The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was a favorite target for Charles Dickens; he never missed a chance to call attention to the law’s brutality or to deride its National Commissioners, its Boards of Guardians, and its petty officials (Brown 154). Few, of his major works fail to fire at least some satiric shots at it, and a significant proportion of his journalistic writings, especially in the Examiner and Household Words,deal with the subject. Dickens’s most direct, sustained, and savage satire on the New Poor Law, however, is to be found in the pages of Oliver Twist. This novel has a “polemical air” (Ackroyd 218) and attacks its subject with a bitter irony that would have made Juvenal wince. As Stephen Leacock puts it, Oliver Twist “is a story for tears, for anger, for hands clenched in righteous indignation” (44). Despite the fact that its devastating satire was extremely effective in stirring up popular hatred for the law (Brown 155), the work has not been without its critics. Much of the criticism has focused on the narrative flaws of the story, such as it’s far-fetched, melodramatic plot with highly contrived explanations; Dickens’s tendency to lapse into mawkish sentimentality, as evidenced by the irrelevant episode of Rose Maylie’s illness; and a certain weakness of characterization, notably Oliver’s and Nancy’s improbable goodness and Mr. Brownlow’s improbable benevolence. Though the novel admittedly has its literary shortcomings, critics have tended to be overly harsh in their assessment of the Inimitable’s first, true novel – The Pickwick Papers was far too episodic to be considered a novel in the modern sense. In spite of its supposed flaws, the story of the “Parish Boy’s Progress” is imbued with an emotional power that renders these faults irrelevant and makes Oliver Twist one of the most trenchant social satires in English Literature, and well worthy of inclusion in the Western literary canon. Its greatness lies in its virtuosic use of dark irony, its intense – and even hideous – realism, its grotesque and wonderfully drawn villains, and its ability to create an atmosphere every bit as dark and oppressive as the social ills against which Dickens is fighting.
If one is to examine and appreciate the greatness of Oliver Twist as a work of social satire, it is well to review, briefly, the subject of Dickens’s animosity – the Poor Law reforms of 1834. In essence, the new law abolished a system of poor relief that had been in place for well over 200 years, ever since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Pool 244). Under the prior system, relief was administered at the local parish level and the funding came partly through alms, but mostly through taxes (called “rates”) paid by parish members. There were workhouses, mainly for the aged and infirm, but most of the assistance took the form of so-called “outdoor relief,” wherein the working poor whose wages fell below subsistence level received a supplement tied to the price of a loaf of bread and the size of their family (“Poor Relief”). This system worked well enough, in its day, but it was designed to handle only isolated cases of local poverty – it was entirely unequal to the task of coping with the large-scale displacement of sizeable populations of workers and the drastic variations in prices and wages that were a result of the Industrial Revolution (“Poor Relief”).
The radical Malthusian and Benthamite reformers sought to impose efficiency and uniformity on the old system, which they saw as encouraging pauperism as a way of life and as doing nothing to check unwanted population growth (House xii). They believed that relief should only be given in the most unattractive form possible in order to discourage idle paupers or the “undeserving poor,” under conditions which prevented the poor from breeding and, thus, exacerbating the problem. Outdoor relief was eliminated; the dreaded workhouse now became the only option, and a grim option it was. Husbands were separated from wives, parents from children; the diet was deliberately sparse; inmates were depersonalized through drab uniforms, extreme regimentation and disenfranchisement; and labor was backbreaking, mindless and unlikely to prepare one for gainful employment on the outside. If this sounds more like prison than social welfare, that was precisely the intent. The goal of the new, Utilitarian system was deterrence, not relief, of pauperism (House xii). In theory, a distinction was to be drawn between the aged, infirm, and children, on the one hand, and the able-bodied idlers, on the other; in practice, however, everyone was sucked into the quagmire of the workhouse and suffered – children most of all.
The New Poor law was fresh in the public mind when Dickens began serializing Oliver Twist in February of 1837 (“Poor Relief”). During its serial run and its release as a three-volume novel, a severe winter, a trade depression, and a year of scarce food and high prices all served to inflame popular sentiment against the law and increase the novel’s intense topicality. There were also very real fears of imminent armed revolution, especially in light of the abortive Chartist uprising in Newport in 1839, during which several thousand armed miners belonging to this radical movement marched on the city in a failed attempt to free what they believed to be political prisoners, a move that was supposed to be the signal for nationwide revolt. Combine this with the fact that Dickens was enjoying enormous popularity as a result of his previous book, The Pickwick Papers, and it is clear that the time was ripe for Dickens to strike his first major blow in the war against social ills. He had an established audience, and they were primed and ready to hear his message. Unlike other social critics of his day, however, his message did not get bogged down in the minutiae of government policy. Dickens was interested in the deplorable plight of the underprivileged, not in debating the relative merits of any particular political theory. He did not dislike this or that argument for oppression; he disliked oppression. Other activists of his time attacked something on the grounds that it was bad economics or bad politics; Dickens attacked things simply because they were bad. His fight was that of the weak against the strong, of freedom and humanity over tyranny and callousness. His goal in Oliver Twist was to expose to a complacent Victorian society “the cruelty of both criminals and middle-class legislators alike” (Dyson 18).
One of the chief weapons Dickens uses in his attack is irony, and he wields that weapon with extraordinary dexterity to set and sustain the story’s tragicomic tone. Nobody who has read the novel can ever forget the wickedly hilarious darts he launches against his target, especially in the early chapters – the workhouse chapters. A complete cataloging of the satiric comments would necessitate the reprinting of most of the novel, but a few examples will suffice to illustrate the general tone. For instance, he describes the baby farm to which Oliver is sent after his birth as a dismal place “where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws rolled about on the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing” (Dickens 4). From the very outset, Dickens heaps sarcasm upon the workhouse system and the Malthusian theories which make it possible. The latter are lampooned in the form of the Board of Guardians:
The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered – the poor people liked it! … ‘Oho!’ said the Board, looking very knowing; ‘we are the fellows to set this to rights’ … So they established the rule, that all the poor people should have the alternative … of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. (Dickens 11)
The starvation regimen of the workhouse was a particularly hated measure for Dickens, who had known hunger and privation when his father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. He stabs at it again in chapter III when Mr. Bumble, in a rare moment of relative kindness, tells Oliver, “don’t cry into your gruel; that’s a very foolish action, Oliver.” “It certainly was,” Dickens sardonically comments, “for there was quite enough water in it already” (18). Dickens repeatedly mocks the cold, heartless efficiency of the system and its officials. For example, there is the scene in chapter IV in which the board “took counsel together on the expediency of shipping off Oliver Twist, in some small trading vessel bound to a good unhealthy port … the probability being that the skipper would flog him to death, in a playful mood, some day after dinner” (22). Sending workhouse children to sea, or to the coal mines, or to some odious apprenticeship in another parish, was a common way of disposing of them and shortening their life expectancy.
Yes, the satire of Oliver Twist is funny, but there is a righteous indignation to it which stands in sharp contrast to the genial humor of its predecessor, The Pickwick Papers, making it all the more effective. Readers expecting more Wellerisms must have gotten quite a jolt when they read the opening pages of Oliver Twist; like a bucket of cold water thrown upon a drowsy person’s face, the ferocious satire of the new book commanded their instant attention. Throughout the novel, Dickens skillfully contrasts the comic tone with the horror and tragedy of the subject matter, producing a jarring effect upon the reader that keeps him focused on the things that Dickens wants him to see and feel.
Another important factor which adds to the story’s emotional impact is its unflinching, often profoundly disturbing, realism. In fact, Dickens’s brutally honest portrayal of the workhouse, as well as the world of thieves, murderers, and prostitutes to which Oliver falls victim, had a lasting effect on future writers and the subject matter they were willing to tackle (House vii). Dickens was able to achieve this effect because he was personally familiar with the places and institutions about which he wrote. In his capacity as journalist, he had visited many workhouses and prisons, including the infamous Newgate prison, which figures prominently in Oliver Twist. He recounts this latter experience in the sobering sketch, “A Visit to Newgate”, in his Sketches by Boz. Dickens was also intimately familiar with the foulest slums of London, places like St. Giles, Saffron Hill, Whitechapel (later of Jack the Ripper notoriety), Rotherhite, Bethnal Green, and the infamous Seven Dials (Johnson 277). He was famous for his long perambulations – sometimes twenty or thirty miles a day – and his peripatetic wanderings often took him through the very heart of some of the worst, most degraded neighborhoods. The area he describes as Jacob’s Island in the novel, where Fagin and his gang dwell, was patterned after a neighborhood not far from Dickens’s home at the time (Smiley 14). Fagin, himself, was patterned after Ikey Solomon, a real-life fence and trainer of child pickpockets. Throughout these chapters, Dickens refuses to romanticize poverty and crime into the picaresque (Johnson 278). His aim was to shine the harsh light of reality on the London underclass in order to “educate” respectable, middle-class, sheltered Victorians who would otherwise ignore or remain blissfully unaware of such things. In the “Preface” to the novel, Dickens writes:
But as the stern truth … was a part of the purpose of this book, I did not, for these readers, abate one hole in the Dodger’s coat, or one scrap of curl-paper in Nancy’s disheveled hair. I had no faith in the delicacy which could not bear to look upon them. (Dickens xvi-xvii)
This is not to say that Dickens pulled no punches. After all, he wanted to keep his audience and he wanted them to hear his message. As Edgar Johnson puts it, Dickens wanted “to move the heart, not turn the stomach” (280). Thus, he does not record the profane oaths of the criminals, and does not dwell upon the details of prostitution, even though it is tacitly understood that Nancy is a part of that world.
That being said, there are, nevertheless, scenes in the novel which are truly horrifying and repulsive. The most famous of these is, of course, Sikes’s murder of Nancy in chapter XLVII. Scarcely less gruesome is Sikes’s own ironic death in chapter L. The relentless fury of the mob that pursues him and the sickening jolt of his death as he accidentally hangs himself while trying to escape across the rooftops, are images not soon forgotten by the reader. These are only the most extreme examples of the gritty realism which pervades the entire narrative.
It is interesting to note that it is chiefly the workhouse and the criminal slums which are portrayed in such grim detail. The “good” characters in the book (Mr. Brownlow and the Maylies) seem to live in almost impossibly idyllic worlds, which is often cited, not without justification, as one of the flaws in the story. One can, nevertheless, discern Dickens’s intent. First, this was part of the general technique of jarring contrasts, mentioned earlier, which was calculated to grab the reader’s attention. Second, it was Dickens’s belief that the ill-treatment and starvation whereby paupers were treated as criminals inevitably led to vice and criminality (Johnson 274). The world of the workhouse and the world of crime were, thus, inextricably linked in his social philosophy: the one was a cause of the other. The New Poor Law does not decrease pauperism; it increases crime. This is really the core lesson of the novel, so it makes sense that these two worlds would be portrayed with the greatest vividness – Dickens wanted them to be linked in the reader’s mind.
Then, there are the villains – the wonderfully drawn, simultaneously horrifying and fascinating villains who steal the show and are a principal source of Oliver Twist‘s brilliance. Few writers have ever been able to match Dickens’s ability to create colorful and riveting bad guys, and few novels have a more colorful cast of scoundrels than Oliver Twist. Fagin, Sikes, The Artful Dodger, Charley Bates and Noah Claypole all deserve a high place in the pantheon of literary malefactors. Angus Wilson rightly notes that each character is superb as an individual, and, together, they are superb as a gang (129). What makes these characters so great, especially at conveying Dickens’ social message about poverty and the Poor Law? More than anything else, it is the sympathy with which they are treated. Dickens’s childhood experiences (e.g., his father ending up in debtor’s prison, Dickens being sent to work in Warren’s blacking factory at age 12, etc.) instilled in him an ability to identify and empathize with social outcasts. As he writes about Fagin and the others, one gets the feeling that, in the back of his mind, he is thinking, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” The thieves are never despised as human beings, even though the things they do are despicable. Dickens clearly views them as victims, just as much as they are criminals: they are just such creatures as might be created by the cold and inhumane Poor Law.
Who cannot sympathize with Fagin at his trial, when he anxiously scans the faces of the crowd, desperate for a kind look or shred of hope, but “in no one face – not even among the women, of whom there were many there – could he read the faintest sympathy for himself, or any feeling but one of all-absorbing interest that he should be condemned” (Dickens 404)? Who can remain unmoved by the pitiable spectacle of the half-mad Fagin in the condemned cell (chapter LII)? Even the brutal Sikes has his tender moments toward Nancy. The Dodger and Charley Bates are perfect examples of what children like Oliver, cast away by society and the Poor Law, are in danger of becoming. They are merely trying to survive in a world that has branded them, stubbornly refusing to die to satisfy the Malthusian desire for population reduction.
It has been said by many critics of Oliver Twist, that one of the great weaknesses of the novel is Dickens’s lackluster delineation of the respectable, “good” characters. Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow are good, kind, and forgiving, even beyond the bounds of reason or common sense. Moreover, as an individual, Oliver – the title character – is perhaps the least interesting and most improbable figure in the book. Humphrey House points out that if Dickens’s “purpose were to show that the starvation and cruel ill-treatment of children in baby farms and workhouses produced ghastly effects on their characters and in society, then Oliver should have turned out a monster” (viii-ix), which, of course, does not happen. From beginning to end, Oliver is a very paragon of innocence and virtue, with a personality so passive and bland that the reader invariably enjoys reading the passages about the thieves much more than those about Oliver. There are several possible reasons for this. The first, and most obvious, is that, since Dickens’s main focus was on calling attention to a great social evil, he took much greater pains to portray the evil than he did the good. Happy places and good characters serve merely as foils to the oppressive places and wicked people. It is the same principle of contrast that runs throughout the entire novel.
Second, Oliver remains something of a blank slate in order that the reader might project those feelings onto him which Dickens was trying to elicit. Dickens wants people to be able to see themselves in Oliver and realize that only the chance circumstances of birth separate their comfortable lives from Oliver’s horrible predicament. To the extent that the boy’s character becomes more rounded and individualized, one becomes less and less able to make this sort of emotional projection onto him.
Finally, there is a great deal of truth in the suggestion that Dickens was working through some of his own painful childhood issues in this novel. The events of his childhood led him to identify with sensitive children beset by a hostile and indifferent world (Kaplan 95). Thus, Mr. Brownlow becomes the ideal father and Mrs. Maylie the ideal mother figure that Dickens never had. Rose is clearly an idealized image of his beloved sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, who had died in Dickens’s arms – a trauma from which he never fully recovered. This inner psychological struggle gives Dickens’s writing an emotional immediacy that might have been lacking had he been a more dispassionate observer. Far from marring the impact of the story, therefore, the handling of the “good” characters only serves to enhance it.
Finally, mention must be made of Charles Dickens’s extraordinary skill in creating an atmosphere that pervades an entire novel and gives it its dominant mood. The dark, oppressive, lurid atmosphere of Oliver Twist is the very epitome of the eponymous adjective, “Dickensian.” Three important, overarching metaphors and motifs are used to impart a sense of unity to the novel and to create its nightmarish effect: incarceration, darkness, and suffocation (Miller 31-33). Throughout most of the novel, Oliver finds himself confined or incarcerated in one way or another – from the baby farm and the workhouse, to Fagin’s lair, Oliver’s life is little better than that of a convict. Even at kindly Mr. Brownlow’s, he spends most of his time confined to bed with an illness, and when he is finally free from that confinement, he promptly falls back into Fagin’s inescapable clutches. The Maylies keep him under close guard for fear of some harm coming to him. All of this is, of course, Dickens’s commentary on how society, under the New Poor Law, treats paupers like criminals.
Darkness also permeates the world of Oliver Twist. Almost none of the important actions of the plot take place in the light of day; they occur at night, in the dark and dingy workhouse, in Fagin’s sunless den, or in the dismal Three Cripples. The overall effect is one of blackness constantly threatening to engulf Oliver, which symbolizes the thieves’ efforts to blacken Oliver’s soul by turning him into a criminal. This can be seen as a parallel to Dickens’s view that the discarded and outcast of society are in very real danger of being caught up in the darkness of crime and vice.
The suffocation motif is established right at the outset, when the parish surgeon has “considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration” (Dickens 1). It continues in the close, stifling atmosphere of the thieves’ den and, perhaps most importantly, in the ever-present danger of ignominious death by hanging. The latter might well have been Oliver’s fate had Fagin succeeded in making him a criminal (Miller 31). The implication here is that if society does not take care of its poor, it condemns them to a life that will end on the gallows. These three motifs give the novel a strong feeling of claustrophobia, of a nightmarish world closing in on Oliver, who has few means of escape. This symbolizes the plight of the poor under the 1834 law.
Is Oliver Twist the perfect novel? One could hardly make such a claim. Is it flawed? There can be no doubt of that; it was, after all, Dickens’s first attempt at a novel proper. Pickwick Papers was too picaresque and episodic and the narrative did not form a unified whole. Coming out, as it did, in the same year Queen Victoria ascended to the throne, one could even make the case that Oliver Twist was the first Victorian novel, but that is an argument for another time. Do its flaws impair its greatness and its effectiveness as social satire? The answer here must be a resounding no. The brilliant use of irony, the intense and dark realism, the vivid and absolutely unforgettable villains, and the inimitably Dickensian atmosphere – any one of these factors alone would be enough to secure a place for the novel in the canon. The whole, however, is much greater than the sum of its parts. Taken as a whole, Oliver Twist is one of the most emotionally potent and devastating social satires in the English language. Even modern readers who have never heard of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 hear Dickens’s message loudly and clearly. After almost 170 years, the story of the neglected parish orphan who plaintively asked for more has lost none of its power to move. Those critics who complain about the highly contrived plot, wherein all the loose ends are neatly tied up by a preposterous series of deus-ex-machina coincidences (all the principal, surviving characters turn out to be related either by birth or by marriage) are missing the point entirely. This is not a plot-driven novel. It is more like a parable in the sense that its driving force is its moral (the lesson Dickens wants society to learn). Jane Smiley expresses it well when she describes Dickens as having an “ecological understanding” of poverty and other social ills (14), meaning that Dickens views everything and everyone in society as connected: rich and poor, educated and ignorant, high and low, are artificial social boundaries. Dickens understood that the evils that afflict one group ultimately have an impact upon the entire community. Like the characters in the novel, we are all connected. Neglect and mistreatment of the poor will produce a bitter harvest of crime and disease, which are no respecters of social distinctions. Dickens saw the New Poor Law as sowing the seeds of that bitter harvest and depicted both sowing and reaping, in all their horror, in Oliver Twist. He summed up his attitude toward a legal system that would allow this to happen in the immortal words of Mr. Bumble: “The law is a ass – a idiot … and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience” (399). Sadly, Dickens was not to see the demise of the asinine law within his lifetime.
Works Cited
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