Oliver Twist Page 0,2

such as Limbkins, an assault on the order of this society, a hanging offense. We can read the rest of the novel in terms of that prediction. The book’s about the noose around the neck.

Oliver Twist contains elements to be found in most of Dickens’ other novels. It concerns an innocent child who is menaced by a cruel world. There is an element of fairy tale—magic changes us, sometimes in terrifying ways—and there is a fairy godmother figure (in this case, Mr. Brownlow, abetted by Mr. Grimwig); lovely motherly women (Rose Maylie, say) of the purest heart will comfort the hero, who is pursued by nightmare forces (Sikes and Fagin); there will be violence, often murder, and Dickens’ prose generally becomes incandescent as the social contract is violated. In Oliver Twist, as Dickens examines the principle of goodness, he balances his scrutiny with Nancy, who is good but fallen, and with characters such as Fagin or Bill Sikes, whose absolute evil matches Oliver’s and Rose Maylie’s absolute good. Another important Dickensian element in the novel is the author’s anger: he detested the venality, the blindness, and the viciousness of his great and wealthy nation. His public officials may wear white waistcoats, but they are as covered with pitch as, say, Fagin, whom Dickens renders repulsive.

In preparing Oliver Twist for the Charles Dickens Edition of 1867, Dickens changed most uses of the phrase “the JEW” to “he” or “Fagin.” He did so partly in response to a letter from Mrs. Eliza Davis, who, with her husband, had purchased Tavi stock House, Dickens’ home in London. Mrs. Davis had written Dickens saying that his depiction of Fagin encouraged “a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew.” Dickens had replied that “Fagin in Oliver Twist is a Jew, because it unfortunately was true of the time to which that story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew.... I have no feeling towards the Jewish people but a friendly one. I always speak well of them, whether in public, or in private....” But of course he did not, and, in writing Fagin, he does not. And because he knew it, one suspects, he made the changes in the edition of 1867; in writing his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend (1865), he created a Jewish character named Riah, who is possessed of great humanity and kindness, and who is victimized by a Christian moneylender.

But Fagin is not only a Jew seen through the lens of bigotry and stereotype; he is Dickens’ way of setting absolute evil against Oliver’s absolute good. Oliver first sees Fagin with a fork in his hand before a fire: he is a childish portrait of the Devil, but Oliver sees him only as a kind and helpful man; it is we who see him as satanic. The boy’s vision of the world assumes that it is good, in spite of the harm it has done him; ours, as we dwell on the harm, does not. It is important, here, to consider how Dickens manipulates this novel’s point of view—the way a character perceives and reports his environment. Because Oliver is a principle of good, and not very much of an interesting person—except in his victimhood, which Dickens takes personally—Dickens does not keep his vision focused on Oliver’s thoughts and feelings. They are rather basic. In chapter V, when he is dealing with Sowerberry the undertaker, Oliver is told, concerning funerals—remember: this is a book about mortality—that “ ‘you’ll get used to it.... Nothing when you are used to it, my boy.’ ” Oliver’s response is to wonder “Whether it had taken a very long time to get Mr. Sowerberry used to it.” This is not a fascinating analysis, and Dickens seems to be merely rounding off the chapter that this colloquoy concludes. But we, through Dickens’ imagery, have witnessed the grief of the impoverished husband who could not help to save the woman he loved; we have seen the attendants throw a can of cold water over him after he faints, and we have seen him locked—consider how many doors and gates are locked and broken through in this novel of imprisonment—out of the churchyard. The reader is directed to social callousness, and Oliver, said to be “thinking over all he had seen and heard”—those are the chapter’s concluding words—walks away from us with those thoughts.

What interests Dickens more than Oliver’s routine thinking is social cruelty, violence, and inner darkness. When they impinge on Oliver’s mind, as