Category: Fall 2020

In Oliver Twist, Rose is described as the ideal woman, in sharp contrast to the low-class women in the novel. Her beauty, kindness, and virtue are emphasized in almost every passage she appears, which positions her as one of the few moral characters in the novel. In chapter 40, Rose and Nancy are presented as foils in respect to femininity, character, and class. This contrast highlights the novel’s theme of poverty leading to moral degradation, perhaps serving as a warning of Oliver’s future if he remains lower-class.

When Rose and Nancy meet for the first time, Rose is presented as a potential “savior” of Nancy’s abandonment of virtue and traditional womanhood. Rose’s kindness is explicitly connected to her femininity; Nancy is embarrassed when meeting her, as she has abandoned this softness and gentleness. Nancy is described as “the miserable companion of thieves and ruffians…even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but alone connected her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child” (225). This connects Nancy’s criminality and roughness to both her lower class and abandonment of her femininity. Her “wasting life,” or her suffering and desperation as a lifelong member of the lower class, “obliterated” her “womanly feeling,” which can be interpreted as her empathy and gentleness. Her life as a criminal, which originates in her childhood, makes her “degraded,” as she cannot express her deeply repressed softness.

Rose is the antithesis of Nancy’s class, femininity, and morality issues. Her willingness to be kind to a woman like Nancy is touted as an example of her unparalleled compassion. However, she goes further by attempting to rescue Nancy from her loss of virtue. Rose begs to Nancy, “do not turn a deaf ear to the entreaties of one of your own sex; the first, I do believe, that ever appealed to you in the voice of pity and compassion…It is never too late…for penitence and atonement” (238). As the ideal woman, Rose wants to return Nancy to her intrinsic virtue, or womanhood. Rose attempts to appeal to Nancy as “one of [her] own sex” in order to make her remember her innate goodness. Despite Nancy’s attempts to explain to Rose that her class status has trapped her in this life, Rose believes Nancy can express “penitence and atonement” and escape. This emphasizes Rose’s flawless empathy and belief in the goodness of others. However, as their conversation continues, it becomes clear that class is the ultimate division between Rose’s upmost morality and Nancy’s depravity.

The comparison between Rose and Nancy emphasizes the novel’s message of lower-class life leading to moral corruption. Nancy is just one of many women in the novel described as unattractive and unfeminine. These two women are symbolic of Oliver Twists’ two potential routes in life, as Rose and Nancy are each potential mother figures. Rose reflects and encourages Oliver’s innate goodness, while Nancy would lead him down a path of destruction, despite her attempts to save Oliver. Nancy’s death later in the novel emphasizes that she was unable to escape her life as a degenerate. Therefore, if Oliver is trapped in a lower-class life, he may also be forced to be corrupted.

I want to discuss Oliver’s discourse so far and what that implies about the society he lives in. His discourse has mostly been passive, because he only gets a chance to speak when he is confronted and even if he does, he is never trusted. As readers, we seldom get any insights on what exactly is going on in Oliver’s mind, and he rarely conveys to people or has anyone to convey to, about his feelings and thoughts. So I was glad to see when Oliver was finally given a chance to talk about his past and was entrusted at Mrs. Maylie’s house. It was the first time in his life that he was able to speak about his sufferings; the process of his recollection was difficult just as his journey was: “The Conference was a long one; for Oliver told them all his simple history: and was often compelled to stop, by pain and want of strength. It was a solemn thing, to hear, in the darkened room, the feeble voice of the sick child recounting a weary catalogue of evils and calamities which hard men had brought upon him” (163). Simply having listeners to his stories was a kind of grace for Oliver, because he wasn’t always so fortunate.

Before finding his haven at Mrs. Maylie’s house, Oliver met people who simply do not care about what he has to say: Fagin could tell by his appearance that Oliver was obviously just another orphan for him to exploit. Mr. Bumble shamelessly lies about Oliver’s past because he knows that his words will always be more credible than Oliver’s due to his age and status. And Mr. Brownlow chose to believe in whatever the stranger tells him instead of trusting Oliver who was sincere and grateful. In this society, innocent children are easily mistaken as malicious liars, which indicates how skeptical and insecure they are of each other. Even when people do have interest in what Oliver has to say, the interest always lies in his past, which is directly related to his status or his family’s status. Mr. Bumble’s fabrication begins with how Oliver was “born of low and vicious parents” (95) which clearly has a great impact on what Mr. Brownlow thinks of Oliver. The only place where social status and history doesn’t matter is at the bottom of the social hierarchy which is a catch itself.

By looking at the parallels between the characters of Nancy and Rose, the complexity of Dickens’ representation of “goodness” in women, most importantly Nancy’s complexity, can be further analyzed. Both women were orphaned, but ultimately ended up on two entirely different ends of society. Rose reveals what a possible outcome could have been for Nancy if she had been raised in the same environment that Rose had, and also highlights the virtues of good that Nancy might still have and could have grown further if given more time.

Nancy, despite her poor upbringing, is also capable of love. Dickens places a lot of importance on the idea of love in the ending of the first meeting between Nancy and Rose.

“When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are…give you’re hearts, love will carry you all lengths…Pity us, lady—Pity us for only having one feeling of the woman left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and pride, into a new means of violence and suffering,” Nancy tells Rose (Dickens 229).

Nancy of course is no longer a virgin, so that “feeling of woman” is gone. She is also no longer “good,” as she has been hardened to a life of crime. The only “feeling of the woman left” that she claims to have is her devotion to the character of Sikes. While Rose had turned away her love of Harry, Nancy clings onto her love for Sikes despite his brutality because she believes her love is her last shred of womanhood and perhaps pure femininity. While this continued devotion to Sikes can be seen as simply a continuation of her life of crime, analyzing Nancy’s change in character and demeanor because of her passion for Sikes could reveal another layer to her supposed last bit of womanhood.

“But the girl, being really weak and exhausted, dropped her head over the back of the chair, and fainted… (Sikes) Not knowing very well what to do, in this uncommon emergency; for Miss Nancy’s hysterics were usually of that violent kind which the patient fights and struggles out of, without much assistance.” (Dickens 216)

As demonstrated in this passage, Nancy’s character becomes increasingly less argumentative and more feverish and delicate. After being “savagely” talked to by Sikes, instead of wittily defending herself like in past circumstances, she faints. Sikes notices this change, contrasting her reaction to the “fights and struggles” that would have usually resulted. She also talks to Sikes differently, and Dickens clearly specifies that she tries to quell him in another passage “with a touch of woman’s tenderness.” (Dickens 215) The specification of it being a woman’s tenderness expands the notion that her nursing of and care for Sikes is an aspect of her true womanhood, formerly suppressed. These new kind of reactions by Nancy are paralleled by Rose, who “sank into a chair, and endeavored to collect her wandering thoughts” (Dickens 229) after speaking to Nancy, and even becomes gravely sick in earlier chapters after going on a walk that is too long, showing how easily a woman of virtue becomes lightheaded. Nancy, through her last womanly virtue of her love for Sikes, seems to be transforming in ways that draw her closer towards Rose, who is represented as the epitome of womanly purity and virtue.

Oliver has been taken into custody for a crime he did not commit. While he continually professed his innocence, no one believed him until the book stall owner spoke on his behalf. Dickens not only uses this event to further the plot of the novel, but also to show the reputability of the different classes. Oliver is a young, poor orphan who has no home. It is clear no one will believe him because society looks down on the poor. Begging is considered a crime that could send you to jail. Oliver is about to be sentenced to three months of hard labor he clearly cannot perform in his weakened state despite Brownlow claiming he does not want to press charges.

The book stall owner recounts what actually happened and Oliver is set free. While the book stall owner is not wealthy, he is still in a class about Oliver. Even though it is old, he is dressed “well” in a suit. While skeptical at first, Fang believes him when the book stall owner mentions Brownlow was reading a book at the time of the robbery, the same one he has in his hand now. He had not payed for the book. Brownlow claims he “forgot all about it” but it was clear he had stolen the book.

While Oliver was chased down and beaten for being suspected of theft, Brownlow, who has just admitted to not paying for the book, is let go with a warning. This once again shows the class disparity. No one bats an eye at Brownlow when he admits to having “forgotten” to pay for the book because he is wealthy. Fang tells him, “Let this be a lesson to you,” while Olivers “lesson” was a beating. This general mistrust and mistreatment of the poor is shown throughout Dickens’ novel. This particular scene showed how it affects the justice system.

“The girl’s life had been squandered in the streets…but there was something of the woman’s original nature left in her still… (Dickens 225, my emphasis). 

Dickens, at the opening of Chapter XL, enters into an examination of Nancy as she begins her epiphanic meeting with Rose Maylie. He explains that “the girl’s [Nancy’s] life had been squandered in the streets…but there was something of the woman’s original nature left in her still…” (225, my emphasis). Dickens’s two major and contrasting portraits of womanhood are in Rose Maylie and Nancy, and here they collide–understanding the significance of having his Eve and Mary in the same room with one another, he opens the chapter immediately onto the heavy implications of “woman’s original nature” (225). His suggestion, in this sentence, is that “the streets” (more specifically “the stews and dens of London”) have worn Nancy’s innate womanly nature down to almost nothing. This “woman’s original nature” is distinct from femininity or sex appeal, from dress or general comportment; rather, “woman’s original nature” must be an impulse towards Dickens’s own ideas of morals, goodness, and doing-good.

He suggests that Nancy is a “girl” but that she retains some degree of “the woman” within her. This is the reverse of the general transition between girlhood and womanhood which comes with age, experience, and identity. To find “the woman’s original nature” in “the girl”, then, is to suggest a fundamental and indelible mark upon the soul and “nature” of women which makes them distinct from men and from their own earthly experience (all of the complex gender and sex implications of that suggestion are beyond the scope of my post). It is something that women are born with and which they carry as far as they can into the world, something that can be “squandered in the streets” via prostitution and coarse manners, male society and crime.  

Notably, Christianity teaches that all human beings are born with Original Sin—the sin of Eve, the first woman, in trusting the snake in the garden of Eden and leading humanity (and, perhaps more importantly to the Church, mankind) to Fall and lose the paradise and everlasting life which they originally possessed. As a result all children are born sinners, and women are additionally punished for this with the pain of childbirth. Dickens would have been intimately familiar with this mythology, yet he suggests that the innate impulse of women is not towards sin and the fall, but towards good-doing and morality. We see this when he suggests that, in giving in to her own ethical imperative of informing Rose Maylie about Oliver’s past and potential future, Nancy is giving into what is “left” of “woman’s original nature” within her. Though she is a “girl” rather than a “woman,” she has the germ of womanhood within her, and it is this womanhood which inspires the good deed which effectively kills her (the implications of the fact that Rose Maylie, unquestionably the pinnacle of the novel’s innate womanly goodness, is the person Nancy reveals her knowledge to, and that she dies after revealing it, is again beyond the scope of my post). Dickens is making a profound argument about gender, about women, and about the potential for redemption in this fragment of a sentence, which informs not only how we should read the femininity (and masculinity!) of this book, but how he intends to influence the moral makeup and religious influence of and over his readers. 

At the beginning of Chapter 48, there is constant imagery of light flooding into dark spaces.  Sikes experiences this the morning after he murders Nancy.  Dickens says, “The sun – the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man – burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory” (Chapter 48).  This statement harshly juxtaposes the events of the night before. Life has just been taken, while the next morning’s sun brings thoughts of new life in the next chapter.  Sikes makes the direct link back to Nancy by saying that Nancy would have opened the curtains to let the light in if she was still alive.

This opening passage seems to indicate divine intervention the morning after an evil event occurs. Having such strong natural imagery or descriptions of light often suggest the presence of religion or God.  This connection can also be drawn through words like “glory”. This passage also states, “through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray” (Chapter 48).  This comparison creates a connection between God and Sikes’s dirty apartment.  It creates parallels with Nancy’s attack in the previous chapter as she was on her knees with Rose’s handkerchief asking for God’s mercy before Sikes killed her.  The presence of light in the following chapter provides an example of religious justice.  While mercy cannot be enacted to save Nancy’s life, natural forces, like the sun, seem to torment Sikes in the wake of this event.  Dickens provides this when he says, “[Sikes] tried to shut it out, but it would stream in. If the sight had been a ghastly one in the dull morning, what was it, now in all that brilliant light!” (Chapter 48). The sun continues to stream in, even as he tries to prevent it.  The light also forces Sikes to face the events of the night before as the sight of a murdered Nancy in the light is much harsher than in the darkness.

At this point in the novel, many troublesome characters avoid justice and retribution for their wrongdoings, especially those who have hurt Oliver.  In this chapter, Sikes receives his own justice for what he’s done, separate from the legal system in London.  He’s tormented in his apartment, but, even after he leaves, he can’t find solace in any location in the city.  Sikes seeks to hide in the shadows, which normally provide safety for the other criminals in the novel, but Sikes can’t escape “the glare of the lamps of a stage-coach” or the fire blazing in an apartment (Chapter 48).  It seems fitting that, when the justice system in London fails, natural or religious forces work to torment Sikes instead.  He cannot outrun the sun.  Sikes’s experiences in this chapter provide hope that the other villains in Oliver Twist will receive some form of justice for their actions.

1. 251 (chapter 30)

The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though the marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known. Thus, a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odor of a flower, or the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened

 

1. 275 (chapter 32)

… with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature’s face; and, carried far from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once in to a new state of being.  Crawling forth, from day to day, to some green sunny spot, they have had such memories wakened up within them by the sight of sky, and hill and plain, and glistening water, that a foretaste of heaven itself has soothed their quick decline, … the memoires which peaceful country scenes call up, are not of this world.

 

 

The passages are describing heaven, describing an after-life but also a before-life because Dickens connects the past with the future. Indicating that we came from there and will return.  But it is also so hopeful.  He links so many images of nature to Heaven, all gentle, all peace.  There is such a comfort in his descriptions.

 

The passage is really about the temporal space we are in now; that no matter how much drudgery there is in this life, there is a better life. He describes Nancy, Dick, Oliver’s mother, …, their poor lives.  But then says that “Heaven is just” and “that there is a brighter world than this.” (p. 282)

 

Is Dickins talking about redemption? About the fact that we are all redeemable?  The discussion between Rose and Nancy with Rose pleading for Nancy to turn around would suggest so.  Is Dickins saying we are all born the same; that Nature, pure nature, gives us the chance to remember who we are, that we can return, that we will return.

 

Dickins clearly describes “good” and “bad” characters. But who is to judge at the end?  Will the “bad” be punished?  What about Nancy?  Clearly a “bad” character but is she redeemable?  There is so much hope throughout this novel, hope of redemption, hope of a better place, hope that Rose will be healed, hope that Oliver will find Brownlow, hope that Rose will convince Nancy to turn around.  Dickins treats death almost lightly as in the early chapters with the children who die, the small coffins, the abuse and neglect leading to death. But he continually reinforces the message that death is not the end, that there is so much more to come, that for those who have suffered in this world there is a better place to come.  The images he uses from nature are of the purest.  Music and streams and sky and hills and plains and peace.  Always peace.

 

What was he trying to say to the audience at the time? If it was mostly the middle class who read these novels, what message was he trying to convey to them?  The message seems to be for those who are suffering in this world, that there will come a better time and place.  Peace will prevail.  There is injustice in this world as we know it, much injustice, but “Heaven is just.”

In chapter 40, Nancy confesses to Rose about Oliver’s true identity and the danger Monks wishes to put him in. At the end of the chapter, Rose begs Nancy to stay away from the people who put her in a danger and Nancy’s reply to her was deeply complicated. Dickens uses Nancy to talk about the social and physical environment people live in and how it affects their actions. 

Both Rose and Nancy have positive qualities, such as being loyal, but the response to these traits is treated differently. Nancy states, “Set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us?… for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering.’’(229).  Nancy because of the circumstances of her situation, reached out and formed connections to people who surround her such as Fagin. She has loyalty for men who would not treat her the same. Nancy’s loyalty is treated with ungratefulness and becomes the source of her pain and struggle. In turn, these characters helped shape her behavior and actions. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Rose, who was surrounded by a good family, shows love and kindness and it seems to only bring those feelings back to her. 

People in the streets who have a conscience like Nancy feel like they can never atone for their sins and view themselves as tainted and tied to their past. Nancy explicitly states to Rose that she is too far beyond redemption. She states, “if you could take my life at once; for I have felt more grief to think of what I am, to-night, than I ever did before, and it would be something not to die in the hell in which I have lived”(229). Nancy’s horrible life circumstances are something she feels responsible for. She even believes that she is so fundamentally tainted that she prays she won’t be tortured the same way in hell. She won’t atone for sins because she feels guilty for and tied to her past. Dickins is using her as a metaphor for how people who want to become better have a very hard time being able to change because of both their past and the people they are surrounded by.

Nancy believes that her positive traits and morals, which led her to do the right thing by Oliver, will become another source of her suffering. By telling Rose, Nancy has a lot to lose from the consequences of her kind of actions and in the end, it leads to her death.

‘Suppose that lad that’s laying there—’ Fagin began. […]

‘Suppose that lad,’ pursued Fagin, ‘was to peach—to blow upon us all—first seeking out the right folks for the purpose, and then having a meeting with ’em in the street to paint our likenesses, describe every mark that they might know us by, and the crib where we might be most easily taken. Suppose he was to do all this, and besides to blow upon a plant we’ve all been in, more or less—of his own fancy; not grabbed, trapped, tried, earwigged by the parson and brought to it on bread and water,—but of his own fancy; to please his own taste; stealing out at nights to find those most interested against us, and peaching to them. Do you hear me?’ cried the Jew, his eyes flashing with rage. ‘Suppose he did all this, what then?’ (Dickens 403-04).

Fagin begins suspecting Nancy’s disloyalty to their merry band of thieves because of her erratic (rebellious) behavior and anxiousness to escape Sikes’s home one Sunday night. Fagin charges Noah Claypole to follow Nancy the next Sunday night when she attends a covert rendez-vous with Mr. Brownlow and Rose. Nancy tells them of Monks’ sinister plot to deprive Oliver of his inheritance while also alluding to the roles of Fagin, Sikes, and co. in the plot. However, she refuses to implicate her associates with concrete details. Nonetheless, Noah snitches on Nancy to Fagin, who is enraged by this news.

Fagin is manipulative, possessive, and selfish throughout the novel. However, this is him at his most wicked. He wants Nancy dead but rather than kill her himself, he manipulates someone else into doing the work—similar to his employment of children to steal for him. Through his repeated use of the word “suppose,” Fagin conditions Sikes into accepting an ugly truth that he would’ve rejected had the former told him outright. Fagin gauges the barbarian’s temperament and provokes his rage by rubbing in Sikes’s face that the impeacher might’ve condemned them all while preserving his/her own freedom. Once assured that Sikes would kill the culprit, whether it be “Charley, or the Dodger, or Bet,” (Dickens 404) or even Fagin himself, Fagin reveals it to be Nancy, and unleashes Bill Sikes and his violent fury in her direction. Sikes confronts Nancy and beats her to death with a club, then flees the scene.

In this passage, Dickens places Fagin’s cunning and cruelty on full display. Fagin commits indirect murder by convincing Bill Sikes, a violent and reckless criminal, that his girlfriend betrayed him and their crew. Ironically, Fagin’s deceit betrays them all; after murdering Nancy, Sikes is captured by the authorities and the rest of the thieves go soon afterwards. Even with this plausible risk looming ahead, Fagin provoked Sikes. This shows Fagin’s willingness to do whatever it takes to preserve himself and, by extension of the gang, his wealth.

As a commentary of contemporary society, Dickens not only depicts Fagin as a racial-caricature and a criminal mastermind, but as peer to the industrialists and avaricious leaders of the Victorian Era who, like Fagin, were responsible for atrocities they themselves didn’t commit.

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Barnes and Nobles Classics, 2003.