, but a member of Fagin’s gang overhears the conversation. When word of Nancy’s disclosure reaches Sikes, he brutally murders Nancy and flees London. Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently hangs himself while trying to escape. Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts Monks and wrings the truth about Oliver’s parentage from him. It is revealed that Monks is Oliver’s half brother. Their father, Mr. Leeford, was unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair with Oliver’s mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks has been pursuing Oliver all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived of his share of the family inheritance. Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to sign over Oliver’s share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered that Rose is Agnes’s younger sister, hence Oliver’s aunt. Fagin is hung for his crimes. Finally, Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside. Summary: Chapter 1 Oliver Twist is born a sickly infant in a workhouse. The parish surgeon and a drunken nurse attend his birth. His mother kisses his forehead and dies, and the nurse announces that Oliver’s mother was found lying in the streets the night before. The surgeon notices that she is not wearing a wedding ring. Summary: Chapter 2 So they established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative . . . of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. 1 Authorities at the workhouse send Oliver to a branch-workhouse for “juvenile offenders against the poor- laws.” The overseer, Mrs. Mann, receives an adequate sum for each child’s upkeep, but she keeps most of the money and lets the children go hungry, sometimes even letting them die. On Oliver’s ninth birthday, Mr. Bumble, a minor church official known as the parish beadle, informs Mrs. Mann that Oliver is too old to stay at her establishment. Since no one has been able to discover his mother’s or father’s identity, he must return to the workhouse. Mrs. Mann asks how the boy came to have any name at all. Mr. Bumble tells her that he keeps a list of names in alphabetical order, naming the orphans from the list as they are born. Mrs. Mann fetches Oliver. When Mr. Bumble is not looking, she glowers and shakes her fist at the boy, so he stays silent about the miserable conditions at her establishment. Before Oliver departs, Mrs. Mann gives him some bread and butter so that he will not seem too hungry at the workhouse. The workhouse offers the poor the opportunity to starve slowly as opposed to quick starvation on the streets. For the workhouse, the undertaker’s bill is a major budget item due to the large number of deaths. Oliver and his young companions suffer the “tortures of slow starvation.” One night at dinner, one child tells the others that if he does not have another bowl of gruel he might eat one of them. Terrified, the children at the workhouse cast lots, determining that whoever loses shall be required to ask for more food for the boy. Oliver loses, and after dinner, the other children insist that Oliver ask for more food at supper. His request so shocks the authorities that they offer five pounds as a reward to anyone who will take Oliver off of their hands. Summary: Chapter 3 In the parish, Oliver has been flogged and then locked in a dark room as a public example. Mr. Gamfield, a brutish chimney sweep, offers to take Oliver on as an apprentice. Because several boys have died under his supervision, the board considers five pounds too large a reward, and they settle on just over three pounds. Mr. Bumble, Mr. Gamfield, and Oliver appear before a magistrate to seal the bargain. At the last minute, the magistrate notices Oliver’s pale, alarmed face. He asks the boy why he looks so terrified. Oliver falls on his knees and begs that he be locked in a room, beaten, killed, or any other punishment besides being apprenticed to Mr. Gamfield. The magistrate refuses to approve the apprenticeship, and the workhouse authorities again advertise Oliver’s availability. Summary: Chapter 4 The workhouse board considers sending Oliver out to sea as a cabin boy, expecting that he would die quickly in such miserable conditions. However, Mr. Sowerberry, the parish undertaker, takes Oliver on as his apprentice. Mr. Bumble informs Oliver that he will suffer dire consequences if he ever complains about his situation. Mrs. Sowerberry remarks that Oliver is rather small. Mr. Bumble assures her that he will grow, but she grumbles that he will only grow by eating their food. Mrs. Sowerberry serves Oliver the leftovers that the dog has declined to eat. Oliver devours the food as though it were a great feast. After he finishes, Mrs. Sowerberry leads him to his bed, worrying that his appetite seems so large. Analysis: Chapters 1–4 Oliver Twist is an extreme criticism of Victorian society’s treatment of the poor. The workhouses that figure prominently in the first few chapters of the novel were institutions that the Victorian middle class established to raise poor children. Since it was believed that certain vices were inherent to the poor and that poor families fostered rather than discouraged such vices, poor husbands and wives were separated in order to prevent them from having children and expanding the lower class. Poor children were taken away from their parents in order to allow the state and 2 principal character, Oliver, after all, is virtuous, good, and innocent. Although we might expect a criticism of the popular conception of the lower classes to describe many lower-class characters who are essentially good, honest, and hardworking, Dickens does not paint such a simplistic picture. The character of Noah, for example, exhibits the same stereotypes that Dickens satirizes in the first several chapters. Noah, the son of a drunkard, seems to have inherited all of the unpleasant traits that his father presumably has. Big, greedy, cowardly, ugly, and dirty, Noah is the quintessential Victorian stereotype of the good-for-nothing poor man. Part of Dickens’s motivation for writing Oliver Twist was to expose the horrid conditions in which the lower classes were expected to live, and, as a result, much of the narrative focuses on the sensationally disgusting settings in which the poor live their lives. At one point, Oliver and Sowerberry travel to a squalid section of town to retrieve a dead pauper’s body. The neighborhood is full of shop fronts that are “fast closed and mouldering away.” The people of this neighborhood have apparently been left behind by the economic expansion of the Industrial Revolution, which was in full force at the time of Oliver Twist’s publication. The bereaved husband’s wife does not starve to death as a result of her “natural” laziness—she starves to death because of the economic realities of the society in which she lives. Oliver’s attack on Noah is an important moment in the development of his character. Most of the time, he is portrayed as sweet, -docile, innocent, and naïve—sometimes to the point of seeming somewhat dim. Indeed, it might seem that Dickens, in his fervent desire to exact his Victorian audience’s sympathy for the poor orphan, exaggerates by making Oliver angelic. Oliver’s fit of rage, however, makes him seem more passionate and human, like an ordinary child. Oliver, raised in the workhouse, has never seen a functioning family except for the Sowerberrys, who are childless. His sense of familial love and duty is strong enough to compel him to violently come to his mother’s defense. Dickens implies that loyalty to kin, and the desire for the love of a family, is an impulse with which children are born, not one that needs to be learned and nurtured. Oliver’s trip to London parallels the migration of the poor to the urban centers of England during the Industrial Revolution. His hungry, exhausted condition is a result of the laws forbidding begging, and it leaves him vulnerable enough to accept the questionable charity of a band of thieves. Dickens clearly blames the crimes committed by the poor on the people who passed the draconian Poor Laws. Thus, in order to survive, Oliver must accept the aid of Fagin’s band. Oliver’s stay with Fagin’s band represents the first truly domestic experience in his life. Although Fagin’s house is filthy and derelict, it contains a relatively idyllic dinner scene, with plenty of food laid out in pewter dishes and no one to begrudge Oliver his full share of the food. Summary: Chapter 9 The next morning, Fagin takes out a box full of jewelry and watches. He notices Oliver observing him. Fagin grabs a bread knife and asks Oliver if he was awake an hour before. Oliver says he was not, and Fagin regains his kindly demeanor. The Artful Dodger returns with another boy, named Charley Bates. Fagin asks if they worked hard that morning. The Dodger produces two pocketbooks, and Charley pulls out four handkerchiefs. Fagin says that they will have to teach Oliver how to pick out the marks on the handkerchiefs with a needle. Oliver does not realize he has joined a band of pickpockets, so he believes their jokes about teaching him how to make handkerchiefs and pocketbooks. Dodger and Charley practice picking Fagin’s pockets. Two young women, Bet and Nancy, whom the narrator describes as “remarkably free and agreeable,” drop in for drinks. Fagin gives all of them some money and 5 sends them out. Fagin lets Oliver practice taking a handkerchief out of his pocket and gives him a shilling for a job well done. Summary: Chapter 10 For days, Fagin keeps Oliver indoors practicing the art of picking pockets. Oliver notices that Fagin punishes the Dodger and Charley if they return home empty-handed. Finally, Fagin sends Oliver out with the Dodger and Charley to “work.” After some time, the Dodger notices a wealthy gentleman absorbed in reading at a bookstall. Oliver watches with horror as Charley and the Dodger sneak up behind the man and steal his handkerchief. He finally understands the nature of Fagin’s work. The gentleman turns and sees Oliver running away. Thinking that Oliver is the thief, he raises a cry. The Dodger and Charley see Oliver running past them, so they join in, crying, “Stop thief!” A large crowd joins the pursuit. A police officer arrives and grabs Oliver by the collar, ignoring the boy’s protests of his innocence. The gentleman who was robbed asks the police officer not to hurt Oliver and follows them to the police station. Summary: Chapter 11 The officer locks Oliver in a jail cell to await his appearance before Mr. Fang, the district magistrate. Mr. Brownlow, the gentleman, protests that he does not want to press charges. He thinks he recognizes something in Oliver’s face, but cannot put his finger on it. Oliver faints in the courtroom, and Mr. Fang sentences him to three months of hard labor. The owner of the bookstall rushes in and tells Mr. Fang that two other boys committed the crime. Oliver is cleared of all charges. Pitying the sickly young Oliver, Brownlow takes him into a coach and drives away. Summary: Chapter 12 Oliver is delirious with a fever for days. When he awakes, Brownlow’s kindly housekeeper, Mrs. Bedwin, is watching over him. He says that he feels as if his mother has come to sit by him. The story of Oliver’s pitiful life brings tears to Mrs. Bedwin’s eyes. Once Oliver is strong enough to sit up, Mrs. Bedwin carries him downstairs. A portrait of a young woman catches Oliver’s eye and affects him greatly. Mr. Brownlow drops in to see how Oliver is feeling. Oliver thanks him for his kindness. Brownlow exclaims with astonishment that Oliver closely resembles the young lady in the portrait. Brownlow’s exclamation startles Oliver so much that the boy faints. Analysis: Chapters 9–12 From today’s perspective, Dickens’s characterization of Fagin through Jewish stereotypes is one of the more uncomfortable aspects of Oliver Twist. Dickens characterizes Fagin as a “very old shrivelled Jew” with a “villainous-looking and repulsive face.” Victorians stereotyped the Jews as avaricious gold worshippers, and in accordance with that stereotype, Fagin’s eyes “glisten” as he takes out a “magnificent gold watch, sparkling with jewels.” True to the anti-Semitic stereotype, his wealth is ill-gotten— Fagin obtains it by having others do the thieving for him, and some of those others have even been hanged for doing Fagin’s bidding. Dickens’s narrator continually refers to him as “the Jew” or “the old Jew,” seemingly making Fagin into a representative for all Jews. When a Jewish acquaintance later took Dickens to task for his portrait of Fagin, Dickens responded that it reflected nothing other than the fact that a sizable number of the leaders of London thieving rings at the time were Jewish. Despite this answer, it is difficult to accept that his portrayal of Fagin does not involve a certain degree of bigotry. Fagin also represents a harsh parody of the Protestant work ethic. Oliver is “anxious to be actively employed” because he notices that Fagin’s “stern morality” manifests itself when Charley and the Dodger return home empty- handed. Fagin rails about the “misery of idle and lazy habits” and punishes them by denying them dinner. Victorians castigated the poor for laziness, but the work ethic they preached was in some 6 ways responsible for creating the perversion of that ethic that Fagin represents. As a result of the “stern morality” of charitable institutions, paupers have to choose between the harsh conditions of the workhouses and the harsh conditions of the streets. Because begging is a punishable offense, those who stay outside the workhouses are often forced to turn to crime in order to survive. Oliver’s experience in the courtroom highlights the precarious position of the poor in the eyes of the law. Mr. Fang is an aptly named representative of the English legal system. The law has fangs ready to devour any unfortunate pauper brought to face “justice.” Without hard evidence or witnesses, and despite Brownlow’s testimony that he does not believe that Oliver is the thief, Mr. Fang convicts Oliver and sentences him to three months of hard labor. In Oliver’s weakened condition, the sentence is really a sentence of death. Oliver’s inability to speak at his trial, caused by his exhaustion and sickness, metaphorically suggests the lower class’s lack of political power and ability to voice its own concerns in a public forum. In 1830s England, the right to vote was based on wealth, so the poor had no say with respect to the law. Moreover, the upper classes project their own conceptions of the poor upon them—to the point of blithely redefining poor people’s identities with no regard for the truth. Oliver cannot even say his name due to exhaustion and terror, so a court officer gives him the false name of “Tom White.” This process of inaccurate renaming occurs throughout the hearing, as Oliver is falsely named a “young vagabond” and a “hardened scoundrel” before he is eventually falsely declared “guilty.” But the name “Oliver Twist” is, in fact, no more authentic, as Mr. Bumble invents this name when Oliver is born. As these examples demonstrate, Oliver’s identity has been determined by other, more powerful people throughout his life. Oliver enters a new world when Brownlow takes him home. The English legal system and the workhouses represent a value system based on retribution, punishment, and strict morals. The Brownlow household, in contrast, operates on a basis of forgiveness and kindness. After a life of false names and false identities imposed by others, Oliver comes into contact with a portrait of a woman he closely resembles. With this event, the novel’s central mystery—Oliver’s true identity—is established. In contrast to the courtroom, where a multiplicity of incorrect identities are forced upon Oliver, in the Brownlow home, Oliver’s resemblance to the woman’s portrait suggests the elusive nature of his true identity. Summary: Chapter 13 Fagin erupts into a rage when the Dodger and Charley return without Oliver. Fagin tosses a pot of beer at Charley, but the pot hits Bill Sikes instead. Sikes is a rough, cruel man who makes his living by robbing houses. They resolve to find Oliver before he reveals their operation to the authorities, and persuade Nancy to go to the police station to find out what happened to him. Nancy dresses in nice clothing, and at the police station she pretends to be Oliver’s distraught sister. She learns that the gentleman from whom the handkerchief was stolen took Oliver home with him to the neighborhood of Pentonville, because the boy had fallen ill during the trial. Fagin sends Charley, Jack, and Nancy to Pentonville to find Oliver. Fagin decides to relocate his operation for the night and fills his pockets with the watches and jewelry from the hidden box after Charley, Nancy, and Jack leave. Summary: Chapter 14 When Oliver next enters the housekeeper’s room, he notices that the portrait of the lady whom he resembles is gone. Mrs. Bedwin says that Brownlow removed it because it seemed to worry Oliver. One day, Brownlow sends for Oliver to meet him in his study. Assuming that Brownlow means to send him away, Oliver begs to remain as a servant. Brownlow assures Oliver that he wishes to be Oliver’s 7 Fagin leaves Oliver locked up in the house for days. During the daytime, Oliver has no human company. The Dodger and Charley ask him why he does not just give himself over to Fagin, since the money comes quickly and easily in their “jolly life.” Fagin gradually allows Oliver to spend more time in the other boys’ company. Sometimes, Fagin himself regales his crew with funny stories of robberies he committed in his youth. Oliver often laughs at the stories despite himself. Fagin’s plan has been to isolate Oliver until he comes to be so grateful for any human contact that he will do whatever Fagin asks. Summary: Chapter 19 Sikes plans to rob a house, but he needs a small boy for the job. Fagin offers Oliver’s services. Sikes warns Oliver that he will kill him if he shows any signs of hesitation during the robbery. Sikes arranges to have Nancy deliver Oliver to the scene. Fagin watches Nancy for any signs of hesitation. Despite her earlier protests against trapping Oliver in a life of crime, she betrays no further misgivings. Summary: Chapter 20 Fagin informs Oliver that he will be taken to Sikes’s residence that night. He gives Oliver a book to read. Oliver waits, shivering in horror at the book’s bloody tales of famous criminals and murderers. Nancy arrives to take him away. Oliver considers calling for help on the streets. Reading his thoughts on his face, Nancy warns him that he could get both of them into deep trouble. They arrive at Sikes’s residence, and Sikes shows Oliver a pistol. He warns Oliver that if he causes any trouble, he will kill him. At five in the morning, they prepare to leave for the job. Summary: Chapter 21 Sikes takes Oliver on a long journey to the town of Shepperton. They arrive after dark. Summary: Chapter 22 Sikes leads Oliver to a ruinous house where his partners in crime, Toby Crackit and Barney, are waiting. At half past one, Sikes and Crackit set out with Oliver. They arrive at the targeted house and climb over the wall surrounding it. Only then does Oliver realize that he will be made to participate in a robbery. Horrified, he begs Sikes to let him go. Sikes curses and prepares to shoot him, but Crackit knocks the pistol away, saying that gunfire will draw attention. Crackit clasps his hand over Oliver’s mouth while Sikes pries open a tiny window. Sikes instructs Oliver to enter through the window and open the street door to let them inside, reminding him that he is within shooting range all the while. Oliver plans to dash for the stairs and warn the family. Sikes lowers him through the window. However, the residents of the house awake, and one shoots Oliver’s arm. Sikes pulls Oliver back through the window. He and Crackit flee with the bleeding Oliver. Analysis: Chapters 17–22 Oliver’s domestic relationship with Fagin and his gang contributes to the novel’s argument that that the environment in which one is raised is a greater determining factor on one’s character than biological nature. The need for companionship, Dickens suggests, drives people to accept whichever community accepts them in return. As Oliver begins to find humor and joy in the companionship of the thieves, it becomes evident how easy it is for Fagin to corrupt Oliver. With the institution of the oppressive Poor Laws, it is no wonder that penniless, friendless children will adopt as family any person who is generous to them and will readily adopt that person’s values. The Artful Dodger and Charley Bates are, aside from their crimes, quite likeable characters. As his name implies, the Dodger is highly intelligent, and Charley is given to bursts of uncontrollable laughter at little provocation. Both, one imagines, could have thrived in legitimate society, were that society willing to admit them to its ranks. The fact that Oliver speaks and carries himself with a demeanor that is much more sophisticated than that of the rest of Fagin’s boys suggests that Dickens is using Oliver to show that even when people are born into squalid conditions, 10 they can appreciate goodness and morality. When the Dodger and Charley pick Brownlow’s pocket, and again when Sikes and Crackit order Oliver into the house, Oliver reacts with shock and horror at the idea of stealing. It is unclear where he has acquired such moral fastidiousness. He could not have learned it amid the life or death struggles of the workhouse. The Dodger and Charley speak in the slang of street children, using expressions like “scragged,” “rum dog,” “peaching,” and “fogles and tickers.” But Oliver does not understand what such expressions mean. He himself speaks in proper King’s English: “I would rather go,” “you’re one, are you not?” Because even Mr. Bumble speaks with a comical vulgar accent, Oliver could not have picked up his refined speech patterns from him. It seems that Oliver’s careful speech is a symptom of his innate moral goodness. Yet the suggestion that Oliver is innately good complicates Dickens’s argument that corruption is bred by the horrible living conditions of the lower classes, rather than inherently born into their characters. Descriptions of Oliver’s face, in fact, seem to suggest that morality can be born into character. Mr. Sowerberry enlists Oliver to serve in funerals on account of the “expression of melancholy in his face.” The usually unperceptive Toby Crackit notes that Oliver’s “mug is a fortun’ to him,” meaning that his innocent-looking face is worth money to the thieves. Mr. Brownlow sees clearly the resemblance between Oliver and the woman in the portrait, thus providing both himself and us with the first hint that the workhouse-born Oliver has an identity that is worth discovering. Dickens clearly protests against the idea propounded by Mr. Bumble, that the poor are born with an affinity for vice and crime. Yet it sometimes seems as if Oliver has been born with an affinity for virtue and love, just as he was born with his angelic face. But even Oliver’s captivating face does not give him immunity against irrational malice, embodied by characters such as Bumble. Bumble names Oliver as a child born of “low and vicious” parents, reproducing the stereotype that the poor inherit a criminal nature. Moreover, Bumble narrates the incident of Oliver’s attack on Noah Claypole in the same light. Oliver was “low and vicious” for trying to define his identity on his own terms. Mr. Bumble shows Brownlow his own identification papers to prove his statement. His status as the middle-class beadle for a workhouse gives him the right to speak for Oliver and therefore to define Oliver’s identity as he sees fit. With his identification papers, Bumble has the power of the state to back up his word. Oliver only has his own word to back him up. Outside of the workhouse, Oliver has no legal existence unless he commits a crime and enters the courtroom. The poor are thus reduced to a public existence as criminals, corpses, and “idle, lazy” paupers living on state charity. The state chooses to recognize their existence only when they commit crimes, die, or enter the workhouses. Summary: Chapter 23 Mr. Bumble visits Mrs. Corney, the widowed matron of the workhouse, to deliver some wine. Mrs. Corney offers him tea. Mr. Bumble slowly moves his chair closer to Mrs. Corney’s and kisses her on the lips. An old pauper woman interrupts them to report that Old Sally, a woman under Mrs. Corney’s care, is close to death and wishes to tell Mrs. Corney something. Irritated, Mrs. Corney leaves. Alone in Mrs. Corney’s room, Mr. Bumble takes “an exact inventory of the furniture.” Summary: Chapter 24 Mrs. Corney enters Old Sally’s room. The dying woman awakens and asks that her other bedside companions be sent away. She then confesses that she once robbed a woman in her care. The woman had been found pregnant on the road, and Sally had attended the childbirth. The woman had given Sally a gold locket, saying it might lead to people who would care for the child. The child’s name was Oliver. Sally dies, and Mrs. Corney leaves. She tells the 11 nurses who attended Sally that Sally had nothing to say after all. Summary: Chapter 25 Crackit arrives at Fagin’s. Fagin has learned from the newspapers that the robbery has failed. Crackit informs Fagin that Oliver has been shot and claims that the entire population of the area then came after them. Crackit says that he and Sikes fled, leaving Oliver in a ditch. Summary: Chapter 26 Fagin rushes into a pub called the Three Cripples to look for a man named Monks. Not finding him, he hurries to Sikes’s residence. At Sikes’s residence, he finds Nancy, who, in a drunken stupor, reports that Sikes is hiding. Fagin relates Oliver’s misfortune, and Nancy cries that she hopes Oliver is dead, because she believes that living with Fagin is worse than death. Fagin replies that Oliver is worth hundreds of pounds to him. He returns to his house to find Monks waiting for him. Monks asks why Fagin has chosen to send Oliver out on such a mission rather than make the boy into a simple pickpocket. It becomes clear that Monks has some interest in Oliver. Monks was looking for Oliver and saw him the day Oliver was arrested. Moreover, Fagin notes that Monks wants Oliver to be made into a hardened thief. Monks becomes alarmed, thinking he sees the shadow of a woman. The two stop talking and leave Fagin’s house. Summary: Chapter 27 Mrs. Corney, flustered, returns to her room. She and Mr. Bumble drink spiked peppermint together. They flirt and kiss. Bumble mentions that the current master of the workhouse is on his deathbed. He hints that he could fill the vacancy and marry Mrs. Corney. She blushes and consents. Bumble travels to inform Sowerberry that his services will be needed for Old Sally. Bumble happens upon Charlotte feeding Noah Claypole oysters in the kitchen. When Noah tells Charlotte he wants to kiss her, Bumble lectures them for their immoral ways. Summary: Chapter 28 The night after the failed robbery, Oliver awakens delirious. He gets up and stumbles over to the same house Sikes tried to get him to rob. Inside, Mr. Giles and Mr. Brittles, two servants, regale the other servants with the details of the night’s events, presenting themselves as intrepid heroes. Oliver’s feeble knock at the door frightens everyone. Brittles opens the door to find Oliver lying on the stoop. They exclaim that Oliver is one of the thieves and drag him inside. The niece of the wealthy mistress of the mansion calls downstairs to ask if the poor creature is badly wounded. She sends Brittles to fetch a doctor and constable while Giles gently carries Oliver upstairs. Analysis: Chapters 23–28 By contrasting two kinds of theft, Dickens shows how his culture is quick to condemn more obvious acts of theft, but ignores theft that occurs in more subtle ways. After presenting Sikes and Crackit’s botched attempt at theft, the novel quickly shifts to the scene of a very different form of thievery. Mrs. Corney, the middle-class matron of the workhouse, enjoys far more luxury than the pauper residents. They are crammed into tiny, unheated spaces, while Mrs. Corney enjoys a room to herself with a blazing fire during the bitterly cold winter. The amenities of her apartment, which draw Mr. Bumble’s eyes and heart in her direction, represent money that would have been more justly spent on the paupers under her care. Thus, her lifestyle is based on theft, but, because she is robbing those who have nothing, her theft will never be acknowledged. The description of Mrs. Corney implies that the middle class controls conceptions of what is right and wrong, since church officials, intellectuals, and public officers—who have the authority to declare what is right and wrong—are all part of the middle class. With this control, they are able to ignore their own version of thievery—subtly shortchanging the lower classes—and at the same time condemn the lower- class version of thievery—stealing physical objects from the rich. The 12 moral authority by which characters can be judged in Oliver Twist: the moral authority of the English court system and the higher spiritual authority of God. Losberne appeals to Giles’s fear of God’s higher authority to keep him from telling the constable that Oliver took part in the attempted burglary. His question to Giles and Brittles—“Are you, on your solemn oaths, able to identify that boy?”—asks them if they are morally able to identify Oliver to the law and live with the consequences. Losberne implies that Giles will be responsible for Oliver’s death if Giles’s statement sends him to the English courtroom, since the harsh, literal- minded authority of the English legal system would sentence Oliver to death for participating in a burglary. But the novel suggests that the higher, spiritual authority of God would sentence Giles to hell for complicity in the death of a child. Even though Giles, Brittles, and Losberne are all certain that it was indeed Oliver who committed the crime, the three men are in a position to exercise mercy, while the court system is not. The scene suggests that mercy is frequently more valuable than justice, especially when crimes or sins are committed within extenuating circumstances. The maternal roles that Mrs. Maylie and Rose play in Oliver’s life place Oliver in a normal family structure for the first time in the novel, and Dickens’s characterization of the upper-class family complicates his original intention of giving voice to the poor. Oliver is the object of women’s kindness when both Mrs. Bedwin and Nancy step in to offer him some measure of maternal protection. But unlike Mrs. Bedwin and Nancy, the Maylie women are upper- class, and Dickens’s portrayal of them reveals an implicit bias toward the upper class that complicates his explicit attempts to speak for the poor. Blessed with the freedom and leisure to do nothing all day but read, pick flowers, take walks, and play the piano, the Maylies lead lives of perfect bliss, in which Oliver is thrilled to take part. Dickens condemns the money-grubbing tendencies of characters like Fagin and Mr. Bumble, but his idyllic portrait of the moneyed life almost makes Fagin’s and Bumble’s avarice seem more understandable. The idyll of Oliver’s life with the Maylies is also related to their move to the countryside, and Dickens suggests that rural life is superior in all ways to city life. In the country, even poor people have “clean houses,” and woodland “scenes of peace and quietude” are described as sufficient comfort even for those who lead “lives of toil.” Dickens’s portrait of rural poverty as perfectly pleasant cannot be entirely accurate, in light of the vast numbers of peasants who chose to migrate to the city in his time. His description of the countryside as a site of class harmony may be a result of Oliver’s sudden migration into the ranks of the upper class as much as anything else. We already know that the condition of the poor in cities is horrific, and the extravagant lives of the wealthy people who live alongside them may look grotesque and downright immoral in contrast. But if the rural poor lead comfortable lives, there is no call to condemn the leisurely existence of the wealthy Maylies. Summary: Chapter 33 Without warning, Rose falls ill with a serious fever. Mrs. Maylie sends Oliver to mail a letter requesting Losberne’s assistance. On his return journey, Oliver stumbles against a tall man wrapped in a cloak. The man curses Oliver, asks what he is doing there, and then falls violently to the ground, “writhing and foaming.” Oliver secures help for the man before he returns home and forgets the incident entirely. Rose’s condition declines rapidly. Losberne arrives and examines her. He states there is little hope for her recovery. However, Rose soon draws back from the brink of death and begins to improve. Summary: Chapter 34 Giles and Harry Maylie, Mrs. Maylie’s son, arrive to see Rose. Harry is angry that his mother has not written him sooner. Mrs. Maylie replies that Rose needs long-lasting love rather than the 15 whims of a youthful suitor. Mrs. Maylie tells her son that he must consider the public opinion in his desire to marry Rose for love. She mentions a “stain” on Rose’s name: although Rose herself has never committed any crime, public opinion may well convict her for the misdeeds of her parents. Mrs. Maylie hints that Rose’s social status may thwart Harry’s ambitions to run for Parliament and that those thwarted ambitions might eventually destroy his love for Rose. In the short run, Mrs. Maylie says, he must choose between his prospects for material gain and his love for Rose. In the long run, however, there is no choice at all, in Mrs. Maylie’s opinion: the negative judgment of society is powerful enough to defeat love. Harry declares that his love for Rose is solid and lasting. While Rose recovers, Oliver and Harry collect flowers for her room. One day Oliver falls asleep while reading by a window. He has a nightmare that Fagin and a man are pointing at him and whispering. Fagin says, “It is he, sure enough!” Oliver awakes to see Fagin and the stranger he saw when he mailed the letter peering through the window. They disappear rapidly as Oliver calls for help. Summary: Chapter 35 Harry and Giles rush to Oliver’s aid. Upon hearing about Fagin and the man, they search the fields around the house but find no trace of them. They circulate a description of Fagin but find no clues to his whereabouts. Harry declares his love to Rose. Although she returns his love, she says she cannot marry him owing to the circumstances of her birth. His station is much higher than hers, and she does not want to hinder his ambitions. Harry states that he plans to propose marriage one more time, but that, if she again refuses, he will not mention it again. Summary: Chapter 36 Before Harry and Losberne depart, Harry asks that Oliver secretly write him a letter every two weeks, telling him everything Oliver and the ladies do and say. From a window, Rose tearfully watches the coach carry Harry and Losberne away. Summary: Chapter 37 The narrator tells us that Mr. Bumble has married Mrs. Corney and become the master of the workhouse. He regrets giving up his position as beadle, but regrets giving up his bachelorhood even more. After a morning of bickering with his wife, he stops in a pub for a drink. A man in a dark cape is sitting there, and he recognizes Mr. Bumble as the former beadle. He offers Mr. Bumble money for information about Old Sally, the woman who attended Oliver’s birth. Mr. Bumble informs him that Old Sally is dead but mentions that he knows a woman who spoke to the old woman on her deathbed. The stranger asks that Mr. Bumble bring this woman to see him the following evening. He gives his name as Monks. Analysis: Chapters 33–37 The relationship between Harry and Rose illustrates that although marriage based on love is difficult, Dickens values it more highly than marriage based on social station. However, Rose and Mrs. Maylie both believe that marriage based on love is problematic. Rose refuses to marry Harry for the same reasons that Mrs. Maylie says she should not. Rose calls herself “a friendless, portionless girl” with a “blight” upon her name. As a penniless, nameless girl, she says to Harry that his friends will suspect that she “sordidly yielded to your first passion and fastened myself . . . on all your hopes and projects.” In other words, she fears that outsiders will believe that she slept with Harry outside of wedlock and secured his hand in marriage in that way. Thus, she demonstrates her awareness of the tendency of “respectable” society to assume the worst about individuals of low social standing, a tendency that has almost ruined Oliver’s life time and again. Rose’s fear that others would find her marriage to Harry “sordid” reveals the fundamental irrationality of the society whose opinion she fears. Victorians who belonged to the middle and upper classes often married for economic 16 reasons. Individuals usually married someone from a similar economic and social class because, presumably, marrying down would harm their social and economic interests. Logically, we might assume that a marriage between two people of different classes was more, not less, likely to be based on love and higher spiritual values, since it would violate the material interests of at least one party. Yet Rose predicts that others would attribute her marriage to Harry to factors far less honorable than love. Society’s inclination to assume the worst about those of low social standing is so strong that it can lead to patently irrational conclusions. Rose regrets that she cannot offer Harry an economically profitable and socially acceptable marriage, but Dickens criticizes socially or economically motivated marriage. Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Corney demonstrate one such marriage, and the Bumbles lead a miserable life. They dislike each other intensely. Mr. Bumble regrets marrying for “six teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a milk-pot; with a small quantity of second-hand furniture, and twenty pound in money.” He bases his marriage on class similarities and not on personal compatibility, and the result is a complete disaster. Like Nancy and Oliver, Bumble learns of the influence that clothing exercises upon identity. Bumble has given up his position as the parish beadle to become the workhouse master. Having exchanged one identity for another, he now regrets the change. After leaving his position as beadle, he realizes how important the beadle’s clothing was to the position. Dickens writes, “Strip the bishop of his apron, or the beadle of his hat and lace; what are they? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.” The power and dignity of privileged roles are not qualities inherent in the men who occupy them. They are, like clothing, merely purchased and worn, and they can be taken off as easily as they were put on. Summary: Chapter 38 During a storm, Mr. and Mrs. Bumble travel to a sordid section of town near a swollen river to meet Monks in a decaying building. While Mr. Bumble shivers in fear, Mrs. Bumble coolly bargains with Monks. They settle on a price of twenty-five pounds for her information. Mrs. Bumble relates how Old Sally robbed Oliver’s mother. Mrs. Bumble says she discovered a ragged pawnbroker’s receipt in Old Sally’s dead hands and that she redeemed it for the gold locket, which she then hands to Monks. Inside, he finds a wedding ring and two locks of hair. The name “Agnes” is engraved on the ring, along with a blank for the surname. Monks ties the locket to a weight and drops it into the river. Summary: Chapter 39 Bill Sikes is ill with a fever. Nancy nurses him anxiously, despite his surly attitude. Fagin and his friends drop in to deliver wine and food. Sikes demands that Fagin give him money. Nancy and Fagin travel to Fagin’s haunt. He is about to delve into his store of cash when Monks arrives and asks to speak to Fagin alone. The two men leave for a secluded room, but Nancy follows them and eavesdrops. The narrator does not reveal the content of the conversation. After Monks departs, Fagin gives Nancy the money. Perturbed by what she has heard, she dashes into the streets and away from Sikes’s residence before returning to deliver the money. Sikes does not notice her nervousness until a few days later. Sensing something, he demands that she sit by him. After he falls asleep, she hurries to a hotel in a wealthy area. She begs the servants to allow her to speak to Miss Maylie, who is staying there. Disapprovingly, they conduct her upstairs. Summary: Chapter 40 Pity us, lady—pity us for having only one feeling of the woman left and for having that turned . . . from a comfort and a pride into a new means of violence and suffering. Nancy confesses to Rose that she is the one who kidnapped Oliver on his errand for Mr. Brownlow. She relates that she 17 In the morning, Sikes flees London, seeing suspicious looks everywhere. He stops at a country inn to eat. Seeing a bloodstain on Sikes’s hat, a salesman grabs it to demonstrate the quality of his stain remover. Sikes flees the inn. He overhears some men talking about the murder at the post office. He wanders the road, haunted by the image of Nancy’s dead eyes. A local barn catches fire, and Sikes helps put out the fire. Sikes decides to return to London and hide. Afraid that his dog, Bull’s-eye, will give him away, he tries to drown the animal, but it escapes. Analysis: Chapters 42–48 Although Fagin claims to be in partnership with his associates, protecting them in exchange for their loyalty, in the end, he manipulates them so that his own self-interest is better served. He watches the people around him with special care and translates his knowledge about them into power. A prime example of this strategy is his hope to use Nancy’s possible lover to control her through blackmail. Even worse, he reveals Nancy’s betrayal of the band’s code of silence to Sikes in the worst, most treacherous light possible. He describes her actions in such a way as to inspire Sikes’s murderous rage. Having Nancy killed is at least as beneficial to Fagin as to Sikes, but Fagin is unwilling to risk doing the deed himself. Instead, he uses his knowledge about Nancy and about Sikes’s character to manipulate Sikes into committing the horrible crime. Oliver Twist explores different varieties of justice—that served by the English court system; spiritual or godly justice; and, with Sikes’s crime, personal justice, or the torments of conscience. Justice for Sikes’s “foulest and most cruel” of crimes is served almost instantly, as Sikes’s guilt immediately subjects him to horrific mental torture. The passages exploring his mental state are among the most psychologically intricate in the novel. Sikes cannot cleanse himself of Nancy’s blood, either figuratively or literally. Visions of Nancy’s dead eyes disturb him greatly, and he fears being seen. During his desperate flight from London, he feels as though everyone is watching suspiciously. Sikes’s remorse and paranoia shape and twist the world around him. The traveling salesman who claims to offer “the infallible and invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain,” including bloodstains, is so canny in his offer to help Sikes remove his stains that the salesman could almost be a figment of Sikes’s haunted imagination. Likewise, the burning barn, which essentially serves no purpose in the plot, seems to be a herald of the fires of hell Sikes sees in his future. Unlike Oliver, who spends much of the novel trying to discover his identity, Sikes desperately wishes to hide his identity. However, his dog, Bull’s-eye, acts as a kind of walking name tag. The animal follows him everywhere. Indeed, Sikes’s animal even leaves his mark at the scene of the crime—his bloodstained footprints cover the room where Nancy is killed. Bull’s-eye often functions as an alter ego for Sikes: the animal is vicious and brutal, just like its owner. Sikes’s desire to kill the dog symbolically and psychologically represents a desire to kill himself, the murderer he has become. Summary: Chapter 49 Mr. Brownlow has captured Monks and brought him to the Brownlow home. Monks’s real name is Edward Leeford. Brownlow was a good friend of Monks’s father, Mr. Leeford. Mr. Leeford was a young man when his family forced him to marry a wealthy older woman. The couple eventually separated but did not divorce, and Edward and his mother went to Paris. Meanwhile, Mr. Leeford fell in love with Agnes Fleming, a retired naval officer’s daughter, who became pregnant with Oliver. The relative who had benefited most from Mr. Leeford’s forced marriage repented and left Mr. Leeford a fortune. Mr. Leeford left a portrait of his beloved Agnes in Brownlow’s care while he went to Rome to claim his inheritance. Mr. Leeford’s wife, hearing of his good fortune, traveled with Edward to meet him 20 there. However, in Rome, Mr. Leeford took ill and died. Brownlow reports that he knows that Monks’s mother burned Mr. Leeford’s will, so Mr. Leeford’s newfound fortune fell to his wife and son. After his mother died, Monks lived in the West Indies on their ill-gotten fortune. Brownlow, remembering Oliver’s resemblance to the woman in the portrait, had gone there to find Monks after Oliver was kidnapped. Meanwhile, the search for Sikes continues. Summary: Chapter 50 Toby Crackit and Tom Chitling flee to a squalid island after Fagin and Noah are captured by the authorities. Sikes’s dog shows up at the house that serves as their hiding place. Sikes arrives soon after. Charley Bates arrives and attacks the murderer, calling for the others to help him. The search party and an angry mob arrive demanding justice. Sikes climbs onto the roof with a rope, intending to lower himself to escape in the midst of the confusion. However, he loses his balance when he imagines that he sees Nancy’s eyes before him. The rope catches around his neck, and he falls to his death with his head in an accidental noose. Summary: Chapter 51 Oliver and his friends travel to the town of his birth, with Monks in tow, to meet Mr. Grimwig. There, Monks reveals that he and his mother found a letter and a will after his father’s death, both of which they destroyed. The letter was addressed to Agnes Fleming’s mother, and it contained a confession from Leeford about their affair. The will stated that, if his illegitimate child were a girl, she should inherit the estate unconditionally. If it were a boy, he would inherit the estate only if he committed no illegal or guilty act. Otherwise, Monks and his mother would receive the fortune. Upon learning of his daughter’s shameful involvement with a married man, Agnes’s father fled his hometown and changed his family’s name. Agnes ran away to save her family the shame of her condition, and her father died soon thereafter of a broken heart. His other small daughter was taken in by a poor couple who died soon after. Mrs. Maylie took pity on the little girl and raised her as her niece. That child is Rose. Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Bumble confess to their part in concealing Oliver’s history, and Mr. Brownlow ensures that they never hold public office again. Harry has given up his political ambitions and vowed to live as a poor clergyman. Knowing that she no longer stands in the way of Harry’s ambitions, Rose agrees to marry him. Summary: Chapter 52 Fagin is sentenced to death for his many crimes. On his miserable last night alive, Brownlow and Oliver visit him in his jail cell to find out the location of papers verifying Oliver’s identity, which Monks had entrusted to Fagin. Summary: Chapter 53 [W]ithout strong affection and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy and whose great attribute is Benevolence . . . happiness can never be attained. Noah is pardoned because he testifies against Fagin. Charley turns to an honest life and becomes a successful grazier, a person who feeds cattle before they are taken to market. Brownlow arranges for Monks’s property to be divided between Monks and Oliver. Monks travels to the New World, where he squanders his share of the inheritance and lives a sordid life that lands him in prison, where he dies. Brownlow adopts Oliver as his son. He, Losberne, and Grimwig take up residence near the rural church over which Harry presides. Analysis Chapters 49–53 The long story surrounding Mr. Leeford’s marriage is told to demonstrate the disastrous consequences of economically motivated marriages. Dickens’s romanticism manifests itself in the difference between Oliver and his half- brother. Oliver, the child of Leeford’s love affair, is virtuous and innocent. Monks, the result of an economic marriage, is morally twisted by his obsession with wealth. This obsession with money leads him down a long, 21 dark path of nefarious crimes and conspiracies. Throughout Oliver Twist, Dickens criticizes the Victorian stereotype of the poor as criminals from birth. However, after a strident critique of the representation of the poor as hereditary criminals, he portrays Monks as a criminal whose nature has been determined since birth. Brownlow tells Monks, “You . . . from your cradle were gall and bitterness to your own father’s heart, and . . . all evil passions, vice, and profligacy, festered [in you].” Monks’s evil character seems less the product of his own decisions than of his birth. Oliver Twist is full of mistaken, assumed, and changed identities. Oliver joins his final domestic scene by assuming yet another identity. Once the mystery of his real identity is revealed, he quickly exchanges it for another, becoming Brownlow’s adopted son. After all the fuss and the labyrinthine conspiracies to conceal Oliver’s identity, it is ironic that he gives it up almost as soon as he discovers it. X Every Shakespeare Play Summed Up in a Quote from The Office | The SparkNotes Blog Every Shakespeare Play Summed Up in a Quote from The Office | The SparkNotes Blog The final chapters quickly deliver the justice that has been delayed throughout the novel. Fagin dies on the gallows. Sikes hangs himself by accident—it is as though the hand of fate or a higher authority reaches out to execute him. Mr. and Mrs. Bumble are deprived of the right to ever hold public office again. They descend into poverty and suffer the same privations they had forced on paupers in the past. Monks never reforms, nor does life show him any mercy. True to Brownlow’s characterization of him as bad from birth, he continues his idle, evil ways and dies in an American prison. For him, there is no redemption. Like Noah, he serves as a foil—a character whose attributes contrast with, and thereby accentuate, those of another—to Oliver’s character. He is as evil, twisted, and mean while Oliver is good, virtuous, and kind. Oliver and all of his friends, of course, enjoy a blissful, fairy-tale ending. Everyone takes up residence in the same neighborhood and lives together like one big, happy family. Perhaps the strangest part of the concluding section of Oliver Twist is Leeford’s condition for Oliver’s inheritance. Leeford states in his will that, if his child were a son, he would inherit his estate “only on the stipulation that in his minority he should never have stained his name with any public act of dishonor, meanness, cowardice, or wrong.” It seems strange that a father would consign his child to lifelong poverty as well as the stigma of illegitimacy if the son ever committed a single wrong in childhood. In the same way that the court is willing to punish Oliver for crimes committed by another, Leeford is ready to punish Oliver for any small misdeed merely because he hated his first son, Monks, so much. One contradiction that critics of Oliver Twist have pointed out is that although Dickens spends much of the novel openly attacking retributive justice, the conclusion of the novel is quick to deliver such justice. At the story’s end, crimes are punished harshly, and devilish characters are still hereditary devils to the very end. The only real change is that Oliver is now acknowledged as a hereditary angel rather than a hereditary devil. No one, it seems, can escape the identity dealt to him or her at birth. The real crime of characters like Mr. Bumble and Fagin may not have been mistreating a defenseless child—it may have been mistreating a child who was born for a better life. Yet Dickens’s crusade for forgiveness and tolerance is upheld by his treatment of more minor characters, like Nancy, whose memory is sanctified, and Charley Bates, who redeems himself and enters honest society. These characters’ fates demonstrate that the individual can indeed rise 22 the boundary between virtue and vice is not always clearly drawn.  Rose Maylie - Agnes Fleming’s sister, raised by Mrs. Maylie after the death of Rose’s father. A beautiful, compassionate, and forgiving young woman, Rose is the novel’s model of female virtue. She establishes a loving relationship with Oliver even before it is revealed that the two are related.  Mr. Brownlow - A well-off, erudite gentleman who serves as Oliver’s first benefactor. Mr. Brownlow owns a portrait of Agnes Fleming and was engaged to Mr. Leeford’s sister when she died. Throughout the novel, he behaves with compassion and common sense and emerges as a natural leader.  Monks - A sickly, vicious young man, prone to violent fits and teeming with inexplicable hatred. With Fagin, he schemes to give Oliver a bad reputation.  Bill Sikes - A brutal professional burglar brought up in Fagin’s gang. Sikes is Nancy's pimp and lover, and he treats both her and his dog Bull’s-eye with an odd combination of cruelty and grudging affection. His murder of Nancy is the most heinous of the many crimes that occur in the novel.  Mr. Bumble - The pompous, self-important beadle—a minor church official—for the workhouse where Oliver is born. Though Mr. Bumble preaches Christian morality, he behaves without compassion toward the paupers under his care. Dickens mercilessly satirizes his self- righteousness, greed, hypocrisy, and folly, of which his name is an obvious symbol.  Agnes Fleming - Oliver’s mother. After falling in love with and becoming pregnant by Mr. Leeford, she chooses to die anonymously in a workhouse rather than stain her family’s reputation. A retired naval officer’s daughter, she was a beautiful, loving woman. Oliver’s face closely resembles hers.  Mr. Leeford - Oliver and Monks’s father, who dies long before the events of the novel. He was an intelligent, high- minded man whose family forced him into an unhappy marriage with a wealthy woman. He eventually separated from his wife and had an illicit love affair with Agnes Fleming. He intended to flee the country with Agnes but died before he could do so.  Mr. Losberne - Mrs. Maylie’s family physician. A hot-tempered but good-hearted old bachelor, Mr. Losberne is fiercely loyal to the Maylies and, eventually, to Oliver.  Mrs. Maylie - A kind, wealthy older woman, the mother of Harry Maylie and adoptive “aunt” of Rose.  Harry Maylie - Mrs. Maylie’s son. Harry is a dashing young man with grand political ambitions and career prospects, which he eventually gives up to marry Rose.  The Artful Dodger - The cleverest of Fagin’s pickpockets. The Dodger’s real name is Jack Dawkins. Though no older than Oliver, the Dodger talks and dresses like a grown man. He introduces Oliver to Fagin.  Charley Bates - One of Fagin’s pickpockets. Charley is ready to laugh at anything.  Old Sally - An elderly pauper who serves as the nurse at Oliver’s birth. Old Sally steals Agnes’s gold locket, the only clue to Oliver’s identity.  Mrs. Corney - The matron of the workhouse where Oliver is born. Mrs. Corney is hypocritical, callous, and materialistic. After she marries Mr. Bumble, she hounds him mercilessly.  Noah Claypole - A charity boy and Mr. Sowerberry’s apprentice. 25 Noah is an overgrown, cowardly bully who mistreats Oliver and eventually joins Fagin’s gang.  Charlotte - The Sowerberrys’ maid. Charlotte becomes romantically involved with Noah Claypole and follows him about slavishly.  Toby Crackit - One of Fagin and Sikes’s associates, crass and not too bright. Toby participates in the attempted burglary of Mrs. Maylie’s home.  Mrs. Bedwin - Mr. Brownlow’s kindhearted housekeeper. Mrs. Bedwin is unwilling to believe Mr. Bumble’s negative report of Oliver’s character.  Bull’s-Eye - Bill Sikes’s dog. As vicious as his master, Bull’s-eye functions as Sikes’s alter ego.  Monks’s Mother - An heiress who lived a decadent life and alienated her husband, Mr. Leeford. Monks’s mother destroyed Mr. Leeford’s will, which left part of his property to Oliver. Much of Monks’s nastiness is presumably inherited from her.  Mr. Sowerberry - The undertaker to whom Oliver is apprenticed. Though Mr. Sowerberry makes a grotesque living arranging cut-rate burials for paupers, he is a decent man who is kind to Oliver.  Mrs. Sowerberry - Sowerberry’s wife. Mrs. Sowerberry is a mean, judgmental woman who henpecks her husband.  Mr. Grimwig - Brownlow’s pessimistic, curmudgeonly friend. Mr. Grimwig is essentially good- hearted, and his pessimism is mostly just a provocative character quirk.  Mr. Giles - Mrs. Maylie’s loyal, though somewhat pompous, butler.  Mr. Brittles - A sort of handyman for Mrs. Maylie’s estate. It is implied that Mr. Brittles is slightly mentally handicapped.  Mrs. Mann - The superintendent of the juvenile workhouse where Oliver is raised. Mrs. Mann physically abuses and half-starves the children in her care.  Mr. Gamfield - A brutal chimney sweep. Oliver almost becomes Mr. Gamfield’s apprentice.  Bet - One of Fagin’s former child pickpockets, now a prostitute.  Mr. Fang - The harsh, irrational, power-hungry magistrate who presides over Oliver’s trial for pickpocketing.  Barney - One of Fagin’s criminal associates. Like Fagin, Barney is Jewish.  Duff And Blathers - Two bumbling police officers who investigate the attempted burglary of Mrs. Maylie’s home.  Tom Chitling - A rather dim member of Fagin’s gang. Tom has served time in jail for doing Fagin’s bidding. THEMES: The Failure of Charity Much of the first part of Oliver Twist challenges the organizations of charity run by the church and the government in Dickens’s time. The system Dickens describes was put into place by the Poor Law of 1834, which stipulated that the poor could only receive government assistance if they moved into government workhouses. Residents of those workhouses were essentially inmates whose rights were severely curtailed by a host of onerous regulations. Labor was required, families were almost always separated, 26 and rations of food and clothing were meager. The workhouses operated on the principle that poverty was the consequence of laziness and that the dreadful conditions in the workhouse would inspire the poor to better their own circumstances. Yet the economic dislocation of the Industrial Revolution made it impossible for many to do so, and the workhouses did not provide any means for social or economic betterment. Furthermore, as Dickens points out, the officials who ran the workhouses blatantly violated the values they preached to the poor. Dickens describes with great sarcasm the greed, laziness, and arrogance of charitable workers like Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Mann. In general, charitable institutions only reproduced the awful conditions in which the poor would live anyway. As Dickens puts it, the poor choose between “being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it.” The Folly of Individualism With the rise of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, individualism was very much in vogue as a philosophy. Victorian capitalists believed that society would run most smoothly if individuals looked out for their own interests. Ironically, the clearest pronunciation of this philosophy comes not from a legitimate businessman but from Fagin, who operates in the illicit businesses of theft and prostitution. He tells Noah Claypole that “a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company.” In other words, the group’s interests are best maintained if every individual looks out for “number one,” or himself. The folly of this philosophy is demonstrated at the end of the novel, when Nancy turns against Monks, Charley Bates turns against Sikes, and Monks turns against Mrs. Corney. Fagin’s unstable family, held together only by the self-interest of its members, is juxtaposed to the little society formed by Oliver, Brownlow, Rose Maylie, and their many friends. This second group is bound together not by concerns of self-interest but by “strong affection and humanity of heart,” the selfless devotion to each other that Dickens sees as the prerequisite for “perfect happiness.” Purity in a Corrupt City Throughout the novel, Dickens confronts the question of whether the terrible environments he depicts have the power to “blacken [the soul] and change its hue for ever.” By examining the fates of most of the characters, we can assume that his answer is that they do not. Certainly, characters like Sikes and Fagin seem to have sustained permanent damage to their moral sensibilities. Yet even Sikes has a conscience, which manifests itself in the apparition of Nancy’s eyes that haunts him after he murders her. Charley Bates maintains enough of a sense of decency to try to capture Sikes. Of course, Oliver is above any corruption, though the novel removes him from unhealthy environments relatively early in his life. Most telling of all is Nancy, who, though she considers herself “lost almost beyond redemption,” ends up making the ultimate sacrifice for a child she hardly knows. In contrast, Monks, perhaps the novel’s most inhuman villain, was brought up amid wealth and comfort. The Countryside Idealized All the injustices and privations suffered by the poor in Oliver Twist occur in cities—either the great city of London or the provincial city where Oliver is born. When the Maylies take Oliver to the countryside, he discovers a “new existence.” Dickens asserts that even people who have spent their entire lives in “close and noisy places” are likely, in the last moments of their lives, to find comfort in half--imagined memories “of sky, and hill and plain.” Moreover, country scenes have the potential to “purify our thoughts” and erase some of the vices that develop in the city. Hence, in the country, “the poor people [are] so neat and clean,” living a life that is free of the squalor that torments their urban counterparts. Oliver and his new family settle in a small village at the novel’s end, as if a happy ending would not be possible in the city. 27