Oliver Twist: Week 08 - Book 2: Chapters X - XIV

[Loretta]

Discuss below! (Eep, I'm a couple weeks behind. Sorry. Will catch up this week.)

[Robin P, Moderator]

Unfortunately, the nice, kind characters such as Rose are less interesting and less developed than the evil ones, or even some of the comic ones. As an actor, it would be more interesting to play the part of Fagin, Nancy or Mr Bumble than that of Rose or even Oliver.

[Zulfiya]

I believe it is true for all Dickens characters. If they are good, they are either passive like Oliver, or flat and plain like Rose.

But his 'bad guys and girls' are truly interesting - they are ominous, macabre, and devious. As for me, I personally like his nerds, geeks, and weirdos. And he created a whole authentic plethora of his dorks and goons.

[MadgeUK]

As I explained elsewhere, being good and passive was a way of survival for 'seen and not heard' children and for the poor and orphaned in particular (and there were thousands of orphans...). Their passivity was a necessary part of living in Victorian society. In a literary sense they are also a foil for the 'nerds, geeks and weirdos'. I therefore thnk they are 'less developed' because Dickens had good reason to make them so.

[Zulfiya]

MadgeUK wrote: "As I explained elsewhere, being good and passive was a way of survival for 'seen and not heard' children and for the poor and orphaned in particular (and there were thousands of orphans...). Their ..."


Let me put my two cents (pennies - we are discussing Dickens, after all.;-)) in our discussion about characters.
I do agree a foil is really necessary to understand characters and their relations better, but by 'geeks, nerds, weirdos, goons, and dorks'I mean characters like Mr. Grimwig (Olver Twist), Dick Swiveller (Old Curiosity Shop), Wilkins Micawber and his wife as well as Miss Mowcher (David Copperfield) to mention just a few. They are strange with bizarre habits and preposterous rhetoric, but never truly or intentionally devious and do not serve as foil characters.
On the other hand, David Copperfield is also an orphan , but he is definitely rebellious and self-reliant. Dickens is our cultural heritage and one of my all-time favorite writers, but it does not mean that there were no inconsistencies in his books, or that some of his characters are two-dimensional, in my humble opinion.

[MadgeUK]

David Copperfield is not an orphan - he was born in a good home, had a mother and a nurse but his father was dead, which is why his rich uncle [See following posts.] courts his mother. He was also Dickens' favourite character and thought to be modelled on himself so perhaps has the 'wordiness' of Dickens too. We meet him as a young man narrating his story so he is bound to seem more self reliant.

Oliver, on the other hand, is not just an orphan, he is a foundling whose mother and family are totally unknown to us until the end of the book. Having been sent to an evil baby farm, we first meet him as a young child consigned to a horrible workhouse run by horrible people. He then becomes an 'innocent abroad' when he is 'adopted' by Fagin and the older boys and, of course, mothered by Nancy. The other characteristic we see in Oliver throughout is his gentleness compared with the other boys and we come to realise later why this is so.

I do not see the characters as geeks, nerds etc. but as eccentrics in true British fashion. You can still meet people like this in England, particularly in the poorer parts of large cities. Every time I see a Dickens' film on TV I am afterwards struck by how many of these characters are around us and what a realistic 'portrait painter' Dickens was. Indeed, there are a couple such characters in my own family, and they abound in English pubs! Their rhetoric is the rhetoric of the Cockney Londoner or of Yorkshire and other counties where dialects are still strong. One of the best examples of this in English literature is the cockney Sam Weller, a favourite character of Victorian Londoners, whose like can still be found on market stalls in the East End.

[Janice]

I'm reading David Copperfield right now--I never remember reading where Mr Murdstone was David Copperfields uncle?

[MadgeUK]

Sorry Janice, you are right, Murdstone is not an uncle. I had him, erroneously, in my own mind as an uncle who became a stepfather.

[MadgeUK]

I think that Chapter I of Oliver Twist defines his character: He is born to a dying mother found by the roadside and taken to a foundling hospital. He cried 'lustily' at birth, was then wrapped in a used blanket, 'badged and ticketed...a parish child..to be cuffed and buffeted through the world - despised by all, and pitied by none'. 'Contriving to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food'...It cannot by expected that this system of farming would produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop [and] Oliver Twist's ninth birthday found him a pale, thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature and decidedly small in circumference. But nature or inheritance had implanted a good sturdy spirit in Oliver's breast' and he had rebelled by asking for more food, thereby incurring the baby-farmer's wrath, a rebellion later to be repeated. We also learn that not only was he born a nonentity, delivered by a 'Mrs Thingummy', brought up by 'the parish' but that his very name was 'inwented' by Mr Bumble, the parish Beadle. As he left the baby farm 'he burst into an agony of childish grief...Wretched as were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind, they were the only friends he had ever known; and a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world sank into the child's heart for the first time.'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_far...

http://www.cottontimes.co.uk/poorlawo...

When reading Dickens I always keep to the forefront of my mind that he is basing his fiction very much on fact. He was a crusading journalist, such as we see in the more responsible newspapers today, determined to expose the evils in his society, particularly those children and the poor. As a Hansard writer recording the daily outpourings of British MPs, he had at first sought to fire them with an enthusiasm for reform but finding that to no avail, he decided to use his pen in another way, becoming one of the most successful of the Victorian reformers.

[Zulfiya]

Janice wrote: "I'm reading David Copperfield right now--I never remember reading where Mr Murdstone was David Copperfields uncle?"

Janice, you are right. Mr. Murdstone is not David's uncle. David is a posthumous child, and his mother dies when he is 7 or 8. So he is an orphan, but coming from somewhat more sheltered and secure background.

Madge, thank you for your input. Our Oliver Twist discussion desperately was in the direst need of some vitality and fresh ideas.

[B. Lynwood]

--- New Join Introduction ----

I'm jumping into the Oliver Twist discussion a little late. I read about half of the book last year and haven't touched it since early January when life caught up with me. I'll pull out my book mark and see, but I do believe that I'm still ahead of the group.

Regardless, I'm about 80% of the way through Nickleby, and really want to finish that before December is up. Hopefully I'll be able to finish that one and still be in step with the group here for Oliver.

One thing that I always had trouble with was the monetary system. Below are Wikipedia.org links that helped out quite a bit when putting crowns and guineas in their proper place!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_st...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_st...

I hope that this helps!

[MadgeUK]

Thanks Zulfiya. Being a founder of RR, I am always there, lurking in the background but usually engaged with the main read:).

B.Lynwood: Guineas were still around when I was very young and I was always taught to count them as one (Sterling) pound plus one shilling, therefore when roughly calculating them they are just over one pound. In the 20C guineas became a 'posh' way of pricing something so that, say, a good hat shop would price in guineas and a cheap one would price in pounds:). It was, I think, a nostalgic link with the Victorian/Edwardian past. The habit died out post WWII.

I was paid half-a-crown a week pocket money during the war, crowns having been withdrawn by then. They were a large silver coin worth one-eighth of a pound. I well remember buying my first book - The Black Tulip - at the end of the war for half-a-crown. Paper was rationed so novels had not been published during the war.

Farthings were withdrawn just after the war and I regretted that because they were a very pretty little copper coin with an engraving of a Wren on the back and my grandfather used to give me farthings to save. The first bicycle was called a penny-farthing because it had a large front wheel, like a penny, and a small back wheel, like a farthing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny-fa...

[Zulfiya]

(Spoilers!) Oh, the mysterious fevers and agues of Dickens characters! Bleak House is full of them; two children die of the unspecified diseases in The Old Curiosity Shop, Dora and Mrs. Murdstone follow the same path in David Copperfield. And now Rosa has succumbed to some infection. To be honest, we live in the world of immunization and are not susceptible to many viral infections and take it for granted. In Victorian England that was, obviously, unheard of, and people succumbed to a number of diseases.
But do you think Dickens used it as a ploy to give a certain impetus to his plot line and expose Oliver again to the world of thieves and darkness?
BTW, we all know that Dickens has a brilliant skill to depict an urban landscape, but you do not often come across such a wonderful passage of peaceful serenity and tranquility. If the village had been beautiful at first it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad.

[B. Lynwood]

MadgeUK wrote: "B.Lynwood: Guineas were still around when I was very young and I wa..."

Madge: Fantastic! Having only been to the continent twice, and never to the UK, I have but little clue the denominations of days gone by. I bet decimalization was a little odd at first!

[MadgeUK]

It certainly was B and I still have not got my head around decimalised weights and measures! Good job there are conversion charts on the internet!:D

[MadgeUK]

Zulfiya: Dickens was certainly not exaggerating illness and diseases in Victorian London. Infant and child mortality rates were very high indeed, as were the rates for women dying in childbirth. Not only were all the infectious diseases around, which we now keep at bay by vaccination but there were frequent cholera outbreaks due to insanitary water. The Thames was called The Great Stink because of the sewage which flowed into it and that water was used for laundry, washing and sometimes drinking. This state of affairs did not improve until later in the century when Chadwick and others lobbied for better water and drainage systems - systems which are still in place today (but gradually being replaced).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/vi...

Again, Dickens was being a responsible journalist in his novels and commenting upon the great evils of his time, which he deliberately exposed to his reading public. His novels were a microcosm of the conditions of Victorian London but these conditions were present in all the major cities where similar overcrowding too place.

There is some info about Dickens' journalistic career here:-

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...

[B. Lynwood]

Zulfiya wrote: "...Dora and Mrs. Murdstone follow the same path in David Copperfield. And now Rosa has succumbed to some infection..."

If I recall correctly, though it has been at least two years since I read Copperfield, Dora and Murdstone both succumb to "consumption" which we know today as tuberculosis. That might help put a face to the disease.

Quite an interesting history, that of TB...

[Anne]

Could you mark spoilers or go to another thread if you're going to discuss novels that haven't yet been read for the Dickens Project? Not all of us have read David Copperfield. I've only read Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Pickwick Papers, and now half of Oliver Twist. I plan on reading the others in the future, but it isn't as much fun to read them if you know what is going to happen. I enjoy the posts with historical info, though. I'm familiar with this era of history, but there's always more to learn.

I agree with others that the evil characters are more fully-developed and interesting. They really feel real to me (to the point of occasionally wishing I could punch one of them). His good characters seem even more flat in comparison because the hypocrites, criminals, and eccentrics are so entertaining to read about. Oliver's passivity makes sense because of his circumstances, but it's hard to feel anything but pity for him.

[Zulfiya]

MadgeUK, thank you for your detailed social and historical commentary.

B. Lynwood, I like your personal approach to the diseases. They should definitely have faces/names. I know that those two mentioned characters allegedly die of consumption or TB, but it is just interesting to observe how Dickens always mystifies the cause and readers feel obliged to deduce or infer the diagnosis.

Anne, I am sorry about the spoilers in the post, but I tried to prevent this from happening by using the word 'spoilers' at the beginning of the post. I wish there was a thread where we could discuss some ideas pertaining to Dickens novels in general as well as some themes, motifs, characters, and their similarities or differences, if they are either recurrent or can be traced and observed in several Dickens novels.

[MadgeUK]

Medical science wasn't as exact as it was today and vague names like 'consumption', 'wasting disease'and 'fever' were common because people did not know what illness they had, so Dickens was using the idioms of the time. There were also superstitutions about mentioning certain things because speaking them aloud might bring them down on your head. These superstitions are still prevalent today when, say, we talk in hushed voices about something unpleasant or use euphemisms like the Big C. One strange idea about the cause of illness was that a 'miasma' could infect people, thus the 'noxious vapours' from the River Thames were held responsible for many diseases.

I will put up a background thread for the discussion of extraneous material although it is still best to hide 'spoiler' information in parenthesis so that folks can avoid it if they wish, whilst reading the rest. You can do this by using the word spoiler like this (view spoiler)[ place information you wish to hide by putting the word spoiler between <> > (hide spoiler)]

[Kristen]

I just finished Oliver Twist today. I was trying to just catch up with the group, but then ended up forging ahead over the long holiday weekend. The chapters in my copy are different so I'm not sure where exactly the discussion is in reference to the book. I have to say Dickens is growing on me. I found this book to be an odd mix, and I'm super curious to hear what everyone's comments are on the ending once we get there.