Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

By King Meera -
SOCIETY:
  • Aristocracy > Middle class > Working class
  • Middle class dominated the poor
POVERTY:
  • move to city to chase the urban dream
  • institutional crime
  • Oliver the illegitimate child of an aristocrat - Dickens makes him suffer like the oppressed
  • but not all middle-class people are evil
IDENTITY:
  • mistaken identity
  • orphans don't know their roots
GOOD VS. EVIL

SOCIAL CRITICISM:
  • origins matter more than character - rather assumptions made about character on the basis of only origin
  • bias
  • showed England at its worst - but if he sugar-coated it, the book would be dismissed
  • rich-poor divide
-------------

Oliver neglected, starved, ill-clothed
Mistreated even as a child
Theme of innocence - where do you begin to differentiate between naivete and stupidity
"inappropriate" time of birth
Reality of workhouses portrayed

----------------

SOCIAL CONTEXT
  • English Poor Law
  • biased implementation - emphasis on virtues of hard work
  • discriminated and differentiated - considered lazy good-for-nothings - led them to hatred and cruelty
  • Victorian society's values: economic success a sign that God favored the hard-working and the honest; condition of poverty seen as a sign of weakness
  • deliberately miserable conditions of workhouse - so people wouldn't use them
Scribbled for some reason: "parochial" "critique" "corruption"

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