TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

C. Dickens, Oliver Twist, Chapter 2

 

         The extract is taken from C. Dickens’ Oliver Twist (1838). The Victorian novel highlights the different conditions poor children had to stand in Workhouses after the Poor Law Act of 1834.

The choice of the child as the protagonist of the novel pays the way to criticize the Utilitarian system dominating after the Industrial revolution. Indeed, children were considered inferior because less productive and physically weaker.

According to the dominant mentality of the age, the novelist characterizes Oliver at the beginning of the second chapter. Oliver is described trough:

-       his age: he is nine

-       his physical appearance: he looks pale, thin due to a spare diet

-       his social condition: he is poor, he works in the coal-cellar

-       references to his genetic: good sturdy spirit

As a result of such a characterization, the reader has a sketch of the character and understands Victorian idea of person. Someone’s identity is the result of social condition, origins and physical appearance, which are fundamental criteria in Utilitarianism.

In addition the third person, omniscient narrator adopts a lot of adjectives and some adverbs for the characterization so that there is a filter between the reader and reality told. The reading is conditioned by the novelist’s choices therefore Realism is not possible.

         In the second sequence the scene is set in the workhouse’s canteen, were children were fed. The novelist focuses the attention on the contrast between their hunger and impossibility to satisfy it. In particular, exaggeration is used to present the small diet in comparison to Oliver’s stomach. The lunch described as an occasion of great public becomes a scene of starvation, when children are presented as animals; different expressions, such as suffered the tortures of slow starvation, so voracious and wild with hunger, he might happen to eat the boy who slept next to him, hungry eye create an hyperbolic effect. In addition the situation looks dramatic due to the use of a metonymic and connotative way of telling and to the tone of the language. Dehumanization is the result of such an effect of disproportion. These devices contribute to create the grotesque, which makes the reader feel the pain of difficulties.

         In the last part of the extract the dialogue between Oliver and the master follows a descriptive sequence of the scene. The master’s characterization coheres with criteria adopted by Oliver’s one but the characters are opposite. Indeed, the master looks fat, healthy and physically strong. As a result, a great contrast is created between the two characters. That culminated in Oliver’s request for more food. The language used by Oliver is simple, direct and adequate to a child: he states he is hungry. The trivial fact is exaggerated by the master and the board’s reaction and by the decision to hung Oliver. What makes people be astonished and angry by Oliver’s request is that it does not fit to the conventions in the workhouse. Oliver has broken the rule. His unconformity is underlined by the linguistic choice of the expression he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary. Overemphasis makes the reader feel pathos for children.

All in all, the situation itself is realistic and represents poor Victorian society but reality is filtered by the omniscient narrator’s connotative use of the language and the creation of pathos and the grotesque. The reader comes therefore close to the difficult reality poor children had to struggle with and understand the difficult consequences of the Industrialization. The novelist’s critic to the Victorian system corresponds to the emotional involvement felt by the reader in the narration.