Oliver Twist

Othering in Oliver Twist

Special thanks to GR friends Kevin and Caroline

I first read Oliver Twist when I was ten. My parents took me to see the musical theater production, and I was enthralled. I found a copy of the novel among my grandparents' old books, and I devoured it. My heart went out to the poor orphan boy, so mistreated in the workhouse, who escaped to London only to be taken in by a gang of thieves. I followed his misadventures and was thrilled by the happy ending. I was oblivious to the melodrama and the stereotyping that pervaded the text. Then, last month, I revisited the text as an adult.

Before proceeding, I need to explain that I dealt with the text in two formats: the audio version, narrated by Richard Pryce, based on the show more original serialized version of the text from 1837, and the written version, as found in Everyman's Library, which used Dickens' revised 1867 version of the text. In the original 1837 serialization, and to a lesser extent in the 1867 revision, Dickens engages in a form of othering that I found jarring and offensive. He would refer to a character by their ethnicity, religion, or disability rather than by their name and link it to something evil or distasteful.

The most flagrant example is the antisemitism evident in his treatment of Fagin:

"and standing over them, with a toasting-fork in his hand, was a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair... Seated round the table were four or five boys, none older than the Dodger ...who whispered a few words to the Jew; and then turned around and grinned at Oliver. So did the Jew himself, toasting fork in hand."(Chapter 8).
This type of imaging and referencing repeats throughout the text.

Dickens also repeatedly links disabilities to moral degeneracy. For example, a nameless character opens the door. "Halloa?" said a little ugly hump-backed man. During the following conversation, with Mr. Losberne (an English gentleman), the text reads "Will you?" sneered the ill-favored cripple. "If you ever want me, 'I'm here." The misshapen little demon set up a yell and danced upon the ground as if wild with rage." (Chapter 32 ).

Similarly, Dickens denigrates the Irish:
"The sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of the place were the public houses, and in them, the lowest orders of the Irish(who are generally the lowest orders of anything.) (Chapter 8).

As these examples demonstrate, Dickens embeds negative stereotyping as a means of othering throughout the text. While I find this practice upsetting, I am a 21st-century reader, responding to a text originally serialized in the 1830s. Are these attitudes the norms of British society during that period? What is a fair way to assess this?

I was reading reviews in journals and on Goodreads. Kevin, in his GR review, tackles these issues, and GR friend Caroline made an astute comment that sums up my feelings:

"I can handle slurs and bigoted sentiments in the characters' speech and thoughts, but not in the narrative. I've always viewed the former as part of characterization and scene-setting (meaning the period of the story). The latter isn't; it's from the author."

In Oliver Twist, it's the narrator's voice, not the characters, that signals the othering. The excessiveness may have bothered some members of the Victorian readership, causing Dickens to make changes to the 1867 edition.

Despite my criticisms, Oliver Twist remains a classic. However, it should be read with a critical eye, especially when taught in schools. show less

It's been decades since I visited this rags-to-riches tale of an orphan's misfortunes and ultimate triumph over all the wicked people who mistreated, exploited and cheated him from birth to adolescence. Its flaws are many: the melodrama; the wordiness; the casual anti-Semitism; the multiple unlikely coincidences and the too pat ending where everyone, innocent or wicked, gets just what they deserve...and yet there's a darn fine story buried in the pathos and heavy-handed social commentary, and there are brilliant bits of comic relief as well. I'm not sorry to have read it again.

Abject poverty, criminality, conspiracies, violence, ignorance, child neglect, and alcoholism.

I was dumbstruck. I had no idea Oliver Twist was filled with so much of human darkness (Dickens' novel, not the musical with the lovely song "Who Will Buy This Wonderful Morning"). Some parts were hard to read even for this 65 year old adult to read.

> The death of Nancy was horrific. And how tragically accurate that she was so used to physical abuse that she couldn't even imagine a life without it, even predicting it would be her death.
> Sikes on the run--without thoughts, only with instincts--is a character that could be confused as being written by a 20th or 21st century writer.
> The bloodlust of the public was as revolting as the public is show more today, like in 2021 when Gabby Petito went missing and was later found dead.
> Fagin was as selfish and as manipulative as anyone in fiction, or in real life, a man missing a moral compass as we would say now. Yet, while he waited in prison for the morning of his hanging to arrive, one couldn't help observe how such a sentence is not entirely blind justice since it also brings out the worst in humanity.

Oliver Twist isn't really about Oliver Twist. The boy Oliver Twist is a plot device. The real story is about the brutality of 1830s England, its poverty, and its exasperating laws.

Say what you will about Dickens but the man knew how to write to entertain and knew how to reflect his society without flinching.

I listened to the outstanding Librivox recording by Mil Nicholson. Highly recommend it. show less

Having now worked my way through most of the Dickens canon, feel confident stating that this isn’t one of his more masterly outings. The plot is transparent, over-reliant on deux ex machina (okay, his plots are *always* over-reliant on improbable coincidence, but this one even more so than most), and the protagonist Oliver is, frankly, a bit of a sop, possessing ample virtue and gratitude but little in the way of intelligence, personality, or gumption. (Not for nothing, this is one of Dickens' earliest works, penned a full 20 years before his brilliant Tale of Two Cities.) So what does it say that I still waited with baited breath to see what would happen in each new chapter? Dickens’ narration is so clever, his characters so show more original, his wit so biting that even a lesser outing still has the power to beguile.

To be fair, I think the reason Dickens doesn't bother to endow Oliver with any particular qualities is because the author is interested in telling an entirely different tale. Our milquetoast protagonist merely provides a narrative device for Dickens to whisk us off on an exploration of London’s repugnant underworld – the frauds, pickpockets, burglars, whores, fences, and murderers that prey not merely on the unwary, but particularly on the desperate, especially children. One reason people may be put off by this story is that the most fully realized characters are wholly odious, from Fagin, the physically and morally repellant leader of a gang of thieves comprised of children he has gleefully corrupted; to Bumble, the absurd parochial Beadle who uses the prestige of his office to mask his casual cruelty; to Sikes, the physically and mentally abusive villain who mistreats his dog and his girlfriend Nancy in equal measure, confident that – in a dark underworld in which they live, where filth is rampant, life is cheap, and exploitation inescapable - neither of them have a choice but to endure his violence.

In anyone else’s hands, this dark tale would be almost unreadable, but what Dickens does so well in all his tales, and certainly here, is to layer this darkness with so much absurdity, humor, wit, and empathy that you keep reading in spite of your revulsion. The scene in which Bumble woos his bride is truly hilarious; the moment that the Artful Dodger meets his fate with a dazzling display of proud insouciance, undeniably affecting; the scene in which Nancy turns her back on the hope of redemption, heartbreaking. And then, in between these scenes, a thousand other moments, some ridiculous, some shocking, some poignant, some ironic, some but all organized into a compelling story and related via Dickens’ deliciously penetrating prose.

Having just recently polished off a bunch of novels that received critical plaudits (Nobel Prize winners, Booker Prize winners, Pen/Faulkner prize winners), feel like I can honestly say that even this relatively weak effort by Dickens deserves to stand alongside the best of what’s being published now. Who else but Dickens is capable of combining the social commentary of Barbara Kingsolver, the grim brutality of Cormac McCarthy, the absurd wit of P.G. Wodehouse, and the unconditional empathy of Toni Morrison into a single affecting tale? show less

I reread this recently for the first time since I was a teenager and found (not surprisingly) that I was interested in very different parts of the story than I was when I was younger. I was much more interested in the character of Bill Sykes, and his haunted guilt, fleeing the law. There is a fabulous scene that I had not remembered where he heroically lends a hand during a fire in a desperate effort to rejoin humanity after murdering a friend. Hellfire and damnation mixed in with attempted atonement. It was really quite mesmerizing.

Second best of Dickens' "skinny" novels (Great Expectations is the best) that suffers from two flaws, one major and one less so. First the lesser, after spending the bulk of the novel on the evils of nurture, that is bad nurture, over nature in the end Dickens' resorts to blood, or birth if you will, by resolving Oliver's better nature as at least partly, if not wholly due to his better "blood." This is a sop to the class structure that Dickens' could never quite throw off. To be fair, he isn't the only 19th century English novelist to fall prey to this, Trollope was just as bad.

The second, and most serious flaw, is the egregious anti-Semitism evident in Dickens' handling of Fagin. He is most frequently referred to as the "Jew." I know show more others are going to argue that the author was just "of his time," but I reject this notion. Other authors of this time didn't play upon stereotypical views. Why isn't Sikes referred to as the "Cockney?" It just doesn't wash with the modern reader. I'm sorry but I cannot get past this when reading the novel. For an author to be a bigot is bad enough but to overtly use it with a major character within the context of a work is a huge problem for me.

Otherwise the novel is a solid melodrama with well drawn characters and a good indictment of the horrors heaped on the lower classes by orphanages, work houses, prisons, child labor, and Victorian industrial society in general. show less

A while back, I decided that I really ought to read some more Dickens. So last year I picked up Great Expectations, which had a good enough story, but which kept reminding me far too much of a friend's comment that he never liked Dickens because it was too obvious they were paying him by the word. But while Oliver Twist might also be legitimately accused of wordiness, in this case that struck me as more charming than tedious, and overall I found it a much more engaging read.

The plot has enough interesting elements, certainly. There's crime and punishment, kindness and cruelty, long-held secrets, and sudden reversals of fortune. Also huge honking coincidences, but at least Dickens introduces them gradually enough to give you time to show more shore up your suspension of disbelief. Oliver himself, though, really isn't much of a character. He's someone to whom things happen, not one who makes things happen, and his only defining traits are innocence, piteousness, and a vague, generic sort of sweetness. But this isn't necessarily a problem; he seems to me to be filling the role of a slightly sentimentalized everychild, and on that level he works well enough.

But what really makes this worth reading isn't the characters or the plot. It's the surprising little moments of human insight, the wonderfully sly and dark satiric humor, and the sharply pointed social commentary. And, unfortunately, while there may be no more workhouses in England, the attitudes towards the poor that Dickens targets here are still too familiar and relevant even now. It's brilliant writing, and if it occasionally brings a little bit of mawkishness or melodrama along with it, I find that entirely forgivable.

Somewhat less forgivable, though, is the portrayal of Fagin as an unpleasantly stereotypical villainous Jew. Interestingly enough, despite everything about this book that I already knew through cultural osmosis, I had never even realized that he was Jewish. Dickens, however, never lets you forget it for an instant. Every other sentence, he's referred to as "the Jew." My impression is that, for whatever it's worth, at least this is more thoughtless stereotyping than active maliciousness. A brief bit of research on the internet reveals that Dickens, having had the offensiveness of this pointed out to him, later revised the last fifteen chapters or so to tone it down. Which is something, I guess, but I don't know that it helps all that much. And it really is very unfortunate, both for the obvious reasons and because without the uncomfortable overtones of anti-Semitism, Fagin really could have been quite an entertainingly smarmy character. And he actually does get some surprisingly poignant moments at the end. show less