Oliver Twist is a witty and complex work that justly critiques the new Poor Law of 1834 and the workhouses that spread throughout Victorian England as a result. It is an important novel that excellently comments on the atrocious and corrupt law—until the end, when Dickens contradicts several subtle elements of the text for the sake of narrative. In the struggle between writing a good story and attempting to portray a realistic message, the overall meaning of the book fails to make an impact as the more nuanced elements of this insightful social commentary get lost as the novel turns into a fairytale-esque good versus evil story. The ending of Oliver Twist is unsatisfactory because narrative justice is distributed evenly while human justice is not, which creates an unstable contradiction.
Oliver Twist is a novel, and to make the story satisfying, Dickens ensures that the characters receive the narrative justice they are expected to be entitled to. One major example of this is within the protagonist’s story. Oliver is not a truly convincing character within this world of stark realism, and “Consequently, he remains passive through most of the novel and emerges as a fragile symbol of innocence rather than a believable character. Critics have generally maintained that Dickens’s portrayal of Oliver is a major defect of the work. On a realistic level, Oliver’s character is an artistic failure” (West). While it is tempting to believe that this is simply an oversight, Oliver’s lack of personality actually serves a larger purpose within the work. A main character who is portrayed as so positively good and morally pure (and who has virtually no other defining characteristics), makes audiences feel sympathy for him and want him to succeed. This pulls the reader along, as they eagerly await the ending that the young child deserves. The reason Oliver deserves his ending is due to predestination, which is an idea that is infused in this novel as a whole, and it is made extraordinarily clear for each of the characters. Fagin is another character that very cleanly gets an ending that is expected for a villain, as he has been predestined for this path. As he is positioned alone in his cell on his last night alive, the author states “It was not until the night of this last awful day, that a withering sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than the dim probability of dying so soon” (Dickens, 430). Fagin is portrayed as so positively and typically evil that it is no surprise to the reader that he receives this kind of ending. Fagin is an opposite to Oliver in practically every way. This conclusion is satisfying because there is so much finality to it, even though it is very simple—Oliver gets a happy ending and Fagin does not. Nancy’s narrative is somewhat of a complicated situation, as she does get her narrative justice due to the fact that she is the reason that Bill Sikes dies, though of course she never gets to see this, because he is the one who kills her. However, in the text, it is stated that “...the murderer, looking behind him on the roof, threw his arms above his head, and uttered a yell of terror. ‘The eyes again!’ he cried in an unearthly screech. Staggering as if struck by lightning, he lost his balance and tumbled over the parapet. The noose was on his neck” (Dickens, 412). Nancy’s eyes have been haunting Sikes ever since her death. In this climactic moment, Nancy torments Sikes one last time, and it is the image of her eyes that causes his end. The resolution of Nancy’s and Sikes’s endings are satisfying in a novelistic sense because Nancy gets some semblance of revenge—a death for a death. Comprehensively, Dickens makes the reader justly impassioned, but later forgoes that acrimony for the sake of a theatrical saccharine ending to smooth over any unpleasantness that the reader may have experienced.
Most of the main characters get human justice as well as narrative justice. Oliver and the rest of the virtuous middle-class characters who are protected by their morality get their idyllic endings, whereas the condemnation of the morally bad Fagin and Sikes is fulfilled. However, there are some notable exceptions to this, and it is these exceptions that convolute the overall message of the novel. One character who complicates Dickens’s clear-cut narrative is Charles Bates. It is said that he “...fell into a train of reflection whether an honest life was not, after all, the best…He struggled hard, and suffered much, for some time; but, having a contented disposition, and a good purpose, succeeded in the end…” (Dickens, 438-439). Here, an accurate reflection of human justice in the real world is sacrificed for the story. Because Bates is placed in the camp of “good” characters, he receives narrative justice. Be that as it may, realism is pushed to the wayside as Bates magically is able to move up in society, despite the fact that, in reality, this was an extraordinarily difficult operation. The backwards nature of the workhouses and the new Poor Law resulted in many people in the lower class preferring to simply die in the streets, as every obstacle was in their way. It is a disagreement among the text that Bates is able to improve his circumstances with just a cheery attitude. Another character who does not receive any human justice is Nancy. She is posited as morally good, as she exhibits sisterly protection over Oliver, and this is shown when she speaks to Rose Maylie, and says, “‘You would serve me best…if you could take my life at once; for I have felt more grief to think of what I am, tonight, than I ever did before, and it would be something not to die in the hell in which I have lived. God bless you, sweet lady, and send as much happiness on your head as I have brought shame on mine!’” (Dickens, 327). Despite all of Nancy’s efforts, she never receives any real justice. While Oliver may never be impacted by his circumstances, Nancy is. Nancy is a realistic character, as even though she is morally good, her environment has corrupted her. Perhaps it has not corrupted her good heart, but has turned her into the criminal character she is. Herein lies an inconsistency, as Nancy is not entitled to the happy ending the other morally good characters are. Because Nancy is not blessed with an inheritance, she is not allowed the social mobility that is allotted to Oliver. In regards to Oliver’s narrative journey and how he is able to escape his circumstances, it is interesting to note that “...[Dickens’s] remedy for the evils caused by the system of poor laws and factory acts was, for the most part, private benevolence” (Milford). Oliver’s ascension is convenient for the narrative, as his origins are discovered and he is able to reclaim his birthright. In a way, this does not accurately reflect a realistic sense of human justice. This astute report on a neglected area of society is downplayed by the solution to the protagonist’s troubles being simply denied his inheritance. While narrative justice is meted out evenly, human justice is not, and this brings up an intriguing disparity in the text.
The narrative is at war with the realism that Dickens first introduces and continuously aims to portray. One critic suggests that “A passive hero who is defined less by his actions than by his family connections (and thus his place within a status hierarchy), Oliver stands apart from [other characters], occupying a generically different idiom (melodrama, not realism) than the [characters] who surround him” (Zlotnick). This emphasizes how there is a shaky inconsistency at work here, as Oliver is somehow exempt from the realist elements of the world. His personhood is erased as the story is prioritized. All of the vivid elements that expose the true horrors of the impact of the new Poor Law are undermined by Oliver’s fairytale journey into bucolic middle class life in the company of a doctor and a lawyer. Another critic points out that “...there is a connection between the protagonist’s immunity from his environment and the fact that the middle class and criminal realms never seem to influence or interpenetrate each other” (Baldridge). Throughout the novel, Dickens critiques the hypocrisy of the upper class and emphasizes the corruption that lies therein. Despite this, the middle class receives none of this treatment. Every middle class character is depicted as morally perfect, and Oliver fits into this because he is revealed to be middle class as well. This makes for a picturesque and fairytale view of domestic Victorian life. This combined with Oliver’s lack of personhood highlights how—whether intentional or not—only “good” people deserve to move up in society. Oliver is incorruptible because his inheritance and his morality protect him from it, and therefore he is “allowed” to move up in the social hierarchy and get the happy ending he is owed. There is once again a problem with Nancy. When speaking to Rose, she says “‘Thank Heaven…that you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and drunkenness, and—and—something worse than all—as I have been from my cradle’” (Dickens, 323). Here, there is a discrepancy between Dickens’s claim that morality is predetermined and Nancy’s insistence that her environment has shaped her. Nancy’s criminal environment is a counterpoint to predestination. This combined with the fact that she receives an unequal amount of justice obscures the clarity of the novel’s overall message. The environments of this world are for the narrative: the “good” middle class characters and the spaces they inhabit are in direct opposition to the lower world of the “bad” criminals, and this includes “good” characters like Nancy. Through Oliver’s existence in narrative melodrama, the clear delineation between environments, and Nancy’s divergence, several disparities arise.
A majority of the pages of Oliver Twist are an excellent portrayal of the effects of the new Poor Law and the harsh realities of the workhouses in Dickens’s time. This work still made a significant impact, and it is still important to read in contemporary settings, but the ending leaves a lingering sense of inadequacy due to its contradictory nature. It is certainly challenging to compose a compelling story while still retaining the more realistic and poignant elements of this social commentary and representing the brutal reality of the lower class in Victorian England. By selecting the vessel of a novel, Dickens had a reckoning in the form of attempting the balance between melodrama and realism, narrative and accuracy. This is explicated through the excessively clear endings for the morally good and bad characters, the inconsistencies with the characters of Bates and Nancy, and the unstable realism. Unfortunately, Oliver Twist ultimately fails to live up to its full potential as a great novel due to the fact that it is self-contradictory and cannot solve the puzzle of narrative versus human justice.
Works Cited
- Baldridge, Cates. “The Instabilities of Inheritance in ‘Oliver Twist.’” Studies in the Novel, vol. 25, no. 2, 1993, pp. 184–95. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29532934. Accessed 3-8 Oct. 2024.
- Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Oxford World’s Classics, 1846.
- Milford, Ruth. “A Study of the Treatment of Poverty in Dickens’s Novels.” Order No. TM21522. The University of Chicago, 1929. United States -- Illinois: ProQuest. Web. Accessed 6-8 Oct. 2024.
- West, Nancy M. “Order in Disorder: Surrealism and ‘Oliver Twist.’” South Atlantic Review, May, 1989, Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 41-58. South Atlantic Modern Language Association, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3200550. Accessed 5-8 Oct. 2024.
- Zlotnick, Susan. “‘The Law’s A Bachelor’: Oliver Twist, Bastardy, and the New Poor Law.” Victorian Literature and Culture. 2006; 34 (1): 131-146. Cambridge University Press, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/abs/laws-a-bachelor-oliver-twist-bastardy-and-the-new-poor-law/94DE97142DD2909C2FC3C9C3BE8E7D80. Accessed 6-7 Oct. 2024.
