Poverty and Social Class in “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens.
In the entire novel, Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens rotates in poverty and social classes as the English town’s main problems. Dickens uses his personal story to build a plot that indicates a poor person’s actual struggles in the Victorian era. With characters from a poor background like Oliver, Fagin, Bill, and Nancy, the actual image is created on how the poor struggles with life. Mr. Brownlow, the police officers, and the shopkeeper represent the high class. This essay will explain how social levels and poverty affect people’s lives, change their character, and limit them from a good experience.
The social classes are connected in different ways. The town’s population is high; hence, the officers are kept occupied by pickpockets while the courts are full of cases waiting to be convicted (Dianne, 23-44). The entrepreneurs employ those who ask for low payments while the poor feed themselves by stealing from the rich. In this society moving from one social class to another was viewed as a crime, so the rich continued to be rich while the poor continued to below. In a situation where a rich marries from a low-income family, getting poor is higher than getting richer.
The society is portrayed as unfeeling and with molly unstable by the author. Instead of the community helping the unfortunate to at least feed themselves, they take advantage of mistreating them and not be concerned. For instance, the undertaker could have taken care of Oliver, feed him well, take him to school, and adopt him as his child. Instead, he mistreats him and provides him with the dog’s feeds and is forced to sleep with coffins. He carries the blame of others when the undertaker is annoyed. In an incident where the undertaker’s wife was insulted, he beats Oliver without listening to what he had to say.
Charles Dickens makes it look like the universe punishes Oliver for being poor and being and being an orphan. Nothing seems to work according to his favor despite having virtues; there is no chance to nurture themselves. Most of the children are under child labor in the novel. If they do not die on farms, they end up in a workhouse, where they starve for food and poverty. From Artful Dodger, we see that the poor got few works to choose that are clean and becoming an illegitimate child equivalent to slavery. Oliver finds himself improving his life through the few who considered his inborn goodness.
In this town escaping from poverty or forgetting it was not possible. The poor are seen as villains, and Dickens aims to show how dehumanized the poor are made to look like is portrayed well through the character Oliver. As a social criticizer to get irritated by evil Dickens, he condemns blood-shedding, ravages, imprisonment without justices. The poor children are not fed enough. For instance, when Oliver fights with Claypole, Bumble blames the coffin maker’s wife for providing Oliver a lot hence gaining energy to fight. Those words give two ideas about the poor and the orphans. First, sentiment validates the verdict to put the orphans in the farms and others in the workhouse. The willful logic keeps an eye on them unless oppressed people stay weak and uprising their conditions. Secondarily the rationalization wishes to put the poor people in the same situation for the rest of their life to keep taking advantage of them. If poor people lack the energy and proper support, they will remain the same, and under the heartless rich people.
As a result of poverty in the town of London, evil is encountered every day. Most of the reasons that resulted in crime included hunger, being homeless, and also illiteracy. All these crimes resulted in imprisonment, and at times, practices injustice. The suffering of society connects to fate, and the rich had freedom since they could buy it. Being in this town symbolizes being in person while being in the countryside is like being free from prison. Hate, greed, ravage are seen in the novel, but later loved dominates at the end. The evil people end up as sufferers of their wrongdoings while the noble characters finally live a joyful life.
Oliver Twist is the main character in the novel. From birth, it’s like fate is less. He is an orphan through her mother’s death. He is kept low by social life. He undergoes a lot of struggle in the orphanage, and the anther uses him to critic how people treated the poor in that era. The poor in the Victorian era have no rights and do not seem human as we witness what happens to Oliver (Fransiska 12-24). Despite him being young, naïve, and innocent, society takes advantage of him. The orphanage manager, where he was supposed to be safe, trades them to the rich people where they end up suffering even more.
As a significant problem in the Victorian era, crime is portrayed well in the novel by Dickens using Fagin, a pickpocket’s gangster leader. He befriended the homeless young people and trained them on how to pickpocket from people in the streets. He later buys the items from his trainees at a low price and sells them for a profit. Doing this prevents him from being caught by the law and suffers the consequences. Fagin is a transparent image of stereotype from Dickens’s idea.
Oliver’s being an orphan contributes to his life struggles poverty. If he was born in a normal situation with both parents, perhaps he could have attended school and become a successful individual. His low morals are contributed by a lack of parents who could have taught him the difference between good and evil. He grows up under the caretakers who are not concerned about him, and that why he cannot respond to the gangsters who earn a living through pickpocketing.
Poor leadership has also contributed to high levels of poverty in the novel. Dickens is angry with the reactions of the government towards poverty. While the poor are starving and others turning to crime to feed themselves, the government, on the other side, is busy implementing new laws, for instance, the New Poor Law. The Old Poor Laws stated that in the case of an illegitimate child and the mother can identify the father; there will be a forced marriage. This brought shame instead of happiness to the parties involved, especially the men since it is their responsibility to avoid street children’s families. In Oliver’s case, if the government had intervened to get his parental documents, Oliver could have been on a safer side.
Poverty has resulted in mistaken identity; most of the lower class characters do not understand their originality. For instance, Oliver does not know his origin, either his real name, and society gives him a name that twists his life. The world around him changes things for him, and ends up in troubles, facing consequences that he did not deserve. The situation is made challenging to distinguish between Oliver, the innocent boy, and the twisted boy the society created. Oliver is not the only one who does not know his origin, but also the gagster was full of kids who wished to know their roots. Later we find out that Bumbles was hiding Oliver’s identity from him all that long.
Prostitution was another thing pushed by poverty. Nancy, Bills’ girlfriend, was a whore. It was not out of self-will but the forces of poverty. She is a lady of ethics, and it is evidential when she intervenes in the fight between Oliver and Bill Sikes. Her chatter is portrayed as noble despite being in crime and prostitution. We witness her being killed by his boyfriend after protecting Oliver from him after Monk’s plan.
Charles Dickens uses the three social classes to describe people’s nature in the victoria era and how they treated humanity from different social levels. The social groups divide people from the rich, middle, and inferior. Due to these classes, human beings are treated unequally, and they face injustice for not belonging to a certain level. The lower class individuals are the primary victims, and because the poor have no vice, they can do nothing about it. Poor people find themselves involved in dirty actions like prostitution and crime to earn a living. From the sociology of Literature, poverty, public stratification, and youth toils are social injustices found in Dickens’ works and reflect what happens in real life during that era. The following are the social classes, how interconnected they are, and how they affect people’s life differently.
To start with, the upper class involved individuals who owned even natural assets, power, and wealth in general. They were lucky because they owned the vast lands and were still free from taxes since they came from noble families (Yazdan 644-650). People who belonged to this class used their power to mistreat the poor, and the worse of it all, the church was used to meet the poor’s oppression actions. An example of such an incident is when Oliver is traded from the orphanage to Mr. Sowerberry, the undertaker. He ends up suffering even wore that pushes him to escape.
The middle class was formed by farmers, shopkeepers, factory owners, entrepreneurs, among others. This class had few people, and they demonstrate care for poor people and also humbleness. They were not rich, but they were also not poor. They managed to feed themselves and afford a contented life in contrast to the poor who could not protect their name and remain with some cash. For example, the shopkeeper, Mr. Brownlow, helps Oliver to escape from Fagin. He also took him home after the court running, and Oliver was innocent. Mr. Brownlow goes to the extent of calling his doctor to came and treat him at home. When Oliver is arrested, he goes to clear him and takes him home again.
The majority represents the lower class level in the novel. The poor have a lower level of everything, including education, redundancy, and revenue, resulting in low social status. Dickens using Oliver Twist’s life among other children portrays how being poor in Victorian life brings suffering. Surprisingly the poor are taken advantage of by even their fellow low individuals. Oliver suffers in the orphanage’s hands, the rich, and still gets oppressed by the gangster who attempts to kill him. Later he gains wealth from his father’s inheritances, Dickens’s way to show that poverty is not permanent.
In conclusion, Dickens uses charters to demonstrate social classes and the truth associated with the different levels. He also portrays how society treats the needy individuals and the actual struggles of a poor person. He aims to ensure that the book readers see how other people struggle and practices equality for all humankind despite the difference in social classes. Dickens also critics the authority of the Victorian era for not practicing and encouraging humanity among the citizens. He also insists indirectly that the poor should be given chances to talk. He also creates a link to politics, Literature, band the social economy. The novel is recognized for stimulating social reforms creating public awareness to demolish poverty, denial of education, child toil, and prostitution.
Works Cited.
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Dickens hard times, bleak house and Oliver Twist”, Journal of Novel Applied Sciences,
(2014): 644-650.
Terry Wrigley. “Rethinking poverty and social class, the teacher response.” Social Justice
Re-examined: Dilemmas and Solutions for the classroom Teacher, (2012): 418-513.
Franciska Ririn Hastuti. Crimes in 19th century London in Charles Dickens’ Oliver
Twist,” Language circle: journal of language and Literature, (2019): 12-24.
Dianne F Sadoff.” Boz and beyond: Oliver Twist and Dickens Legacy.”,
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