Anna's review
Oliver Twist (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens
Social Darwinism in action!
Oliver is born poor in the workhouse, and orphaned at birth.
Rasied in digusting conditions - in a home for babies where they are all neglected, then to the workhouse, and farmed out as an apprentice after the infamous 'Can I have some more?' incident.
Scarpers off to London, falls in with a bad crowd - the charismatic Artful Dodger, and Fagin, who is more commonly refered to by Dickens as simply 'The Jew'. Has various adventures, throughout which he is repeatedly saved by well-meaning middle-class people.
From Dicken's account of Oliver's story, you'd get the impression that the middle classes in Victorian London were constantly taking bedraggled urchins into their nice drawing roomed houses and nursing them bad to health.
Anyway, throughout all his troubles and turmoils, Oliver stays resolutely opposed to any kind of theft or general naughtiness on the part of people like Fagin's boys.
You'd think, having been brought up in an abysmal workho...more
Oliver is born poor in the workhouse, and orphaned at birth.
Rasied in digusting conditions - in a home for babies where they are all neglected, then to the workhouse, and farmed out as an apprentice after the infamous 'Can I have some more?' incident.
Scarpers off to London, falls in with a bad crowd - the charismatic Artful Dodger, and Fagin, who is more commonly refered to by Dickens as simply 'The Jew'. Has various adventures, throughout which he is repeatedly saved by well-meaning middle-class people.
From Dicken's account of Oliver's story, you'd get the impression that the middle classes in Victorian London were constantly taking bedraggled urchins into their nice drawing roomed houses and nursing them bad to health.
Anyway, throughout all his troubles and turmoils, Oliver stays resolutely opposed to any kind of theft or general naughtiness on the part of people like Fagin's boys.
You'd think, having been brought up in an abysmal workho...more
