The Historic Value in Dickens' Oliver Twist

If, as according to Fredric Jameson, a piece of literature is a historical account, and politics is the basis behind all thoughts, then the characters in a piece of literature are the history makers and politics could be considered at least part of the piece's overall agenda. In Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens offers some background information on the various aspects of Victorian England's history, including some issues related to the New Poor Law, sickness and death, class distinctions, anti-Semitism, the industrial era and its related lack of job security, etc. Through a sometimes sarcastic embellishment of characters and the occasional exaggeration of the aforementioned circumstances in the novel, Dickens produces a book that entertains as well as historicizes and politicizes.

Fredric Jameson believes that people should "always historicize" (Jameson 9). He believes that a reader should familiarize himself with the background information surrounding a piece of art or literature and relate that history to the text as "history shapes the narrative" of a tale (Roberts 70). The historical relevance of Oliver Twist develops very early in the story. One of the first characters introduced in the novel is Mr. Bumble. Mr. Bumble represents the local governing board as the parish beadle. The beadle is actually a low level governing official, but the reader would not know this based on Mr. Bumble's attitude and character in the novel (Pool 167). Though Mr. Bumble over-dramatizes himself and his importance in the parish, his presence in the novel is of great importance. His character helps tie pieces of the story together as well as the rest of the characters. His character also introduces the reader to some of the various historical elements including the indoctrination of the New Poor Laws and how they relate to the workhouse and the system of apprenticeship.

Dickens writes Oliver Twist around the time of the Industrial era. Adults as well as young children spend hours working in the factories or in other unsafe working conditions for long hours every day (Mitchell 44). Not long after Oliver's placement in the workhouse, the beadle makes an attempt to place Oliver under the apprenticeship of the chimney sweep. Though this may seem ludicrous to a twenty-first century reader, it is actually based on the reality of life for a child growing up in the nineteenth century. Parents often apprentice their young children in order for them to become someone else's responsibility to feed and shelter (Mitchell 60).What seems even more absurd, and something else that Dickens appears to acknowledge in the text, is the existence of an act that was instated in the year 1834 stipulating that before a boy could be "bound to sweep as an apprentice, he should be examined by two magistrates and made to state that he was 'willing and desirous to follow the business of a Chimney Sweep'" (Hughes 116). As depicted in Oliver Twist, the beadle forcibly tells Oliver to look happy and accept this apprenticeship. The beadle warns Oliver that if he does not obey and manages to fail "in either particular, there [is] no telling what would be done to him", thereby proving that a child's best interests are still not considered regardless of any act intended to protect him (33). Further, it isn't until the Factory Act of 1802 is officially enforced in 1833 that children under the age of nine were forbidden to work in factories (Mitchell 44). Oliver's guardians initiate the process of finding him an apprenticeship shortly after his ninth birthday. Further, it should be noted that had it not been for the magistrate taking notice of Oliver's discomfort and taking pity on him, there would have been nothing to stand in the way of signing him over to the chimneysweep without his consent, as it was a common practice among paupers who had no one to look out for their welfare besides the local magistrate (Pool 241). This scenario seems to be the case when the board informs Oliver about his apprenticeship without the benefit of a meeting before the magistrate (39).

Another major theme in Oliver Twist relates to sickness and death, especially of the poor people within the parish in which Oliver resides. Dickens brings the issue of the poor to the forefront and helps the reader understand the trials and tribulations of these people throughout the subplots in the novel. After the beadle's unsuccessful plan to apprentice Oliver to the chimneysweep, he happens to see Mr. Sowerberry, who decides to take Oliver himself (37). In the course of their conversations on matters of parochial deaths, the beadle reveals his version of the circumstances of a poor woman's death. Mr. Bumble portrays the deceased woman as an ingrate for not accepting a medicine prescribed by a parochial surgeon's apprentice in an unmarked blacking bottle. This medicine is prescribed without a consultation with the woman in order to find what truly ailed her (46). While the use of an apprentice, even in the medical field is not uncommon practice for the period (Mitchell 196), the woman's husband apparently sent the medicine back saying it wouldn't satisfy her needs (46). This conversation exposes the reader to a bit of Dickens possible feelings toward the government's treatment of the poor as the beadle claims to have known nothing about the woman previous to this incident, when in fact he had been well aware that she was a sickly woman living in the parish and blames her death on her refusal of medicine.

At the very beginning of his apprenticeship, Oliver goes with the undertaker to the home of the aforementioned recently deceased woman in order to size her for a coffin and plan the funeral. Through speaking with the recently departed woman's husband, the reader learns the husband's version of the circumstances leading up to her death. The woman suffered from some form of illness, and when the husband turned to the streets in the hopes of receiving aid for his sick wife, he instead finds himself imprisoned for begging. By the time of his release from prison, his wife is even more ill than she had been before his incarceration and he never is able to help her. The husband believes the parish officials allow her to slowly starve to death and do nothing to save her except for finally offering her the aforementioned medicine (47-48). In fact, though her life is a burden to society, her death is considered an even greater burden considering the fact that since it was not financially possible for the family to take care of the funeral arrangements, the coffin, or the gravesite, it became the responsibility of the local government to provide the deceased woman with a funeral.

This leads to another aspect Dickens writes about in his novel, which is the funeral. Funerals and funeral arrangements are generally considered grand yet solemn affairs during this era, even among the poorer classes, people would generally put money aside for this purpose as it was considered a disgrace to receive help from the parish for the purpose of a funeral (Mitchell 162). People of all classes generally turn funerals into social events (Pool 253). In one chapter of the Oliver Twist, Mr. Sowerberry discusses the idea with his wife of having Oliver act as a mute for the children's funerals. Though not a custom of the twentieth century, during Dickens' time, undertakers used mutes to "stand around and lend dignity to the affair" (Pool 253). However, there does not appear to be anything solemn or respectable taking place at the funeral of the pauper woman whose funeral Oliver attends not long after his apprenticeship begins. Her funeral is hurried and there are children playing in the cemetery. Dickens may have portrayed the funeral in this manner as this portray of a funeral rite seems to be popular among writers of the period possibly stemming from the belief that anything extra requires payment and "the workhouse doesn't want to pay for it" (Pool 243).

Dickens describes Oliver's time in the workhouse as a bleak period. The children spend large quantities of time at work beginning six o'clock in the morning picking oakum (25). The reward for this work is barely enough food to keep a person alive. According to Pool, the government designed the workhouse to be as "grim and grinding as possible so that a recipient of workhouse charity would avoid going on relief if at all possible" (245). The object of the workhouse was to keep people from vagrancy and being wards of the state any more than necessary. If you could not afford to take care of yourself, then you would be sent to the workhouse and live in less than satisfactory conditions. The presumption of course is that if the workhouse provided such miserable living conditions, the people would spend as little time as possible in the workhouse and try their best to get back on their own feet.

Aside from being a physically undesirable place to live, other reasons exist for not wanting to be associated with the workhouse. This sentiment is expressed in the narrative upon the meeting between Oliver and Noah Claypole which states, "Noah was a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan" and he is always referring to him as "work' us" as if it were a derogatory remark. Though Noah's parentage, consisting of a washerwoman for a mother, and a drunken soldier for a father does not sound like something that would give Noah much of an advantage in life, society, according to Oliver Twist, still holds him in higher esteem than Oliver (44). Apparently, this is a reference to the fact that there is a definitive and "deliberate stigma attached to going to the workhouse and this lingering stigma of the workhouse created a sense of humiliation among people who needed to ask for help (Mitchell 93, 95).

Another issue that relates to this era is the latent Anti-Semitism which was part of the early Victorian heritage (Stone 449). While they are only two characters, Fagan and Barney represent the entire group of Jewish people who live in nineteenth century London. Though all Jewish people may not be fences and thieves, at the time the novel is written, Jewish people cannot acquire many of the jobs available to Protestants including opening a shop within the city of London or holding a job that requires a degree as Jews of this era are not allowed to receive a degree from a university (Stone 449). Therefore, Dickens uses Fagan and Barney to show that Jewish people had to find alternate means of supporting themselves.

During his apprenticeship with the undertaker, a fight ensues between Oliver and Noah Claypole. When the fight ends, Mrs. Sowerberry sends for the beadle since Mr. Sowerberry is away. Mrs. Sowerberry recounts the circumstances as she sees them to the beadle telling him that she believes Oliver has gone mad. Mr. Bumble insists, however, that it's not madness but meat that makes Oliver behave the way he does (56). He tells her that by overfeeding him, she is raising an "artificial soul and spirit in him" and he wants to know "what have paupers to do with soul or spirit?" The beadle refers to the local governing board and comments on its overall belief about starving the residents of the workhouse to keep them in line, which is another comment that alludes to the sarcastic attitude Dickens possesses toward the political ideals of the government. Mr. Bumble informs Mrs. Sowerberry that if she had kept Oliver on gruel his behavior would never get out of hand. Though according to the narrative, his meals are not more than table scraps intended for the dog or the dirty odds and ends which nobody else would eat (41, 56-57), Mr. Bumble leads Mrs. Sowerberry to believe that she is much too liberal. However, regardless of the food being left over scraps, Oliver receives much more food than he ever received while living in the workhouse. The daily fare at the workhouse is nothing more three small servings of gruel each day, an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays (26). According to Mitchell, while Dickens may exaggerate the minimal amount of food offered in the workhouse, this daily diet is at least close to an accurate depiction of the diet that most of the poorer class people who lived during this era consumed on a regular basis. Mitchell states that bread, potatoes, and tea were the staples of the diet for the working class. And apparently, Oliver's bits of meat, though the cause of his "madness" allowed him more food than most people of the period, as Mitchell also states that workers in a percentage of rural laborer's had never tasted meat besides bits of bacon (122)

In addition to historicizing everything, Jameson believes there is a political motive behind all actions. As he states in The Political Unconscious, the political perspective is the "absolute horizon of all readings and all interpretation" meaning that every aspect of a piece of literature is subject to a political interpretation (11). According to Mitchell, people did not pay much attention to parliament during the Victorian Era, the local governments command control over what takes place within the individual parishes at least until the indoctrination of the New Poor Law which was designed to reform the welfare system (90). The idea of making the workhouses such a miserable place to live stems from the idea that of the local governments not wishing to encourage the poor and destitute to depend on the government for their welfare. With this in mind, the moments when Dickens appears to make his most sarcastic statements may be more of an allusion to his dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs of the local governments who sometimes seem to be the deliberate cause of people's death or continued misery. Dickens alludes to certain ideas throughout the novel that stem from some of the political ideas during the era. Some of these comments include the one he makes about Oliver Twist going to sleep on his hard bed upon first entering the workhouse. He says, "What a noble illustration of the tender laws of England! They let the paupers go to sleep", as if being allowed to go to sleep at night is a luxury that the government was gracious enough to offer but not required to allow (25) and another instance of this relates to how the (new) system was in full operation and it was a rather expensive operation for the government too, as they were responsible for increase in the undertaker's bill as well as the cost to take in the clothing "of all the paupers, which fluttered loosely on their wasted, shrunken forms, after a week or two's gruel (26).

Some of the other comments Dickens makes throughout the novel provide what seem to be more in keeping with a sense of sarcasm and his thoughts regarding the politics of the day. This includes the notion that when the poor die, they have eaten so little food that there bodies have worn away to nothing. Apparently, Sowerberry comments that the price paid by the local governing board for coffins is very small indeed, but the beadle replies that the coffins too are smaller, and he refers to the new system of feeding the poor which is a comment related to the New Poor Law (37).

At the end of the story, after all the blessings have been bestowed upon Oliver, Mr. Bumble and his wife are left poor and destitute and residents of the workhouse where Oliver was born. The couple's status and subsequent lack thereof also represents a historical depiction of the lack of job security that exists during this era. People live with a fear that they can lose everything they have. Mr. Bumble's riches to rags story shows him going from being a member of the local government to becoming a pauper living in the very workhouse he once ran. This is an accurate depiction. In nineteenth century London, there is no such thing as job security and people "endured terrible work conditions in order to make themselves irreplaceable" (Mitchell 261). Of course, the beadle's job did not require any physical labor beyond beating Oliver within an inch of his life (Slater 53) and fighting with the gate at the infant workhouse (21), but even his job is not what it would seem and in reality he is nothing more than a "glorified messenger boy" (Pool 168) There are no benefits or unions and one could easily fall from his rank and position. People are often one paycheck away from complete financial ruin.

In conclusion, Fredric Jameson believes that every piece of literature is a historical account politics should be considered as a background for interpretation. Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist is no exception. Through the various characters in the novel such as Mr. Bumble and the circumstances related to the workhouse, apprenticeships, and funerals and the relationship of many of these things to the New Poor Laws, Oliver Twist, helps the reader understand the historical value that exists in the novel. In an often sarcastic manner, Dickens brings the Victorian Era to life allowing the reader to understand what people of all stations and class endured.

Sources:

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Ed. Fred Kaplan. New York. Queens College and the

Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Hughes, Kristine. The Writers Guide toEveryday Life in Regency and Victorian

England From 1811-1901. Ohio. Writer's Digest Books, Inc., 1998

Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious. New York. Cornell University Press,

1981

Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Connecticut. Greenwood Press, 1996

Roberts, Adam. Fredric Jameson. New York. Routledge, 2000

Slater, Michael. Readings on Oliver Twist. Ed. Jill Karson. San Diego. Green Haven

Press, 2001