so there was an element of truth, but Dickens’ boiled them down to amplify the traits he was most interested in and remove the traits superfluous to literary requirements. In effect, Dickens’ Victorian world is a cartoon, where the more mundane, mediocre and prosaic details serve only as a neutral backdrop, while the colourful characters are allowed to distract the attention.
It can be no coincidence that Dickens himself was an accomplished performer. He was the William Shakespeare of the Victorian age, both writing and taking to the stage as a storyteller. This makes it easy to understand why his characters had such pronounced identities, because Dickens would mentally assume different roles whilst story telling, both on paper and when treading the boards.
As any parent or teacher will attest, it is quite necessary to exaggerate characters with gestures and voices while story telling to capture the imagination of the audience and leave no confusion about who is who. This is exactly what Dickens was doing, so that his version of the Victorian world became one of overblown polarity: villains and do-gooders, the devout and the morally fallen, the wealthy and the poor, the beautiful and the ugly, the selfish and the selfless. Those who fall ‘somewhere between’ truly are the silent majority in Dickensian Britain.
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER 2 Treats of Oliver Twist’s growth, education, and board
CHAPTER 4 Oliver, being offered another place, makes his first entry into public life
CHAPTER 6 Oliver, being goaded by the taunts of Noah, rouses into action, and rather astonishes him
CHAPTER 7 Oliver continues refractory
CHAPTER 8 Oliver walks to London. He encounters on the road a strange sort of young gentleman
CHAPTER 15 Showing how very fond of Oliver Twist, the merry old Jew and Miss Nancy were
CHAPTER 16 Relates what became of Oliver Twist, after he had been claimed by Nancy
CHAPTER 18 How Oliver passed his time in the improving society of his reputable friends
CHAPTER 19 In which a notable plan is discussed and determined on
CHAPTER 20 Wherein Oliver is delivered over to Mr. William Sikes
CHAPTER 25 Wherein this history reverts to Mr. Fagin and company
CHAPTER 28 Looks after Oliver, and proceeds with his adventures
CHAPTER 29 Has an introductory account of the inmates of the house, to which Oliver resorted
