Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist
OLIVER TWIST
When Oliver Twist was first published in 1838, it was not fashionable to write novels that showed life in all its miserable reality. But Dickens wanted to shock his readers. He wanted to show criminals as they really were, and to reveal all the horrors and violence that hid in the narrow, dirty backstreets of London. So he gives us the evil Fagin, the brutal Bill Sikes, and a crowd of thieves and robbers, who lie and cheat and steal, and live in fear of prison or the hangman’s rope around their necks.
Dickens also had another purpose. He wanted to show that goodness can survive through every kind of hardship. So he gives us little Oliver Twist – an orphan thrown into a world of poverty and crime, starved and beaten and unloved. He gives us Nancy – poor, miserable, unhappy Nancy, who struggles to stay loyal in a cruel world.
And, as in all the best stories, goodness triumphs over evil in the end.
PEOPLE IN THIS STORY
Oliver Twist
Mrs Mann, in charge of the ‘baby farm’
Mr Bumble, the beadle
Mrs Corney, a widow, in charge of the workhouse
Old Sally, a woman in the workhouse
Mr Sowerberry, an undertaker
Mrs Sowerberry, his wife
Charlotte, the Sowerberrys’ servant
Noah Claypole, a charity-boy
Fagin
The Artful Dodger, one of Fagin’s boys
Charley Bates, another of Fagin’s boys
Bill Sikes, a robber
Nancy, Bill Sikes’ girl
Monks, a mysterious stranger
Mr Brownlow, an old gentleman
Mrs Bedwin, Mr Brownlow’s housekeeper
Mr Grimwig, an old friend of Mr Brownlow’s
Mrs Maylie, a kind lady
Harry Maylie, her son
Rose Maylie, her niece
Dr Losberne, a friend of the Maylies’
1
Oliver’s early life
Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse, and when he arrived in this hard world, it was very doubtful whether he would live beyond the first three minutes. He lay on a hard little bed and struggled to start breathing.
Oliver fought his first battle without much assistance from the two people present at his birth. One was an old woman, who was nearly always drunk, and the other was a busy local doctor, who was not paid enough to be very interested in Oliver’s survival. After all, death was a common event in the workhouse, where only the poor and homeless lived.
However, Oliver managed to draw his first breath, and then announced his arrival to the rest of the workhouse by crying loudly. His mother raised her pale young face from the pillow and whispered, ‘Let me see the child, and die.’
The doctor turned away from the fire, where he had been warming his hands. ‘You must not talk about dying yet,’ he said to her kindly. He gave her the child to hold. Lovingly, she kissed the baby on its forehead with her cold white lips, then stared wildly around the room, fell back – and died.
‘Poor dear!’ said the nurse, hurriedly putting a green glass bottle back in the pocket of her long skirt.
The doctor began to put on his coat. ‘The baby is weak and will probably have difficulties,’ he said. ‘If so, give it a little milk to keep it quiet.’ Then he looked at the dead woman. ‘The mother was a good-looking girl. Where did she come from?’
‘She was brought here last night,’ replied the old woman. ‘She was found lying in the street. She’d walked some distance, judging by her shoes, which were worn to pieces. Where she came from, where she was going to, or what her name was, nobody knows.’
The doctor lifted the girl’s left hand. ‘The old story,’ he said sadly, shaking his head. ‘No wedding ring, I see. Ah! Good night.’
And so Oliver was left with only the drunken nurse. Without clothes, under his first blanket, he could have been the child of a king or a beggar. But when the woman dressed him later in rough cotton clothes, yellow with age, he looked exactly what he was – an orphan in a workhouse, ready for a life of misery, hunger, and neglect.
Oliver cried loudly. If he could have known that he was a workhouse
