Oliver Twist
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, CHANGES IN ENGLAND‛S SOCIAL
CLASS STRUCTURE, AND THE NEW POOR LAW OF 1834
Between approximately 1750 and 1830, the Industrial Revolution transformed
England from an agricultural society to an industrial, capitalist economy.
Increases in food production, accelerated by the practice of land enclosure, led
to technological innovations in the workplace. Advances in the mechanization of
cotton and textile production, the development of the steam engine, as well as
the expansion of the railroad and canal system helped England become part of a
global economy.
The Industrial Revolution had far-reaching effects on social class and family
structures. England witnessed the rise of a middle class—manufacturers,
merchants, importers and exporters—that, within a single generation amassed
capital fortunes that often surpassed the incomes of the land-owning aristocracy.
At the same time, however, a new class of urban poor emerged. The Enclosure
Acts drove thousands of peasants, who had lived for generations on tenant farms
or common lands, from their homes. Displaced peasants migrated to the cities to
work at low-skilled and low-paying jobs in factories. With no collective bargaining
rights or other legal protections, most laborers faced long work days and weeks
for wages often so low that they still could not afford food and housing. Wives
had to work to augment their families‛ incomes, as did children—some as young as
eight or nine years old.
Since the early Middle Ages, charitable assistance for the poor had been handled
locally, usually by the village or town parish. Urban parishes, however, found their
resources stretched to the limit by the tremendous influx of country peasantry.
More assistance was requested than the parish was able to provide. There was in
place an allowance system that provided a boost to the laborers‛ salaries, but as
the number of urban workers increased,
the more costly the allowance system became. In 1834, therefore, the “New Poor
Law”
was enacted. This amendment to poor laws dating back to 1601 was an almost
inevitable consequence of the middle class‛s growing influence and the resulting
shift in social values.
Despite their wealth, individuals in the middle class were still looked down upon
by the land-owning aristocracy, who often lacked the funds necessary to maintain
their own estates. Among the ways manufacturers and merchants found to buy
themselves social acceptance were to purchase land from the cash-poor
aristocracy, to marry their sons and daughters into established, titled families,
and to lend money at excessive interest with land as the collateral. This
economically powerful middle class demanded and won a share of the political
power that had been monopolized by the aristocracy. To counter the stigma of
earned money, they fostered the attitude that hard work was a virtue and
idleness a vice.
The result of this ideological shift was that, while the idle upper class was still
envied, the new urban poor were seen as lazy, immoral, and largely responsible for
their own poverty. As the middle class continued to gain social and political power,
its attitude toward and treatment of the poor grew increasingly cruel.
The landed upper class, while largely indifferent to the lives of people in the lower
classes, was also aware of the code of noblesse oblige, the belief that those born
to wealth and privilege bore an obligation to assist those less fortunate. The selfmade middle class, however, did not consider itself to bear such an obligation.
To discourage laziness, the 1834 law stipulated that assistance be available only
within a workhouse. Furthermore, conditions in the workhouses were to be so
harsh that only the most desperate would opt to go there. The stated goal of the
law was not to help the poor as much as to reduce the cost of helping the poor.
The poor who relied on public assistance had no place enjoying comforts or
luxuries that they had not won with their own hard work. Meals were deliberately
inadequate, so as to encourage inmates to find the means to support themselves.
Husbands and wives were separated to prevent their having children, who would
then need to draw on the parish‛s resources. Children were separated from their
parents to prevent the parents from passing on to their children whatever values
or “character flaws” had initially led to their poverty.
Inmates of the workhouses were further separated into the “able-bodied poor”
and the
“deserving poor.” Conditions for the “deserving poor”— the old, the sick, and the
very young—were no better than they were for the lazy and shiftless “ablebodied poor.” So, instead of encouraging the able to work themselves out of
poverty, the 1834 law punished those who were least able to fend for themselves.
This was the world into which the infant Oliver Twist was born—in the workhouse
of an unnamed town to an unknown and unmarried woman who dies almost
immediately, leaving the infant an orphan.
BRITAIN‛S COURTS: THE TREADMILL, TRANSPORTATION, AND THE
DEATH PENALTY
 The Treadmill
When Oliver first meets the Artful Dodger in Chapter VIII, the Dodger
mistakenly assumes that Oliver‛s seven-days‛ walk is the sentence imposed as his
punishment for some crime, a “beak‛s order.” The two boys then have the following
exchange:
Dodger: Was you never on the mill?
Oliver: What mill?
Dodger:
What mill! Why, the mill—the mill as takes up so little room that it‛ll
work inside a Stone jug…
“Stone jug” was slang for prison in general and Newgate Prison specifically. The
“mill” refers to the treadmill, a device introduced into British prisons in 1779.
Later, they were also built in some workhouses. There were two types of
treadmills: huge wooden wheels that resembled the treadmills often used today
in hamster cages, and contraptions that looked like enormous wagon wheels. It is
probably the hamster-cage style wheel that the Dodger is talking about when he
says, “[W]hen you walk by a beak‛s order, it‛s not straight forerd, but always a
going up, and never a coming down again.”
Convicted criminals sentenced to [labor] were sent to prisons with treadmills
forced to walk them for a certain number of hours (typically eight) each day. The
energy the men generated on the mill was often used to power an actual grinding
mill in the making of flour and corn meal which could then be sold as a means of
supporting the prison.
The 1779 prison reform act described treadmill labor as “labor of the hardest
and most servile kind in which drudgery is chiefly required and where the work is
little liable to be spoiled by ignorance, neglect, or obstinacy.”
However brutal the work may have been, hard labor at the treadmill was believed
to teach prisoners the value of hard work. Prisoners working on the treadmill or
exhausted from a shift would not be able to get into the kind of trouble that
idleness would invite. Finally, the rumors of how horrible a sentence of hard labor
was would deter others from committing crimes.
 Transportation of Convicts
Another sentence for the most serious offenders and the most frequent repeat
offenders was “transportation.” This sentence was imposed especially when the
offense did not warrant a sentence of death.
Prior to the Revolutionary War, convicts were frequently transported to the
British colonies in America. Later, penal colonies were established in Australia
and Tasmania. The sentence was occasionally for a specified period of time, seven
years for example, but, increasingly, the sentence would be for life. The
conditions for the transported convicts were somewhat similar to those for slaves
shipped to America. Many died during the four- to six-month journey, and many
more were ill or dying when they arrived in the colony.
Those who survived were set to work as servants or laborers for the settlers.
Some transported convicts seized the opportunity to work hard, save money, and
establish
a new life. Prisoners who served their terms were free to return to England but
had to make their own way back. Many, therefore, stayed in the colony as free
settlers.
Those who failed to be “reformed” were sent to other penal colonies where they
were chained, whipped, and set to hard labor for the rest of their lives.
Eventually, transportation of convicts became expensive, and the legal settlers
of the colonies complained about having to receive the criminals. By 1840,
transportation was regarded as a failure in terms of reforming criminals and
deterring crime. The Penal Servitude Act of 1853 gave judges the freedom to
sentence criminals to a term of hard labor instead of transportation. Eventually,
the practice of sending convicted felons overseas ended completely.
“Ikey” Solomon, the notorious fence who may have provided the model for Fagin
in Oliver Twist, was transported to Tasmania after his famous 1830 trial. His wife
had been transported there several years before. When he is caught picking
pockets, and the owner of his stolen snuff box is identified, the Artful Dodger is
sentenced to be transported for life (Chapter XLIII). Dickens does not reveal
the specific colony the thief is sentenced to, but Charley tells Fagin and Bolter
that the Dodger‛s passage has already been booked.
THE UNDERTAKER‛S MUTE
Early in his career, after the judge spares him from an apprenticeship to the
chimney sweep, Oliver finds himself apprenticed to the undertaker Mr.
Sowerberry, who says of Oliver:
There‛s an expression of melancholy in his face…He would make a delightful
mute…I don‛t mean a regular mute to attend grown-up people…but only for
children‛s practice. It would be very new to have a mute in proportion…it would
have a superb effect.
Thus, Oliver becomes an “undertaker‛s mute.” Mutes were men who dressed in
elaborate, full mourning attire, including a sash and a top hat with a trailing silk
hat band. The sash and hat band were black for an adult‛s funeral and white for
a child‛s. He also carried a staff, likewise decorated for mourning. The mute would
typically arrive at the house of the deceased early on the morning of the funeral
and stand, silent and unmoving, beside the door. He then
led the funeral procession, walking ahead of the horse-drawn hearse. His face
mimicked exaggerated expressions of grief, and his primary role was to intensify
the morbid solemnity of the occasion.
Undertakers‛ mutes were common throughout Europe from the 17th to the end
of the 19th centuries. By the middle of the 19th century, to have at least one
mute among the funeral party was standard practice, even for middle-class
families that could not really afford the costly extravagance of a “proper”
Victorian funeral. Most mutes were day-laborers, paid for each individual job.
One factor that significantly contributed to the demise of the mute was alcohol.
Because mutes worked exclusively outdoors in all kinds of weather, it was
customary for the family of the deceased to provide the mute with gin to help
him fight the cold. As a result, undertakers‛ mutes eventually developed the
reputation of drunkenness. It would not be uncommon for a mute to arrive at the
house of the deceased having already consumed several drinks. The incongruous
images of the excessively sorrowful mourner and the staggering drunk in mourning
eventually led to public ridicule and the decline of the mute as a fashionable
embellishment.
Sowerberry‛s innovation is that, rather than use an adult mute for a child‛s funeral,
Oliver would serve and add a new level of poignancy to the affair.
ANTI-SEMITISM IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND AND OLIVER TWIST
One of the central characters in Oliver Twist is the nearly-despicable “mentor”
of the band of thieves, Fagin. Even the reader knows the character‛s name, before
Dickens tells us that the elderly gentleman is a Jew.
Since the days of the Roman Empire, anti-Semitism and negative stereotypes
have persisted throughout Europe. Many of the stereotypes that survive today
originated in the Middle Ages when the Roman Catholic Church prohibited the
lending of money for interest (it was considered greedy and unloving to demand
interest from the poor). In most places, Jews were prohibited from owning land,
so whatever wealth they amassed tended to be in coin. Certain prohibitions in the
Old Testament forbid the Jew to lend to another Jew for interest, but it was
considered lawful for a Jew to lend money to a Christian in this manner. However,
the Jew‛s eventually demanding repayment, along with the agreed-upon interest,
soon became the source of the stereotype of the greedy and miserly Jew.
Consider Shakespeare‛s treatment of the Jew, Shylock, in The Merchant of
Venice.
A phenomenon known as “blood libel” also appeared with the spread of Christianity
through Europe. “Blood libel” is the name given to the wild accusations of
demagogues and enraged mobs claiming all sorts of atrocities at the hands of
Jews. Such accusations included stealing Christian babies and eating them, using
the blood of Christian babies to bake Passover matzoh, poisoning wells, and other
acts of brutality.
England was not exempt from anti-Semitism, although Jews tended to fare better
in England than in other European nations during the Middle Ages, Renaissance,
and early modern period.
•
The first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070.
William the Conqueror invited Jews to emigrate from France, hoping merchants
would strengthen and stabilize the English economy.
•
King Henry I (1100–1135) granted the chief Rabbi of London a charter
that granted the Rabbi and his followers the rights to
•
move about the country without paying tolls;
•
buy and sell;
•
sell debts owed to them after holding the notes a year and a day;
•
swear on the Torah rather than on a Christian Bible;
•
be tried by a jury of their peers (i.e., other Jews).
•
Though not all left England, Jews were expelled in 1290 by Edward I‛s
Edict of Expulsion.
•
Small groups practiced Judaism secretly until the Protectorate of Oliver
Cromwell (1653–1658). The Edict of Expulsion was not repealed, but a small group
of Jews discovered living in London was allowed to stay.
•
England‛s merchants and bankers were well aware of the valuable
contributions Jews made to the economy, and they continuously lobbied
Parliament to place male Jews on an equal legal footing with the other
“emancipated males.”
•
Jews in the United Kingdom found encouragement that the Sacramental
Test Act (1828) and the Roman Catholic Relief Act (1829) bestowed the rights
of equal citizenship on Roman Catholics. A petition demanding a similar
“emancipation” for Jews was presented to Parliament. It contained the signatures
of 2,000 merchants and bankers from London and Liverpool. (The resulting
legislation would remain an actively debated bill before Parliament for the next
30 years!)
•
Through the 19th century, the United Kingdom gained a reputation for
religious tolerance due to an overall lack of violence against Jews.
Critics note some key similarities between Fagin‛s trial in Chapter LII and the
1830 trial of the notorious thief and fence, Isaac “Ikey” Solomon.
Solomon was one of nine children born to a Jewish family in the East End of
London. His father, Henry Solomon, was a fence and taught his trade to his son.
Throughout his career, Solomon ran many pawn shops in London in which he fenced
stolen goods. He was arrested in 1810 and again in 1827. The 1827 arrest made
him internationally famous, as he escaped from custody and eventually arrived in
New York. His wife was arrested and sent to the British penal colony in Tasmania.
Solomon traveled from New York to be with her. In October 1828, he was
arrested and returned to London.
The 1830 trial was a media sensation, and many critics assume Dickens modeled
Fagin‛s trial after it. Ultimately, although Fagin was sentenced to hang, Solomon
was sentenced to fourteen years in the penal colony in Tasmania. He was
eventually partially pardoned and released from prison. He died in Hobart,
Tasmania, on September 3, 1850.
Whether Dickens had Ikey Solomon in mind as he developed his character Fagin,
when criticized for his portrayal of Jews—especially when he dealt with other
oppressed people so compassionately—he defended himself and his portrayal. In
an 1863 letter to Eliza Davis, the wife of the Jewish tenant in Dickens‛s home, he
wrote, “Fagin, in Oliver Twist, is a Jew, because it unfortunately was true of the
time to which that story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was
a Jew.” He concluded his letter, “I have no feeling towards the Jewish people but
a friendly one. I always speak well of them, whether in public or private, and bear
my testimony (as I ought to do) to their perfect good faith in such transactions
as I have ever had with them.”
Dickens later expressed regret for his portrayal of Fagin in the novel and, in later
revisions, toned down references to the character‛s Jewishness.
JACOB‛S ISLAND
Dickens begins Chapter L with an especially bleak description:
Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where
the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with
the dust of colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed houses, there exists
the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that
are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its
inhabitants.…In such a neighbourhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of
Southwark, stands Jacob‛s Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet
deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but
known in the days of this story as Folly Ditch.
As are many of the locales Dickens names in his novels, Jacob‛s Island is an actual
place, a place that was, indeed, infamous for its poverty, squalor, and crime. It
was an “island” only by virtue of the tidal ditches that, as Dickens describes, were
up to twenty feet wide and eight feet deep when the Thames was at high tide but
were wide expanses of foul-smelling, garbage strewn mud at low tide.
Records of the area date back to the Middle Ages when Jacob‛s Island was the
location of a mill apparently owned by the monks of the historically significant
Bermondsey Abbey, which was chartered in 1082. This abbey was dissolved under
Henry VIII and became the site of the homes of various noble families.
It was the monks of Bermondsey Abbey who dug the original trenches that
eventually became Dickens‛s “muddy ditch.” They also built the first dock, which
they called St. Saviour‛s, to provide travelers and merchants easy access from
the River Thames.
Respectable and profitable industry—especially connected with shipping and
trade—rose up in the 18th century. Something of a housing boom followed, but
the people who were drawn
to the area were unskilled laborers who could find work on the docks and in the
warehouses. This work tended to be low-paying and casual. Workers found
themselves employed and unemployed in random intervals. The hastily built
tenements eventually fell into disrepair.
Then, by the turn of the 19th century, much of the trade handled by the Jacob‛s
Island‛s docks moved slightly downriver to the area of Rotherhithe. Here, the
docks were expanded and deepened. As Jacob‛s Island docks became idle and its
warehouses emptied, its residents fell from occasional poverty into deep and
chronic poverty. By Dickens‛s time, the area was a notorious “rookery,” British
slang for slum.
The attention focused on the neighborhood by writers like Dickens and social
researchers and reformers like Charles Kingsley and Henry Mayhew helped some.
In the 1850s, the ditches were filled in, thus eliminating much of the smell and
cause of disease. Churches focused their mission work in the area. The
dilapidated tenements were torn down and replaced with more modern and
sanitary housing. While many writers celebrated the changes, others mourned the
fact that the “romance” and “character” of the neighborhood had been destroyed.
In 1934, a public housing development called the Dickens Estate was opened.
Houses were named after Dickens‛s characters. Ironically, none was named for
Bill Sikes, the only Dickens character to have lived and died on Jacob‛s Island.
The development still stands, now described by Wikimapia. org as a “mid-rise
brick-clad social housing estate of Bermondsey, parts of which have been bought
by its tenants under the right to buy and thus form part of the private housing
sector over time.”
COMMON LITERARY CONVENTIONS IN OLIVER TWIST
As in all of his novels, Charles Dickens employs certain conventions and devices
that were popular with his Victorian audience.
•
The Orphan of Unknown Parentage: Often a secondary character in
Victorian novels, in Oliver Twist, the orphan is the title character and protagonist.
•
The Lost-and-Found Heir: While the fortune Oliver inherits turns out to
be fairly small, it is discovered that he is the benefactor of his late father‛s will.
It is Oliver‛s standing as benefactor that motivates his half-brother (Monks) to
destroy him and thus claim the fortune as his own.
•
The Hidden and Discovered Items: Often this is a diary (and sometimes a
missing will or deed), but this was a popular device for discovering the past or
hearing a character‛s innermost thoughts. Monks testifies to Mr. Grimwig that he
and his mother destroyed Mr. Leeford‛s will and a letter identifying Agnes and
her child as his heir. The matron of the workhouse where Oliver was born is able
to produce a ring and a locket that had belonged to Oliver‛s mother and would
confirm her and, thus, his identity.
Coincidence: All literary plots are essentially contrived because they must
•
work out the way the author intends them, and coincidence is an important force
in many plots. However, a Victorian audience demanded that all loose ends be
connected at the end of the story. They particularly enjoyed revelations like the
fact that:
Rose Maylie turns out to be Oliver‛s mother‛s sister;
•
the gentleman whose handkerchief Dodger and Charley choose to steal
•
on Oliver‛s first day at work is Mr. Brownlow;
•
Mr. Brownlow just happens to have been engaged to Oliver‛s father‛s sister;
•
Poetic Justice: Just as Victorians required that no questions be left
unanswered at the denouement, the middle class‛s views of morality and justice
required that each character come to his or her just and deserving end. Many
critics fault Dickens for, on the one hand, denouncing retributive justice while,
on the other hand, executing death sentences on all of his most foul characters
in the novel. Others, however, simply point to the Victorian convention of poetic
justice. Those who deserve to die die; those who deserve to be reduced to poverty
are, and those who deserve to find happiness in loving families do so. Oliver Twist
has exactly the kind of happy ending Dickens‛s readers would have demanded.
•
Caricatures and Stereotypes: While many of Dickens‛s characters seem
exaggerated and outlandish, by comparison, they allow the relatively flat main
characters to seem normal. Static characters like Bill Sikes—unfailing in his utter
cruelty—and Rose Maylie—equally unfailing in her naïve and virtuous goodness—
emphasize the extremes that Oliver must navigate in his journey from nameless
orphan to a young boy with a family and a small fortune. In Oliver Twist, look for:
•
figure;
the poor orphan buffeted from home to home and parent-figure to parent-
•
the uncorrupted, innocent child;
•
the lost and then found relative;
•
one person‛s selfless devotion to someone unworthy of that devotion;
•
the nagging, shrewish wife;
•
clarity of thought resulting from sickness and madness;
•
melodramatic portrayals of good and evil.
CHARLES DICKENS
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in the city of
Portsmouth on the southern coast of England. He was the second of eight children
of John and Elizabeth
(Barrow) Dickens. John Dickens was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and the family
moved fairly frequently to follow the senior Dickens‛s assignments.
In 1824, when Dickens was twelve, his father was sent to the Marshalsea debtors‛
prison
in London. Dickens‛s mother and his younger siblings joined him, which was
frequently
the custom. Dickens, however, boarded with a family friend in Camden Town. To
pay his board and help support his family, the twelve-year-old Dickens left school
and took work
at Warren‛s Blacking Warehouse, a shoe polish manufacturer. He spent his tenhour work days pasting labels on pots of boot blacking for a wage of six shillings
a week. The work was tedious and the conditions horrible.
When he was still new at the warehouse, Dickens was befriended by an older boy
who taught him the intricate process of assembling the labels and pasting them
on the jars. His name was Bob Fagin.
When Dickens‛s father inherited a small bequest, he was finally able to pay off
his debts and leave the debtors‛ prison. Dickens‛s mother, however, insisted that
her son remain in the blacking factory. He never got over what felt like
abandonment: “I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget,
that my mother was warm for my being sent back.”
Dickens drew heavily in his novels on the unhappiness of his childhood, the
treatment of his parents under the Insolvent Debtors Act, and the harshness of
the conditions under which he and his fellow child-laborers lived and worked.
In April 1836, while writing and serializing his first novel, The Pickwick Papers,
he married Catherine Hogarth. Although the couple had ten children, the
marriage was not a happy one.
In 1857, Dickens fell deeply in love with actress Ellen Ternan. He and Catherine
separated—divorce was impossible for the world-renowned Charles Dickens—and
rumors of Dickens‛s adultery haunted him for the rest of his life.
On June 9, 1865, Dickens, Ternan, and Ternan‛s mother were passengers on the
South Eastern Railway Folkestone-to-London train that derailed and plunged off
of a bridge. Dickens himself suffered injuries from which he would never fully
recover. He, nonetheless, assisted many of the injured and is credited with saving
several lives. He died at 58, five years to the day after the accident, having
suffered a stroke from which he never regained consciousness.
Although his desire was to be buried privately at Rochester Cathedral near his
home, Gads Hill Place, he was interred in the Poets‛ Corner of Westminster Abbey
on June 14, 1870. Dickens was, at the time of his death, the most popular novelist
in England.
Chapter 1
1. What is the narrator implying about his society when, in the first paragraph,
he refuses to provide specific details of the town in which the child is born or
the date on which the birth occurred?
2. Summarize the key facts of the infant and his birth.
3. What narrative tone does Dickens strive for in the opening chapter? What
techniques does he use to achieve this tone? Provide some textual examples.
4. What do the circumstances surrounding Oliver‛s birth portend for his life?
What was Dickens most likely foreshadowing by describing Oliver‛s initial trouble
with breathing?
Carefully read the following passage from the opening of Charles Dickens‛s Oliver
Twist and then select the best answers to the multiple-choice questions that
follow.
Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be
prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name,
there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse;
and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself
to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this
stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed
to the head of this chapter.
For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow and trouble, by the
parish surgeon, it remained a matter of considerable doubt whether the child
would survive to bear any name at all; in which case it is somewhat more than
probable that these memoirs would never have appeared; or, if they had, that
being comprised within a couple of pages, they would have possessed the
inestimable merit of being the most concise and faithful specimen of biography,
extant in the literature of any age or country.
Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being born in a workhouse, is in
itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance that can possibly befall a
human being, I do mean to say that in this particular instance, it was the best
thing for Oliver Twist that could by possibility have occurred. The fact is, that
there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the
office of respiration,—a troublesome practice, but one which custom has
rendered necessary to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping on a
little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and the next:
the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter. Now, if, during this brief
period, Oliver had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts,
experienced nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably
and indubitably have been killed in no time. There being nobody by, however, but
a pauper old woman, who was rendered rather misty by an unwonted allowance of
beer; and a parish surgeon who did such matters by contract; Oliver and Nature
fought out the point between them. The result was, that, after a few struggles,
Oliver breathed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to the inmates of the
workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed upon the parish, by
setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected from a male infant
who had not been possessed of that very useful appendage, a voice, for a much
longer space of time than three minutes and a quarter.
As Oliver gave this first proof of the free and proper action of his lungs, the
patchwork coverlet which was carelessly flung over the iron bedstead, rustled;
the pale face of a young woman was raised feebly from the pillow; and a faint
voice imperfectly articulated the words, “Let me see the child, and die.”
The surgeon had been sitting with his face turned towards the fire: giving the
palms of his hands a warm and a rub alternately. As the young woman spoke, he
rose, and advancing to the bed‛s head, said, with more kindness than might have
been expected of him:
“Oh, you must not talk about dying yet.”
“Lor bless her heart, no!” interposed the nurse, hastily depositing in her pocket a
green glass bottle, the contents of which she had been tasting in a corner with
evident satisfaction. “Lor bless her dear heart, when she has lived as long as I
have, sir, and had thirteen children of her own, and all on ‛em dead except two,
and them in the wurkus with me, she‛ll know better than to take on in that way,
bless her dear heart! Think what it is to be a mother, there‛s a dear young lamb,
do.”
Apparently this consolatory perspective of a mother‛s prospects failed in
producing its due effect. The patient shook her head, and stretched out her hand
towards the child.
The surgeon deposited it in her arms. She imprinted her cold white lips
passionately on its forehead; passed her hands over her face; gazed wildly round;
shuddered; fell back—and died. They chafed her breast, hands, and temples; but
the blood had stopped for ever. They talked of hope and comfort. They had been
strangers too long.
“It‛s all over, Mrs. Thingummy!” said the surgeon at last.
“Ah, poor dear, so it is!” said the nurse, picking up the cork of the green bottle,
which had fallen out on the pillow, as she stooped to take up the child. “Poor dear!”
“You needn‛t mind sending up to me, if the child cries, nurse,” said the surgeon,
putting on his gloves with great deliberation. “It‛s very likely it will be
troublesome. Give it a little gruel if it is.” He put on his hat, and, pausing by the
bed-side on his way to the door, added, “She was a good-looking girl, too; where
did she come from?”
“She was brought here last night,” replied the old woman, “by the overseer‛s order.
She was found lying in the street. She had walked some distance, for her shoes
were worn to pieces; but where she came from, or where she was going to, nobody
knows.”
The surgeon leaned over the body, and raised the left hand. “The old story,” he
said, shaking his head: “no wedding ring, I see. Ah! Good night!”
1.
The most likely reason Dickens chose not to name the town of Oliver‛s
birth is that he
2.
A.
did not know the name of the town.
B.
did not want to make the town infamous.
C.
wanted to avoid speculation about the town and the people involved.
D.
wanted to increase the importance of the town in the story.
E.
wanted to suggest such a birth could have happened anywhere.
The tone of this passage can best be described as
A.
somber.
B.
foreboding.
C.
glib.
D.
comic.
E.
sarcastic.
3.
The mother‛s death occurring immediately after the baby‛s birth could be
interpreted as
A.
coincidence.
B.
melodrama.
4.
C.
tragedy.
D.
comedy.
E.
romance.
The sentiment behind the surgeon‛s observation at the close of this
passage is most likely
5.
A.
disdain.
B.
curiosity.
C.
surprise.
D.
disbelief.
E.
regret.
Which of the following best anticipates the target of Dickens‛s social
criticism?
A.
“Let me see the child, and die.”
B.
“Oh, you must not talk about dying yet.”
C.
“It‛s all over, Mrs. Thingummy!”
D.
“It‛s very likely it will be troublesome.”
E.
“The old story…no wedding ring, I see.”
Chapter two
1. What is Dickens‛s point in revealing the amount of money the “elderly female”
received per child and what she did with the money?
2. What happens to many of the boys who are “farmed out” to this workhouse?
Why is Mrs. Mann not reprimanded for her actions?
3. Describe the attitude that is suggested by the tone of the paragraph that
begins, “The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and
when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once,
what ordinary folks would never have discovered—the poor people liked it!”
4. How does Dickens emphasize the hypocrisy of the men who govern the
institutions established to help the poor?
5. The end of Chapter II was also the end of the first published installment of
the novel. How does the incident at the end of the chapter constitute the highest
point in the action so far? What suspense does this incident create?
Carefully read the following passage from the Chapter II of Charles Dickens‛s
Oliver Twist and then select the best answers to the multiple-choice questions
that follow.
For the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a systematic course
of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute
situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to
the parish authorities. The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the
workhouse authorities, whether there was no female then domiciled in “the house”
who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist, the consolation and nourishment
of which he stood in need. The workhouse authorities replied with humility, that
there was not. Upon this the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely
resolved, that Oliver should be “farmed,” or, in other words, that he should be
despatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty
other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled about the floor all day,
without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the
parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and
for the consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week.
Sevenpence-halfpenny‛s worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great
deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach,
and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and
experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate
perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part
of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial
generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them.
Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very
great experimental philosopher.
Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher who had a great
theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who demonstrated it
so well, that he got his own horse down to a straw a day, and would unquestionably
have rendered him a very spirited and rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he
had not died, four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first
comfortable bait of air. Unfortunately for the experimental philosophy of the
female to whose protecting care Oliver Twist was delivered over, a similar result
usually attended the operation of her system; for at the very moment when a
child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest
possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either
that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got halfsmothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was
usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers it had
never known in this.
*******
It cannot be expected that this system of farming would produce any very
extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist‛s ninth birth-day 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. It
had had plenty of room to expand, thanks to the spare diet of the establishment;
and perhaps to this circumstance may be attributed his having any ninth birthday at all. Be this as it may, however, it was his ninth birth-day; and he was keeping
it in the coal-cellar with a select party of two other young gentlemen, who, after
participating with him in a sound thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously
presuming to be hungry, when Mrs. Mann, the good lady of the house, was
unexpectedly startled by the apparition of Mr. Bumble, the beadle, striving to
undo the wicket of the garden-gate.
*******
The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when
they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what
ordinary folks would never have discovered—the poor people liked it! It was a
regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where
there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year
round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work. “Oho!” said
the board, looking very knowing; “we are the fellows to set this to rights; we‛ll
stop it all, in no time.” So, they established the rule, that all poor people should
have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved
by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. With this view, they
contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with
a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three
meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays.
They made a great many other wise and humane regulations, having reference to
the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat; kindly undertook to divorce poor
married people, in consequence of the great expense of a suit in Doctors‛ Commons;
and, instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had theretofore
done, took his family away from him, and made him a bachelor! There is no saying
how many applicants for relief, under these last two heads, might have started
up in all classes of society, if it had not been coupled with the workhouse; but the
board were long-headed men, and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was
inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened people.
*******
Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered
the tortures of slow starvation for three months: at last they got so voracious
and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn‛t been used
to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cookshop), hinted darkly to
his companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel per diem, he was afraid
he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to
be a weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye; and they implicitly
believed him. A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the master
after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.
The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook‛s uniform,
stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind
him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons.
The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while
his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger,
and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master,
basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
“Please, sir, I want some more.”
6.
The relationship between the tone and the subject matter of the first
paragraph can best be described as
7.
A.
jarring.
B.
complementary.
C.
consonant.
D.
abusive.
E.
oppositional.
Dickens uses the colloquialism of “farming” orphans to a home in the
country as the basis for which figurative device?
8.
9.
10.
A.
metaphor
B.
simile
C.
hyperbole
D.
oxymoron
E.
pun
All of the following can be inferred from the fourth paragraph EXCEPT
A.
the authorities believed the poor embraced their poverty.
B.
workhouses were insufficiently funded to do their jobs.
C.
families were separated when they entered the workhouse.
D.
conditions at the workhouse were intentionally harsh.
E.
assistance for the poor was available only in the workhouse.
To call the workhouse a “brick and mortar elysium” is a(n)
A.
comic metaphor.
B.
sensory image.
C.
unintended oxymoron.
D.
ironic allusion.
E.
common euphemism.
Oliver‛s famous request, “Please, sir, I want some more,” is significant
primarily because it
A.
reveals to the reader the boys‛ hunger.
B.
suggests a possible theme of the novel.
C.
introduces the novel‛s primary conflict.
D.
establishes Oliver as the focus of the narrative.
E.
changes Oliver‛s passivity into activity.
Chapter Three
1. What is a sinecure? What is Dickens saying when he writes in this chapter‛s
title that the position Oliver nearly took “would not have been a sinecure”?
2. What information about the chimney sweep trade can be inferred from the
conversation between Mr. Gamfield and the board?
3. What effect does Dickens achieve in the paragraph that begins “It was the
critical moment of Oliver‛s fate”? What philosophical point does this small
observation reinforce?
4. How is Oliver shown some mercy in this chapter?
Chapter four
1. Why do the workhouse and parish officials dislike Oliver so strongly?
2. To what extent does Dickens achieve pathos in this chapter? To what extent
does he slip into bathos? What is the overall effect (if any) of any inconsistencies
in the chapter‛s emotional effect?
Chapter five
1. What observation about society and human nature does Dickens make with his
introduction of Noah into Oliver‛s sphere?
2. What overall idea is Dickens illustrating in his depiction of the dead woman‛s
funeral? List a few specific examples of this idea in the scene.
Chapter six
1. What exactly is Oliver‛s job with Mr. Sowerberry?
2. What criticism does Dickens levy against the funeral industry of his day? How
does this criticism echo the overall theme that is emerging?
3. What philosophical view does Dickens revisit when the narrator notes:
“I come to a very important passage in Oliver‛s history; for I have to record an
act, slight and unimportant perhaps in appearance, but which indirectly produced
a material change in all his future prospects and proceedings”?
4. What is the most likely explanation for Dickens‛s describing Noah‛s attempts
to make Oliver cry in this segment?
[Noah] entered upon various other topics of petty annoyance, like a malicious and
ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was…and in this attempt, did what many small
wits, with far greater reputations than Noah, sometimes do to this day, when
they want to be funny.
5. In what way is Oliver‛s response to Noah‛s taunting a turning point in his life?
How does it invite the reader to reassess one of the novel‛s primary themes?
6. What significant fact is Dickens revealing when he says that Noah‛s “top
waistcoat- button might have been somewhere on a level with the crown of
Oliver‛s head”? Why is this fact significant at this point in the story?
Chapter seven
1. Is Mr. Bumble‛s explanation for Oliver‛s behavior ironic? Why or why not?
2. How is Mrs. Sowerberry‛s response to Bumble: “ ‘Dear, dear!‛ ejaculated Mrs.
Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes to the kitchen ceiling: ‘this comes of being
liberal!‛ ” doubly ironic?
3. How does the awakening of Oliver‛s spirit that began in Chapter VI turn the
plot in a completely new direction?
Chapter eight
1. How do the opening paragraphs of this chapter advance the primary theme of
the novel?
2. Why is it important for Dickens to specify that the kindness of the turnpike
man and benevolent old lady “sank deeper into Oliver‛s soul, than all the sufferings
he had ever undergone”?
3. To what is Dawkins referring when he asks Oliver, “Was you never on the mill?”
4. What clues does Dickens provide about the identity of Jack Dawkins and the
gentlemen to whom he is going to introduce Oliver?
Chapter nine
1. What might Dickens‛s point be in referring to the “pleasant old gentleman” as
“the Jew”?
2. In the following passage, what and whom is Fagin talking about while inspecting
his treasure? Why does Dickens not specify who the “clever dogs” and “fine
fellows” are?
Clever dogs! Clever dogs! Staunch to the last! Never told the old parson where
they were. Never peached upon old Fagin! And why should they? It wouldn‛t have
loosened the knot, or kept the drop up, a minute longer. No, no, no! Fine fellows!
Fine fellows!
3. What is the most likely purpose of the game Oliver watches and then learns to
play?
Chapter ten
1. Explain the dramatic irony in Oliver‛s realization of what the boys‛ “work” is.
2. Explain the situational irony in the gentleman‛s attitude toward Oliver.
3. In what way(s) might Chapter X turn out to be the “very important chapter”
that Dickens promised in the chapter‛s argument?
Chapter eleven
1. What does Dickens achieve with the business about the book that Brownlow
forgot to pay for and Mr. Fang‛s accusation of theft?
2. What questions does the chapter raise to compel the reader to anticipate the
next month‛s installment?
3. This chapter is the conclusion of the fifth published installment. For what
possible reasons would Dickens want to end the installment on a lighthearted note?
What is the narrative and thematic significance of the bookseller‛s sudden
appearance and the resolution it leads to?
Chapter twelve
1. Do the opening paragraphs of this chapter achieve pathos or do they slip into
bathos? Why?
2. What effect does Dickens achieve in Oliver‛s conversation with the doctor?
What technique does Dickens use to achieve this effect?
3. Explain Dickens‛s point in describing the broth fed to the recuperating Oliver:
“strong enough…to furnish an ample dinner, when reduced to the regulation
strength, for three hundred and fifty paupers, at the lowest computation.”
4. What clues does Dickens provide to suggest that the portrait hanging in the
bedroom will prove significant later in the novel?
5. What is Dickens communicating about the chronology of the two timelines when
he writes:
Oliver knew not the cause of this sudden exclamation; for, not being strong
enough to bear the start it gave him, he fainted away. A weakness on his part,
which affords the narrative an opportunity of relieving the reader from suspense,
in behalf of the two young pupils of the Merry Old Gentleman; and of recording—
That when the Dodger, and his accomplished friend Master Bates, joined in the
hue-and-cry which was raised at Oliver‛s heels, in consequence of their executing
an illegal conveyance of Mr. Brownlow‛s personal property, as has been already
described…
Chapter thirteen
1. Since there is no change of scene or gap in the timeline between the end of
Chapter XII and the beginning of Chapter XIII, what are the likely reasons
Dickens has chosen to begin a new chapter here?
2. Why are Sikes and Fagin anxious about Oliver‛s whereabouts?
3. What can you determine about Sikes and Fagin?
4. What does the three-person exchange between Nancy, Sikes, and Fagin
suggest about Nancy? About Nancy‛s relationship with Sikes?
5. What point is Dickens stressing when he describes the three criminals
incarcerated in the police office jail? How does he emphasize the ridiculousness
of their situation?
Chapter fourteen
1. For what probable reason(s) would Dickens want to make it a point to mention
the portrait again so early in this chapter?
2. Explain the point Dickens is making about Grimwig and human nature in general
in the following:
It is worthy of remark, as illustrating the importance we attach to our own
judgments, and the pride with which we put forth our most rash and hasty
conclusions, that, although Mr. Grimwig was not by any means a bad-hearted man,
and though he would have been unfeignedly sorry to see his respected friend
duped and deceived, he really did most earnestly and strongly hope at that
moment, that Oliver Twist might not come back.
3. In addition to the humor provided by Grimwig‛s contentious, self-contradicting
character, how does Grimwig intensify the suspense and mystery of the story?
4. What information does the reader have from previous chapters that allows him
or her to speculate what has happened to Oliver?
Chapter fifteen
1. What narrative purpose does the opening episode of Sikes and his dog serve?
2. How does Nancy clarify the chronology of this plotline?
3. What do Fagin‛s and the waiter‛s secretive actions in the public house in Little
Saffron Hill suggest? How does Dickens establish that Fagin and the waiter are
communicating secretly?
4. When Fagin and Sikes are first talking, Dickens notes that Fagin was “obviously
very ill at ease.” Although the reason for Fagin‛s discomfort is never explicitly
revealed, what clues does Dickens provide throughout the chapter that might
point to an explanation of Fagin‛s mood?
5. How do the events of this chapter reinforce the theme that the nature and
circumstances of one‛s life are determined by fate?
Chapter sixteen
1. What does Dickens reveal about Nancy and Sikes in their exchange as they walk
through Smithfield and consider the convicts in nearby Newgate prison?
2. How does Dickens redeem Nancy and reveal her to be a character worthy of
the reader‛s sympathy?
3. What coincidence is revealed to have helped return Oliver to Fagin? How does
Dickens use this coincidence to support his theme about fate?
Chapter seventeen
1. What is especially ironic about the words describing this chapter?
2. Explain Dickens‛s thematic point in this chapter‛s introductory paragraphs.
3. What is Dickens‛s narrative purpose for these opening paragraphs?
4. Examine the word choice Dickens uses to depict Mr. Bumble‛s enormous girth.
5. How does the ending of this chapter present a more significant obstacle to
Oliver than the endings of previous chapters?
Carefully read the following passage from Chapter XVII of Charles Dickens‛s
Oliver Twist. Then, write a well-supported essay in which you argue whether the
prevailing emotional effect of this passage is pathos or bathos and then analyze
the techniques Dickens uses to achieve that effect.
“What‛s the matter with you, porochial Dick?” inquired Mr. Bumble, with welltimed jocularity.
“Nothing, sir,” replied the child faintly.
“I should think not,” said Mrs. Mann, who had of course laughed very much at Mr.
Bumble‛s humour. “You want for nothing, I‛m sure.”
“I should like—” faltered the child.
“Heyday!” interposed Mrs. Mann, “I suppose you‛re going to say that you do want
for something, now? Why, you little wretch—”
“Stop, Mrs. Mann, stop!” said the beadle, raising his hand with a show of authority.
“Like what, sir, eh?”
“I should like,” faltered the child, “if somebody that can write, would put a few
words down for me on a piece of paper, and fold it up and seal it, and keep it for
me, after I am laid in the ground.”
“Why, what does the boy mean?” exclaimed Mr. Bumble, on whom the earnest
manner and wan aspect of the child had made some impression: accustomed as he
was to such things. “What do you mean, sir?”
“I should like,” said the child, “to leave my dear love to poor Oliver Twist; and to
let him know how often I have sat by myself and cried to think of his wandering
about in the dark nights with nobody to help him. And I should like to tell him,”
said the child, pressing his small hands together, and speaking with great fervour,
“that I was glad to die when I was very young; for, perhaps, if I had lived to be a
man, and had grown old, my little sister who is in Heaven, might forget me, or be
unlike me; and it would be so much happier if we were both children there
together.”
Mr. Bumble surveyed the little speaker, from head to foot, with indescribable
astonishment; and, turning to his companion, said, “They‛re all in one story, Mrs.
Mann. That out-dacious Oliver has demogalized them all!”
“I couldn‛t have believed it, sir!” said Mrs. Mann, holding up her hands, and looking
malignantly at Dick. “I never see such a hardened little wretch!”
“Take him away, ma‛am!” said Mr. Bumble imperiously. “This must be stated to the
board, Mrs. Mann.”
“I hope the gentlemen will understand that it isn‛t my fault, sir?” said Mrs. Mann,
whimpering pathetically.
“They shall understand that, ma‛am; they shall be acquainted with the true state
of the case,” said Mr. Bumble. “There; take him away, I can‛t bear the sight on
him.”
Chapter eighteen
1. Judging from the way the word is used in the conversation with Charley, what
does the Dodger mean when he expresses the wish that Oliver were a prig?
2. What is the narrative purpose of this chapter, which neither advances the
action of the plot, further develops any of the main characters, nor provides
important exposition?
Chapter nineteen
1. What techniques does Dickens use to depict Fagin‛s and Sikes‛s mutual distrust?
2. What are Dickens‛s most likely reasons for devoting so much space to Fagin and
Sikes‛s plan?
3. What do the closing paragraphs of this chapter reveal about Fagin?
Chapter twenty
1. How does Dickens emphasize his earlier suggestion that Fagin might feel
genuine affection for Oliver?
2. Explain the Nancy/Oliver relationship.
Chapter twenty one
1. What is the double significance of this chapter‛s opening sentence: “It was a
cheerless morning?
2, What does Dickens achieve by narrating Sikes and Oliver‛s day-long journey in
such detail?
Chapter twenty two
1. Who is “the same individual who has been heretofore described as laboring
under the infirmity of speaking through his nose, and officiating as waiter at the
public-house on Saffron Hill”? What might his presence here suggest?
2. What effect does Dickens create in the paragraph in which he toys with
sentence structure and mechanics? How does Dickens‛s word choice contribute
to this effect?
The cry was repeated—a light appeared—a vision of two terrified half-dressed
men at the top of the stairs swam before his eyes—a flash—a loud noise—a
smoke—a crash somewhere, but where he knew not,—and he staggered back.
3. What fact is Dickens revealing when Sikes tells Crackit, “They‛ve hit him. Quick!
How the boy bleeds!”?
4. This chapter is the end of another monthly installment. How has Dickens
managed to produce a sense of rising action and increase the reader‛s suspense?
Chapter twenty three
1. Why has Dickens chosen to pause in his narrative to include this chapter about
Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Corney?
2. What does the announcement of “Old Sally‛s” deathbed confession suggest?
Who might Old Sally be?
3. What can be inferred from Mr. Bumble‛s actions, both before and after Mrs.
Corney is called away?
Carefully read the following passage from the Chapter XXIII of Charles
Dickens‛s Oliver Twist and then select the best answers to the multiple-choice
questions that follow.
“Well!” said the matron, leaning her elbow on the table, and looking reflectively
at the fire; “I‛m sure we have all on us a great deal to be grateful for! A great
deal, if we did but know it. Ah!”
Mrs. Corney shook her head mournfully, as if deploring the mental blindness of
those paupers who did not know it; and thrusting a silver spoon (private property)
into the inmost recesses of a two-ounce tin tea-caddy, proceeded to make the
tea.
How slight a thing will disturb the equanimity of our frail minds! The black teapot,
being very small and easily filled, ran over while Mrs. Corney was moralising; and
the water slightly scalded Mrs. Corney‛s hand.
“Drat the pot!” said the worthy matron, setting it down very hastily on the hob;
“a little stupid thing, that only holds a couple of cups! What use is it of, to anybody!
Except,” said Mrs. Corney, pausing, “except to a poor desolate creature like me.
Oh dear!”
With these words, the matron dropped into her chair, and, once more resting her
elbow on the table, thought of her solitary fate. The small teapot, and the single
cup, had awakened in her mind sad recollections of Mr. Corney (who had not been
dead more than five-and-twenty years); and she was overpowered.
“I shall never get another!” said Mrs. Corney, pettishly; “I shall never get
another—like him.”
Whether this remark bore reference to the husband, or the teapot, is uncertain.
It might have been the latter; for Mrs. Corney looked at it as she spoke; and took
it up afterwards. She had just tasted her first cup, when she was disturbed by a
soft tap at the room-door.
“Oh, come in with you!” said Mrs. Corney, sharply. “Some of the old women dying,
I suppose. They always die when I‛m at meals. Don‛t stand there, letting the cold
air in, don‛t. What‛s amiss now, eh?”
“Nothing, ma‛am, nothing,” replied a man‛s voice.
“Dear me!” exclaimed the matron, in a much sweeter tone, “is that Mr. Bumble?”
“At your service, ma‛am,” said Mr. Bumble, who had been stopping outside to rub
his shoes clean, and to shake the snow off his coat; and who now made his
appearance, bearing the cocked hat in one hand and a bundle in the other. “Shall
I shut the door, ma‛am?”
The lady modestly hesitated to reply, lest there should be any impropriety in
holding an interview with Mr. Bumble, with closed doors. Mr. Bumble taking
advantage of the hesitation, and being very cold himself, shut it without
permission.
“Hard weather, Mr. Bumble,” said the matron.
“Hard, indeed, ma‛am,” replied the beadle. “Anti-porochial weather this, ma‛am.
We have given away, Mrs. Corney, we have given away a matter of twenty quartern
loaves and a cheese and a half, this very blessed afternoon; and yet them paupers
are not contented.”
“Of course not. When would they be, Mr. Bumble?” said the matron, sipping her
tea.
“When, indeed, ma‛am,” rejoined Mr. Bumble. “Why here‛s one man that, in
consideration of his wife and large family, has a quartern loaf and a good pound
of cheese, full weight. Is he grateful, ma‛am? Is he grateful? Not a copper
farthing‛s worth of it! What does he do, ma‛am, but ask for a few coals; if it‛s only
a pocket handkerchief full, he says! Coals! What would he do with coals? Toast
his cheese with ‛em, and then come back for more. That‛s the way with these
people, ma‛am; give ‛em a apron full of coals to-day, and they‛ll come back for
another, the day after to-morrow, as brazen as alabaster.”
The matron expressed her entire concurrence in this intelligible smile; and the
beadle went on.
“I never,” said Mr. Bumble, “see anything like the pitch it‛s got to. The day afore
yesterday, a man—you have been a married woman, ma‛am, and I may mention it
to you—a man, with hardly a rag upon his back (here Mrs. Corney looked at the
floor), goes to our overseer‛s door when he has got company coming to dinner; and
says, he must be relieved, Mrs. Corney. As he wouldn‛t go away, and shocked the
company very much, our overseer sent him out a pound of potatoes and half a pint
of oatmeal. ‘My heart!‛ says the ungrateful villain, ‘what‛s the use of this to me?
You might as well give me a pair of iron spectacles!‛ ‘Very good,‛ says our overseer,
taking ‛em away again, ‘you won‛t get anything else here.‛ ‘Then I‛ll die in the
streets!‛ says the vagrant. ‘Oh no, you won‛t,‛ says our overseer.
“Ha! ha! That was very good! So like Mr. Grannett, wasn‛t it?” interposed the
matron. “Well, Mr. Bumble?”
“Well, ma‛am,” rejoined the beadle, “he went away; and he did die in the streets.
There‛s a obstinate pauper for you!”
“It beats anything I could have believed,” observed the matron emphatically. “But
don‛t you think out-of-door relief a very bad thing, any way, Mr. Bumble? You‛re
a gentleman of experience, and ought to know. Come.”
“Mrs. Corney,” said the beadle, smiling as men smile who are conscious of superior
information, “out-of-door relief, properly managed: properly managed, ma‛am: is
the porochial safeguard. The great principle of out-of-door relief is, to give the
paupers exactly what they don‛t want; and then they get tired of coming.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Corney. “Well, that is a good one, too!”
11.
12.
This passage contains all of the following EXCEPT
A.
caricature.
B.
stereotype.
C.
hyperbole.
D.
situational irony.
E.
verbal irony.
Dickens juxtaposes the glimpse of Mrs. Corney at tea and Mr. Bumble‛s
visit in order to
A.
contrast her simple lifestyle with his.
B.
depict both Mrs. Corney‛s personal and professional lives.
C.
evoke reader sympathy for Mrs. Corney.
13.
14.
D.
suggest a companionable relationship between them.
E.
emphasize the loneliness of the workhouse.
When Mr. Brumble calls the weather “anti-porochial,” he most likely means
A.
not suited to his personal taste.
B.
unexpectedly harsh.
C.
not conducive to social visits.
D.
cruel to the poor and homeless.
E.
disadvantageous to the parish.
Which of the following best summarizes Mr. Bumble‛s point in his story
about the beggar who died?
15.
A.
Charity begins at home.
B.
Relief for the poor is best found in the workhouse.
C.
Beggars should be grateful for whatever they get.
D.
Relief should go only to the deserving.
E.
The poor usually cause their own poverty.
What Victorian social attitude is Dickens highlighting and mocking in this
passage?
A.
middle-class indifference
B.
institutional obliviousness
C.
lower-class entitlement
D.
generosity of spirit
E.
humble gratitude
Chapter twenty four
1. What important revelation does Old Sally make? How might this revelation alter
the course of the novel?
Chapter twenty five
1. The next three chapters make up an entire monthly installment. Why have none
of the chapters dealt with Oliver and Sikes and the foiled burglary attempt?
What effect does Dickens achieve by ending this installment with the arrival of
Toby Crackit and the information he provides?
Chapter twenty six
1. Who is the “mysterious character” Dickens refers to in the title of the chapter?
Why is the “mysterious”?
2. How did the character called “Monks” learn that Oliver was associated with
Fagin? What effect has he already had on events in the plot?
3. What might Fagin‛s claim that Oliver is “worth hundreds of pounds to me” have
to do with the new character?
Chapter twenty seven
1. What ironic claims does the narrator “humbly” declare in the opening paragraph?
In what way(s) are these claims ironic?
2. In what ways is Mr. Bumble‛s proposal humorous? What elements of social
criticism does it imply?
3. What does the “love scene” between Charlotte and Noah reveal about Bumble;
how does it advance the social criticism of this chapter?
The following passage, from Chapter XXVIII, relates the pursuit of the three
would-be house-breakers, focusing on the pursuers. Carefully read the passage;
then, write a thoughtful, well-supported essay in which you analyze the techniques
Dickens uses to create humor in the passage and explain the role humor is
intended to play at this juncture in the narrative.
Do not merely summarize the passage.
At this moment the noise grew louder. Sikes, again looking round, could discern
that the men who had given chase were already climbing the gate of the field in
which he stood; and that a couple of dogs were some paces in advance of them.
“It‛s all up, Bill!” cried Toby; “drop the kid, and show ‛em your heels.” With this
parting advice, Mr. Crackit, preferring the chance of being shot by his friend, to
the certainty of being taken by his enemies, fairly turned tail, and darted off at
full speed. Sikes clenched his teeth; took one look around; threw over the
prostrate form of Oliver the cape in which he had been hurriedly muffled; ran
along the front of the hedge, as if to distract the attention of those behind, from
the spot where the boy lay; paused, for a second, before another hedge which
met it at right angles; and whirling his pistol high into the air, cleared it at a
bound, and was gone.
“Ho, ho, there!” cried a tremulous voice in the rear. “Pincher! Neptune! Come here,
come here!”
The dogs, who, in common with their masters, seemed to have no particular relish
for the sport in which they were engaged, readily answered to the command.
Three men, who had by this time advanced some distance into the field, stopped
to take counsel together.
“My advice, or, leastways, I should say, my orders, is,” said the fattest man of
the party, “that we ‛mediately go home again.”
“I am, agreeable to anything which is agreeable to Mr. Giles,” said a shorter man;
who was by no means of a slim figure, and who was very pale in the face, and very
polite: as frightened men frequently are.
“I shouldn‛t wish to appear ill-mannered, gentlemen,” said the third, who had
called the dogs back, “Mr. Giles ought to know.”
“Certainly,” replied the shorter man; “and whatever Mr. Giles says, it isn‛t our
place to contradict him. No, no, I know my sitiwation! Thank my stars, I know my
sitiwation.” To tell the truth, the little man did seem to know his situation, and to
know perfectly well that it was by no means a desirable one; for his teeth
chattered in his head as he spoke.
“You are afraid, Brittles,” said Mr. Giles.
“I an‛t,” said Brittles.
“You are,” said Giles.
“You‛re a falsehood, Mr. Giles,” said Brittles.
“You‛re a lie, Brittles,” said Mr. Giles.
Now, these four retorts arose from Mr. Giles‛s taunt; and Mr. Giles‛s taunt had
arisen from his indignation at having the responsibility of going home again,
imposed upon himself under cover of a compliment. The third man brought the
dispute to a close, most philosophically.
“I‛ll tell you what it is, gentlemen,” said he, “we‛re all afraid.”
“Speak for yourself, sir.” said Mr. Giles, who was the palest of the party.
“So I do,” replied the man. “It‛s natural and proper to be afraid, under such
circumstances. I am.”
“So am I,” said Brittles; “only there‛s no call to tell a man he is, so bounceably.”
These frank admissions softened Mr. Giles, who at once owned that he was afraid;
upon which, they all three faced about, and ran back again with the completest
unanimity, until Mr. Giles (who had the shortest wind of the party, and was
encumbered with a pitchfork) most handsomely insisted on stopping, to make an
apology for his hastiness of speech.
“But it‛s wonderful,” said Mr. Giles, when he had explained, “what a man will do,
when his blood is up. I should have committed murder—I know I should—if we‛d
caught one of them rascals.”
As the other two were impressed with a similar presentiment; and as their blood,
like his, had all gone down again; some speculation ensued upon the cause of this
sudden change in their temperament.
“I know what it was,” said Mr. Giles; “it was the gate.”
“I shouldn‛t wonder if it was,” exclaimed Brittles, catching at the idea.
“You may depend upon it,” said Giles, “that that gate stopped the flow of the
excitement. I felt all mine suddenly going away, as I was climbing over it.
By a remarkable coincidence, the other two had been visited with the same
unpleasant sensation at that precise moment. It was quite obvious, therefore,
that it was the gate; especially as there was no doubt regarding the time at which
the change had taken place, because all three remembered that they had come in
sight of the robbers at the instant of its occurrence.
This dialogue was held between the two men who had surprised the burglars, and
a travelling tinker who had been sleeping in an outhouse, and who had been roused,
together with his two mongrel curs, to join in the pursuit. Mr. Giles acted in the
double capacity of butler and steward to the old lady of the mansion; Brittles was
a lad of all-work: who, having entered her service a mere child, was treated as a
promising young boy still, though he was something past thirty.
Encouraging each other with such converse as this; but, keeping very close
together, notwithstanding, and looking apprehensively round, whenever a fresh
gust rattled through the boughs; the three men hurried back to a tree, behind
which they had left their lantern, lest its light should inform the thieves in what
direction to fire. Catching up the light, they made the best of their way home, at
a good round trot; and long after their dusky forms had ceased to be discernible,
the light might have been seen twinkling and dancing in the distance, like some
exhalation of the damp and gloomy atmosphere through which it was swiftly borne.
Chapter twenty eight
1. Compare Toby Crackit‛s desertion with Bill Sikes‛s. In what way(s) is Sikes a
more sympathetic character?
2. How does Dickens portray the three pursuers as “clowns”?
3. What does the aunt‛s instructions for how to treat Oliver suggest about her
character?
4. In what opposite directions might the plot go after the end of this chapter?
5. What ironic comment does the narrator insert regarding Oliver‛s condition?
Twenty nine
1. How is Giles‛s pride in injuring and apprehending the previous night‛s burglar
ironic? How does this pride affect the reader‛s impression of him?
Chapter thirty
1. How does Dickens manage to maintain suspense about the women‛s first view of
their burglar when the reader already knows that Oliver is a child?
2. What does Rose reveal about herself with her compassion for Oliver?
3. Who can the reader infer are the Bow Street Officers? On what note does
their arrival end this installment?
Chapter thirty one
1. What clues does Dickens provide in this chapter to either confirm or refute
the reader‛s inference about who the B ow Street Officers are?
2. Analyze the structure and wording of the following sentence. What effect does
this sentence help Dickens create?
Lights were then procured; and Messrs. Blathers and Duff, attended by the
native constable, Brittles, Giles, and everybody else in short, went into the little
room at the end of the passage and looked out at the window; and afterwards
went round by way of the lawn, and looked in at the window; and after that, had
a candle handed out to inspect the shutter with; and after that, a lantern to trace
the footsteps with; and after that, a pitchfork to poke the bushes with.
3. What is Dickens implying at the end of the chapter when he relates that the
investigation of the Maylie robbery was concluded when “a neighboring magistrate
was readily induced to take the joint bail of Mrs. Maylie and Mr. Losberne for
Oliver‛s appearance if he should ever be called upon; and Blathers and Duff, being
rewarded with a couple guineas, returned to town”?
Chapter thirty two
1. What is the tone of the opening paragraph of this chapter? What word choice
results in this tone?
2. What does the parting glance the hump-backed man casts at Oliver suggest?
Why?
3. What emerges as Oliver‛s chief virtue? How is this especially evidenced in this
chapter?
4. As this chapter is again the end of a monthly installment, what is the narrative
function of the last several paragraphs? What should the reader expect in the
next month‛s installment?
Chapter thirty three
1. What philosophical/theological question does Dickens touch on at the beginning
of Rose‛s illness? Which view does Dickens seem to hold?
2. How do the events of Oliver‛s stay with Mrs. Maylie echo those of his stay with
Brownlow?
3. What does Dickens most likely intend the reader to suspect about the
mysterious man Oliver encounters outside of the inn?
4. Analyze the device Dickens uses to create the narrative tone of his description
of Rose‛s illness. How effective is this tone in intensifying reader sympathy for
the characters and situation?
Chapter thirty four
1. How might Dickens have intended the opening few paragraphs to misdirect the
reader‛s expectations for the plot? How has he set up the probable success of
this misdirection?
2. By what steps does Dickens introduce Harry Maylie? What does Dickens
achieve by introducing this character so gradually?
3. How does the presence of Harry Maylie advance Dickens‛s criticism of social
class bias? Recall when Dickens first broached this theme.
4. On what foreboding note does Dickens end this chapter, which is also the end
of another monthly installment? How does the detail of Oliver‛s awaking from a
dream affect the suspense?
Chapter thirty five
1. To what extent does this chapter begin to resolve the suspense on which the
previous chapter ended?
2. Briefly summarize Rose‛s reasons for declining Harry Maylie‛s proposal.
3. What narrative possibility is Dickens setting up by having Rose promise to allow
Harry to propose once more in a year?
Chapter thirty six
1. What is Dickens promising when he says that this chapter “should be read…as
a sequel to the last, and a key to one that will follow when its time arrives”?
Chapter thirty seven
1. What observation is Dickens making when he writes “Dignity, and even holiness
too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people
imagine”? How does this observation apply to Mr. Bumble himself?
2. What facts about the Bumble marriage does this chapter reveal? Why are
these facts significant?
3. In what ironic way does this chapter provide an epiphany to Bumble?
4. From the description Dickens provides (“The man who was seated there, was
tall and dark, and wore a large cloak. He had the air of a stranger; and seemed,
by a certain haggardness in his look, as well as by the dusty soils on his dress, to
have travelled some distance.”), who might the reader infer the stranger, Monks,
is?
Chapter thirty eight
1. How does the weather contribute to the overall melodramatic nature of the
novel?
2. What is the possible significance of the wedding ring Mrs. Bumble collected
from the pawnbroker? Why would Dickens want to open up the possibility
suggested by the ring?
3. What is suggested by Monks‛s actions after the revelation of the ring?
Chapter thirty nine
1. What is the most likely explanation for Sikes‛s “having gone down in the world”
that is apparent at the beginning of this chapter?
2. Explain the humor in Dickens‛s description of Nancy‛s revival.
3. What social theme does Nancy‛s reception at the family‛s hotel in Hyde Park
emphasize? What is ironic about her reception?
Chapter forty
1. What is Dickens claiming when he calls pride “the vice of the lowest and most
debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured”?
2. In what ways are Rose and Nancy foils for one another? How does their meeting
in this chapter highlight their similarities and differences? How does their
comparison support Dickens‛s social criticism?
3. What important information is revealed in this chapter?
Chapter forty one
1. What is the primary narrative function of this chapter?
Chapter forty two
1. Explain how Dickens establishes Noah Claypole‛s character from his
reintroduction at the beginning of this chapter.
2. Explain the ambiguity in Fagin‛s telling Noah that he must give up the money he
stole. What does Dickens most likely want the reader to suspect?
Chapter forty three
1. How does Dickens give the reader reason to laugh at Noah‛s expense? Explain
the sinister note that underlies the humor.
2. What does the Artful Dodger‛s arrest signal to the reader about the progress
of the novel‛s plot?
3. Explain the ironic humor in Fagin and Charley‛s conversation about the Dodger‛s
arrest and pending trial.
4. How does the Artful Dodger‛s trial and conviction contrast with Oliver‛s earlier
one? How do the differences provide some evidence of the motif of poetic justice?
The following is excerpted from Chapter XLIII of Charles Dickens‛s Oliver Twist.
Carefully read the excerpt and then select the best answers to the multiplechoice questions that follow.
“It‛s all up, Fagin,” said Charley, when he and his new companion had been made
known to each other.
“What do you mean?”
“They‛ve found the gentleman as owns the box; two or three more‛s a coming
to ‛dentify him; and the Artful‛s booked for a passage out,” replied Master Bates.
“I must have a full suit of mourning, Fagin, and a hatband, to wisit him in, afore
he sets out upon his travels. To think of Jack Dawkins—lummy Jack—the
Dodger—the Artful Dodger—going abroad for a common twopenny-halfpenny
sneeze-box! I never thought he‛d a done it under a gold watch, chain, and seals,
at the lowest. Oh, why didn‛t he rob some rich old gentleman of all his walables,
and go out as a gentleman, and not like a common prig, without no honour nor glory!”
With this expression of feeling for his unfortunate friend, Master Bates sat
himself on the nearest chair with an aspect of chagrin and despondency.
“What do you talk about his having neither honour nor glory for?” exclaimed Fagin,
darting an angry look at his pupil. “Wasn‛t he always top-sawyer among you all! Is
there one of you that could touch him or come near him on any scent! Eh?”
“Not one,” replied Master Bates, in a voice rendered husky by regret; “not one.”
“Then what do you talk of?” replied Fagin angrily; “what are you blubbering for?”
“’Cause it isn‛t on the rec-ord, is it?” said Charley, chafed into perfect defiance
of his venerable friend by the current of his regrets; “‛cause it can‛t come out in
the ‛dictment; ‛cause nobody will never know half of what he was. How will he stand
in the Newgate Calendar? P‛raps not be there at all. Oh, my eye, my eye, wot a
blow it is!”
“Ha! ha!” cried Fagin, extending his right hand, and turning to Mr. Bolter in a fit
of chuckling which shook him as though he had the palsy; “see what a pride they
take in their profession, my dear. Ain‛t it beautiful?”
Mr. Bolter nodded assent; and Fagin, after contemplating the grief of Charley
Bates for some seconds with evident satisfaction, stepped up to that young
gentleman and patted him on the shoulder.
“Never mind, Charley,” said Fagin soothingly; “it‛ll come out, it‛ll be sure to come
out. They‛ll all know what a clever fellow he was; he‛ll show it himself, and not
disgrace his old pals and teachers. Think how young he is, too! What a distinction,
Charley, to be lagged at his time of life!”
“Well, it is a honour that is!” said Charley, a little consoled.
“He shall have all he wants,” continued the Jew. “He shall be kept in the Stone
Jug, Charley, like a gentleman. Like a gentleman! With his beer every day, and
money in his pocket to pitch and toss with, if he can‛t spend it.”
“No, shall he though?” cried Charley Bates.
“Ay, that he shall,” replied Fagin, “and we‛ll have a big-wig, Charley: one that‛s got
the greatest gift of the gab: to carry on his defence; and he shall make a speech
for himself too, if he likes; and we‛ll read it all in the papers— ‘Artful Dodger—
shrieks of laughter—here the court was convulsed‛—eh, Charley, eh?”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Master Bates, “what a lark that would be, wouldn‛t it, Fagin? I
say, how the Artful would bother em, wouldn‛t he?”
“Would!” cried Fagin. “He shall—he will!”
“Ah, to be sure, so he will,” repeated Charley, rubbing his hands.
“I think I see him now,” cried the Jew, bending his eyes upon his pupil.
“So do I,” cried Charley Bates. ‘Ha! ha! ha! so do I. I see it all afore me, upon my
soul I do, Fagin. What a game! What a regular game! All the big-wigs trying to look
solemn, and Jack Dawkins addressing of ‛em as intimate and comfortable as if he
was the judge‛s own son making a speech arter dinner—ha! ha! ha!”
In fact, Mr. Fagin had so well humoured his young friend‛s eccentric disposition,
that Master Bates, who had at first been disposed to consider the imprisoned
Dodger rather in the light of a victim, now looked upon him as the chief actor in
a scene of most uncommon and exquisite humour, and felt quite impatient for the
arrival of the time when his old companion should have so favourable an
opportunity of displaying his abilities.
“We must know how he gets on to-day, by some handy means or other,” said Fagin.
“Let me think.”
“Shall I go?” asked Charley.
16.
17.
The chief source of Charley‛s grief is that the Dodger
A.
has witnesses against him.
B.
will not receive the credit he is due.
C.
was caught because of a foolish error.
D.
is too young to be punished so severely.
E.
will confess to all of his crimes.
What do the clues provided in the beginning of this passage suggest is
going to be the Artful Dodger‛s sentence if convicted?
18.
19.
A.
life imprisonment
B.
public humiliation in Newgate
C.
transportation to a penal colony
D.
hanging
E.
hard labor
The primary source of humor in this scene is
A.
ambiguity.
B.
irony.
C.
wordplay.
D.
paradox.
E.
gullibility.
Fagin‛s words and actions in this passage reveal him to be
A.
abusive.
B.
imprudent.
20.
C.
unintelligent.
D.
deceitful.
E.
careless.
As it is used in the third paragraph of this passage, the word prig most
likely means
A.
thief.
B.
prude.
C.
dilettante.
D.
imposter.
E.
novice.
Chapter forty four
1. What does Nancy‛s inner turmoil at the beginning of this chapter suggest to
the reader about her character? What does it suggest about the character of
those considered low and immoral by society?
2. How does Nancy‛s altercation with Sikes propel the plot still closer to its climax?
3. How is Sikes‛s decision to “let [Nancy] a little blood, without troubling the
doctor” if she has another show of rebellious behavior ambiguous? What might
this offer foreshadow?
4. What new complication is revealed at the end of this chapter?
Read the following passage from Chapter XLIV. Then, write a well-supported
essay in which you analyze the techniques Dickens uses to convey the subtle
complexities of the relationships between Fagin and Sikes, Sikes and Nancy, and
Fagin and Nancy.
Do not merely describe each of the relationships.
Fagin offered no reply to this compliment; but, pulling Sikes by the sleeve, pointed
his finger towards Nancy, who had taken advantage of the foregoing conversation
to put on her bonnet, and was now leaving the room.
“Hallo!” cried Sikes. “Nance. Where‛s the gal going to at this time of night?”
“Not far.”
“What answer‛s that?” returned Sikes. “Where are you going?”
“I say, not far.”
“And I say where?” retorted Sikes. “Do you hear me?”
“I don‛t know where,” replied the girl.
“Then I do,” said Sikes, more in the spirit of obstinancy than because he had any
real objection to the girl going where she listed. “Nowhere. Sit down.”
“I‛m not well. I told you that before,” rejoined the girl. “I want a breath of air.”
“Put your head out of the winder,” replied Sikes.
“There‛s not enough there,” said the girl. “I want it in the street.”
“Then you won‛t have it,” replied Sikes. With which assurance he rose, locked the
door, took the key out, and pulling her bonnet from her head, flung it up to the
top of an old press. “There,” said the robber. “Now stop quietly where you are,
will you?”
“It‛s not such a matter as a bonnet would keep me,” said the girl turning very pale.
“What do you mean, Bill? Do you know what you‛re doing?”
“Know what I‛m—Oh!” cried Sikes turning to Fagin, “she‛s out of her senses, you
know, or she daren‛t talk to me in that way.”
“You‛ll drive me on to something desperate,” muttered the girl, placing both hands
upon her breast, as though to keep down by force some violent outbreak. “Let me
go, will you,—this minute—this instant.”
“No!” said Sikes.
“Tell him to let me go, Fagin. He had better. It‛ll be better for him. Do you hear
me?” cried Nancy stamping her foot upon the ground.
“Hear you!” repeated Sikes turning round in his chair to confront her. “Aye! And
if I hear you for half a minute longer, the dog shall have such a grip on your throat
as‛ll tear some of that screaming voice out. Wot has come over you, you jade! Wot
is it?”
“Let me go,” said the girl with great earnestness; then sitting herself down on the
floor, before the door, she said, “Bill, let me go; you don‛t know what you are doing.
You don‛t, indeed. For only one hour—do—do!”
“Cut my limbs off one by one!” cried Sikes, seizing her roughly by the arm, “if I
don‛t think the gal‛s stark raving mad. Get up.”
“Not till you let me go—not till you let me go—Never—never!” screamed the girl.
Sikes looked on, for a minute, watching his opportunity, and suddenly pinioning her
hands dragged her, struggling and wrestling with him by the way, into a small room
adjoining, where he sat himself on a bench, and thrusting her into a chair, held
her down by force. She struggled and implored by turns until twelve o‛clock had
struck, and then, wearied and exhausted, ceased to contest the point any further.
With a caution, backed by many oaths, to make no more efforts to go out that
night, Sikes left her to recover at leisure and rejoined Fagin.
“Whew!” said the housebreaker, wiping the perspiration from his face. “Wot a
precious strange gal that is!”
“You may say that, Bill,” replied Fagin thoughtfully. “You may say that.”
“Wot did she take it into her head to go out to-night for, do you think?” asked
Sikes. “Come; you should know her better than me. Wot does it mean?”
“Obstinacy; woman‛s obstinacy, I suppose, my dear.”
“Well, I suppose it is,” growled Sikes. “I thought I had tamed her, but she‛s as
bad as ever.”
“Worse,” said Fagin thoughtfully. “I never knew her like this, for such a little
cause.”
“Nor I,” said Sikes. “I think she‛s got a touch of that fever in her blood yet, and
it won‛t come out—eh?”
“Like enough.”
“I‛ll let her a little blood, without troubling the doctor, if she‛s took that way
again,” said Sikes.
Fagin nodded an expressive approval of this mode of treatment.
“She was hanging about me all day, and night too, when I was stretched on my
back; and you, like a blackhearted wolf as you are, kept yourself aloof,” said Sikes.
“We was very poor too, all the time, and I think, one way or other, it‛s worried
and fretted her; and that being shut up here so long has made her restless—eh?”
“That‛s it, my dear,” replied the Jew in a whisper. “Hush!”
As he uttered these words, the girl herself appeared and resumed her former
seat. Her eyes were swollen and red; she rocked herself to and fro; tossed her
head; and, after a little time, burst out laughing.
“Why, now she‛s on the other tack!” exclaimed Sikes, turning a look of excessive
surprise on his companion.
Fagin nodded to him to take no further notice just then; and, in a few minutes,
the girl subsided into her accustomed demeanour. Whispering Sikes that there
was no fear of her relapsing, Fagin took up his hat and bade him good-night. He
paused when he reached the room-door, and looking round, asked if somebody
would light him down the dark stairs.
“Light him down,” said Sikes, who was filling his pipe. “It‛s a pity he should break
his neck himself, and disappoint the sight-seers. Show him a light.”
Nancy followed the old man down stairs, with a candle. When they reached the
passage, he laid his finger on his lip, and drawing close to the girl, said, in a whisper,
“What is it, Nancy, dear?”
“What do you mean?” replied the girl, in the same tone.
“The reason of all this,” replied Fagin. “If he”—he pointed with his skinny forefinger up the stairs—“is so hard with you (he‛s a brute, Nance, a brute-beast),
why don‛t you—”
“Well?” said the girl, as Fagin paused, with his mouth almost touching her ear, and
his eyes looking into hers.
“No matter just now. We‛ll talk of this again. You have a friend in me, Nance; a
staunch friend. I have the means at hand, quiet and close. If you want revenge on
those that treat you like a dog—like a dog! worse than his dog, for he humours
him sometimes—come to me. I say, come to me. He is the mere hound of a day,
but you know me of old, Nance.
“I know you well,” replied the girl, without manifesting the least emotion. “Good
night.”
She shrank back, as Fagin offered to lay his hand on hers, but said good night
again, in a steady voice, and, answering his parting look with a nod of intelligence,
closed the door between them.
Chapter forty five
1. What narrative purpose does this chapter serve?
Chapter forty six
1. What techniques does Dickens use to create the general atmosphere of this
chapter?
2. Again, what does Nancy‛s insistence that Fagin not be arrested reveal about
her character?
3. What earlier facts and details are given a new context when Mr. Brownlow
suddenly realizes he might know who Monks is?
4. How does Dickens once again digress toward propaganda and bathos in this
chapter?
Chapter forty seven
1. What does Dickens achieve by having Sikes kill Nancy? How does this episode
appeal to Dickens‛s readers‛ Victorian morality?
2. What is significant about the fact that Sikes‛s anger is essentially founded on
a lie?
3. Why would Dickens choose to begin a monthly installment with Nancy‛s murder
rather than end an installment with such an event?
Read the following passage from Chapter XLVII. Then, write a well-supported
essay in which you evaluate the effectiveness and necessity of a scene of graphic
violence in establishing characters and advancing to plot of the novel.
Make certain your essay does not merely state and explain an opinion.
The word would not have been exchanged, but that the housebreaker was unable
to open the door: on which he was expending fruitless oaths and violence, when
the Jew came panting up.
“Let me out,” said Sikes. “Don‛t speak to me; it‛s not safe. Let me out, I say!”
“Hear me speak a word,” rejoined Fagin, laying his hand upon the lock. “You won‛t
be—”
“Well,” replied the other.
“You won‛t be—too—violent, Bill?”
The day was breaking, and there was light enough for the men to see each other‛s
faces. They exchanged one brief glance; there was a fire in the eyes of both,
which could not be mistaken.
“I mean,” said Fagin, showing that he felt all disguise was now useless, “not too
violent for safety. Be crafty, Bill, and not too bold.”
Sikes made no reply; but, pulling open the door, of which Fagin had turned the
lock, dashed into the silent streets.
Without one pause, or moment‛s consideration; without once turning his head to
the right or left, or raising his eyes to the sky, or lowering them to the ground,
but looking straight before him with savage resolution: his teeth so tightly
compressed that the strained jaw seemed starting through his skin; the robber
held on his headlong course, nor muttered a word, nor relaxed a muscle, until he
reached his own door. He opened it, softly, with a key; strode lightly up the stairs;
and entering his own room, double-locked the door, and lifting a heavy table
against it, drew back the curtain of the bed.
The girl was lying, half-dressed, upon it. He had roused her from her sleep, for
she raised herself with a hurried and startled look.
“Get up!” said the man.
“It is you, Bill!” said the girl, with an expression of pleasure at his return.
“It is,” was the reply. “Get up.”
There was a candle burning, but the man hastily drew it from the candlestick, and
hurled it under the grate. Seeing the faint light of early day without, the girl rose
to undraw the curtain.
“Let it be,” said Sikes, thrusting his hand before her. “There‛s light enough for
wot I‛ve got to do.”
“Bill,” said the girl, in the low voice of alarm, “why do you look like that at me!”
The robber sat regarding her, for a few seconds, with dilated nostrils and heaving
breast; and then, grasping her by the head and throat, dragged her into the
middle of the room, and looking once towards the door, placed his heavy hand upon
her mouth.
“Bill, Bill!” gasped the girl, wrestling with the strength of mortal fear,—“I—I won‛t
scream or cry—not once—hear me—speak to me—tell me what I have done!”
“You know, you she devil!” returned the robber, suppressing his breath. “You were
watched to-night; every word you said was heard.”
“Then spare my life for the love of Heaven, as I spared yours,” rejoined the girl,
clinging to him. “Bill, dear Bill, you cannot have the heart to kill me. Oh! think of
all I have given up, only this one night, for you. You shall have time to think, and
save yourself this crime; I will not loose my hold, you cannot throw me off. Bill,
Bill, for dear God‛s sake, for your own, for mine, stop before you spill my blood! I
have been true to you, upon my guilty soul I have!”
The man struggled violently to release his arms; but those of the girl were clasped
round his, and tear her as he would, he could not tear them away.
“Bill,” cried the girl, striving to lay her head upon his breast, “the gentleman and
that dear lady, told me to-night of a home in some foreign country where I could
end my days in solitude and peace. Let me see them again, and beg them, on my
knees, to show the same mercy and goodness to you; and this dreadful place, and
far apart lead better lives, and forget how we have lived, except in prayers, and
never see each other more. It is never too late to repent. They told me so—I feel
it now—but we must have time—a little, little time!”
The housebreaker freed one arm, and grasped his pistol. The certainty of
immediate detection if he fired, flashed across his mind even in the midst of his
fury; and he beat it twice with all the force he could summon, upon the upturned
face that almost touched his own.
She staggered and fell: nearly blinded with the blood that rained down from a
deep gash in her forehead; but raising herself, with difficulty, on her knees, drew
from her bosom a white handkerchief—Rose Maylie‛s own—and holding it up, in
her folded hands, as high towards Heaven as her feeble strength would allow,
breathed one prayer for mercy to her Maker.
It was a ghastly figure to look upon. The murderer staggering backward to the
wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand, seized a heavy club and struck her
down.
Chapter forty eight
1. What image is Dickens conveying with the summative “And there was the body—
mere flesh and blood, no more—but such flesh, and so much blood”?
2. What point of Dickens‛s social criticism does the conversation Sikes overhears
at the post office illustrate? How does this conversation illustrate this point?
3. Explain the joke the guard makes while waiting for the mail bag. What does
Dickens achieve by having the character make a joke in this episode?
4. How can the episode with the fire be seen as a counterpoint to Nancy‛s murder?
What point about Sikes does the conclusion of this episode suggest?
Chapter forty nine
1. How does this chapter reveal a side of Mr. Brownlow that Dickens has not yet
shown before?
2. What unexpected impact is Nancy‛s murder going to have on the plot?
3. What is the solution to the mystery of Oliver‛s identity? How did Oliver come
to be born under such questionable circumstances?
4. What effect does Dickens intend to achieve by contriving such coincidences as
Leeford‛s wife arriving in Paris only a day before his death and the naval officer‛s
family leaving their home only a week before Brownlow arrived there?
5. To what is Mr. Brownlow referring when he says that Oliver “was cast in [his]
way by a stronger hand than chance”?
6. How does this chapter constitute the climax of the novel?
Chapter fifty
1. For what likely reason has Dickens chosen such an extremely squalid
neighborhood for the setting of this chapter?
2. In what ways would Sikes‛s death have satisfied Dickens‛s Victorian readers‛
sense of justice?
Carefully read the following passage from the Chapter L of Charles Dickens‛s
Oliver Twist and then select the best answers to the multiple-choice questions
that follow.
Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where
the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with
the dust of colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed houses, there exists
the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that
are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its
inhabitants.
To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of close, narrow,
and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of waterside people,
and devoted to the traffic they may be supposed to occasion. The cheapest and
least delicate provisions are heaped in the shops; the coarsest and commonest
articles of wearing apparel dangle at the sales-man‛s door, and stream from the
house-parapet and windows. Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest
class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged chil-dren, and the
raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by
offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which branch off on the right
and left, and deafened by the clash of ponderous waggons that bear great piles
of merchandise from the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner.
Arriving, at length, in streets remoter and less-frequented than those through
which he has passed, he walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting over the
pavement, dismantled walls that seem to totter as he passes, chimneys half
crushed half hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty iron bars that time and
dirt have almost eaten away, every imaginable sign of desolation and neglect.
In such a neighbourhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of Southwark, stands
Jacob‛s Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep and fifteen
or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in the days of
this story as Folly Ditch. It is a creek or inlet from the Thames, and can always
be filled at high water by opening the sluices at the Lead Mills from which it took
its old name. At such times, a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges
thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side
lowering from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails, domestic utensils of
all kinds, in which to haul the water up; and when his eye is turned from these
operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by
the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half-adozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows,
broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never
there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted
even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting
themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it—as some have done;
dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of
poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament
the banks of Folly Ditch.
In Jacob‛s Island, the warehouses are roofless and empty; the walls are crumbling
down; the windows are windows no more; the doors are failing into the streets;
the chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke. Thirty or forty years ago,
before losses and chancery suits came upon it, it was a thriving place; but now it
is a desolate island in-deed. The houses have no owners; they are broken open,
and entered upon by those who have the courage; and there they live, and there
they die. They must have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced
to a desitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob‛s Island.
In an upper room of one of these houses—a detached house of fair size, ruinous
in other respects, but strongly defended at door and window: of which house the
back commanded the ditch in manner already described—there were assembled
three men, who, regarding each other every now and then with looks expressive
of perplexity and expectation, sat for some time in profound and gloomy silence.
One of these was Toby Crackit, another Mr. Chitling, and the third a robber of
fifty years, whose nose had been almost beaten in, in some old scuffle, and whose
face bore a frightful scar which might probably be traced to the same occasion.
This man was a returned transport, and his name was Kags.
“I wish,” said Toby, turning to Mr. Chitling, “that you had picked out some other
crib when the two old ones got too warm, and had not come here, my fine feller.”
*******
There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to abandon as
hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care swagger, turned
to Chitling and said,
“When was Fagin took then?”
“Just at dinner-time—two o‛clock this afternoon. Charley and I made our lucky up
the wash‛us chimney, and Bolter got into the empty water-butt, head downwards;
but his legs were so precious long that they stuck out at the top, and so they took
him too.”
“And Bet?”
“Poor Bet! She went to see the Body, to speak to who it was,” replied Chitling, his
countenance failing more and more, “and went off mad, screaming and raving, and
beating her head against the boards; so they put a strait-weskut on her and took
her to the hospital—and there she is.”
“Wot‛s come of young Bates?” demanded Kags.
“He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he‛ll be here soon,” replied
Chitling. “There‛s nowhere else to go to now, for the people at the Cripples are all
in custody, and the bar of the ken—I went up there and see it with my own eyes—
is filled with traps.”
“This is a smash,” observed Toby biting his lips. “There‛s more than one will go
with this.”
“The sessions are on,” said Kags: “if they get the inquest over, and Bolter turns
King‛s evidence: as of course he will, from what he‛s said already: they can prove
Fagin an accessory before the fact, and get the trial on on Friday, and he‛ll swing
in six days from this, by G__!”
“You should have heard people groan,” said Chitling; “the officers fought like
devils, or they‛d have torn him away. He was down once, but they made a ring
round him, and fought their way along. You should have seen how he looked about
him, all muddy and bleeding, and clung to them as if they were his dearest friends.
I can see ‛em now, not able to stand upright with the pressing of the mob, and
dragging him along amongst ‛em; I can see the people jumping up, one behind
another, and snarling with their teeth and making at him; I can see the blood upon
his hair and beard, and hear the cries with which the women worked them-selves
into the centre of the crowd at the street corner, and swore they‛d tear his heart
out!”
The horror-stricken witness of this scene pressed his hands upon his ears, and
with his eyes closed got up and paced violently to and fro, like one distracted.
21.
The tone and pacing of this passage suggest that this chapter follows a
scene of
22.
A.
intense action.
B.
comic relief.
C.
quiet reflection.
D.
periodic summary.
E.
dramatic reversal.
The primary narrative function of this passage is to
A.
intensify the conflict.
B.
resolve a conflict.
C.
introduce a new setting.
D.
introduce a new character.
E.
provide plot exposition.
23.
The vivid details with which Dickens describes Jacob‛s Island suggest to
the reader that
24.
A.
it is an extremely unpleasant location.
B.
Dickens was familiar with the district.
C.
the district is severely poverty-stricken.
D.
Dickens‛s social criticism is intensifying.
E.
an important plot event will occur here.
To whom is Dickens most likely referring when he writes of residents of
Jacob‛s Island, “They must have powerful motives for a secret residence”?
A.
the extremely impoverished
B.
notorious criminals
C.
social outcasts
D.
runaways
E.
the ill and insane
25.
To what does Dickens attribute the downfall of Jacob‛s island?
A.
violent crime
B.
overpopulation
C.
questionable business practices
D.
industrialization
E.
unfavorable trade laws
Chapter fifty one
1. Explain the humor in Mr. Bumble‛s tirade “If the law supposes that…the law is
a ass—a idiot. If that‛s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I
wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”
2. What questions are answered and coincidences revealed in this chapter?
3. How does Rose‛s continued refusal to marry Harry advance Dickens‛s criticism
of social prejudice?
4. What narrative facts suggest that Dickens blames social prejudice for the
creation of people like Monks and the Bumbles?
Chapter fifty two
1. How can Fagin‛s fate be considered poetic justice? What point is Dickens
probably suggesting by his full treatment of this master criminal?
Chapter fifty three
1. For what likely reasons does Dickens have Oliver give half of his small
inheritance to Monks?
2. How does the Bumbles‛ fate illustrate poetic justice?
3. What Victorian moral principles are driven home by Charley Bates‛s success?
4. How does Dickens uses Oliver‛s mother to provide structure to the plot and
bring it to full closure?
The following is the entire final chapter of Charles Dickens‛s Oliver Twist.
Carefully read the chapter and then select the best answers to the multiplechoice questions that follow.
The fortunes of those who have figured in this tale are nearly closed. The little
that remains to their historian to relate, is told in few and simple words.
Before three months had passed, Rose Fleming and Harry Maylie were married in
the village church which was henceforth to be the scene of the young clergyman‛s
labours; on the same day they entered into possession of their new and happy
home.
Mrs. Maylie took up her abode with her son and daughter-in-law, to enjoy, during
the tranquil remainder of her days, the greatest felicity that age and worth can
know—the contemplation of the happiness of those on whom the warmest
affections and tenderest cares of a well-spent life, have been unceasingly
bestowed.
It appeared, on full and careful investigation, that if the wreck of property
remaining in the custody of Monks (which had never prospered either in his hands
or in those of his mother) were equally divided between himself and Oliver, it
would yield, to each, little more than three thousand pounds. By the provisions of
his father‛s will, Oliver would have been entitled to the whole; but Mr. Brownlow,
unwilling to deprive the elder son of the opportunity of retrieving his former vices
and pursuing an honest career, proposed this mode of distribution, to which his
young charge joyfully acceded.
Monks, still bearing that assumed name, retired with his portion to a distant part
of the New World; where, having quickly squandered it, he once more fell into his
old courses, and, after undergoing a long confinement for some fresh act of fraud
and knavery, at length sunk under an attack of his old disorder, and died in prison.
As far from home, died the chief remaining members of his friend Fagin‛s gang.
Mr. Brownlow adopted Oliver as his son. Removing with him and the old
housekeeper to within a mile of the parsonage-house, where his dear friends
resided, he gratified the only remaining wish of Oliver‛s warm and earnest heart,
and thus linked together a little society, whose condition approached as nearly to
one of perfect happiness as can ever be known in this changing world.
Soon after the marriage of the young people, the worthy doctor returned to
Chertsey, where, bereft of the presence of his old friends, he would have been
discontented if his temperament had admitted of such a feeling; and would have
turned quite peevish if he had known how. For two or three months, he contented
himself with hinting that he feared the air began to disagree with him; then,
finding that the place really no longer was, to him, what it had been, he settled
his business on his assistant, took a bachelor‛s cottage outside the village of which
his young friend was pastor, and instantaneously recovered. Here, he took to
gardening, planting, fishing, carpentering, and various other pursuits of a similar
kind: all undertaken with his characteristic impetuosity. In each and all, he has
since become famous throughout the neighbourhood, as a most profound
authority.
Before his removal, he had managed to contract a strong friendship for Mr.
Grimwig, which that eccentric gentleman cordially reciprocated. He is accordingly
visited by Mr. Grimwig a great many times in the course of the year. On all such
occasions, Mr. Grimwig plants, fishes, and carpenters, with great ardour; doing
everything in a very singular and unprecedented manner, but always maintaining
with his favourite asseveration, that his mode is the right one. On Sundays, he
never fails to criticise the sermon to the young clergyman‛s face: always informing
Mr. Losberne, in strict confidence afterwards, that he considers it an excellent
performance, but deems it as well not to say so. It is a standing and very favourite
joke, for Mr. Brownlow to rally him on his old prophecy concerning Oliver, and to
remind him of the night on which they sat with the watch between them, waiting
his return; but Mr Grimwig contends that he was right in the main, and, in proof
thereof, remarks that Oliver did not come back, after all; which always calls forth
a laugh on his side, and increases his good humour.
Mr. Noah Claypole: receiving a free pardon from the Crown in consequence of
being admitted approver against Fagin: and considering his profession not
altogether as safe a one as he could wish: was, for some little time, at a loss for
the means of a livelihood, not burthened with too much work. After some
consideration, he went into business as an Informer, in which calling he realises a
genteel subsistence. His plan is, to walk out once a week during church time
attended by Charlotte in respectable attire. The lady faints away at the doors of
charitable
publicans,
and
the
gentleman
being
accommodated
with
threepennyworth of brandy to restore her, lays an information next day, and
pockets half the penalty. Sometimes Mr. Clay faints himself, but the result is the
same.
Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, deprived of their situations, were gradually reduced to
great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers in that very same
workhouse in which they had once lorded it over others. Mr. Bumble has been
heard to say, that in this reverse and degradation, he has not even spirits to be
thankful for being separated from his wife.
As to Mr. Giles and Brittles, they still remain in their old posts, although the
former is bald, and the last-named boy quite grey. They sleep at the parsonage,
but divide their attentions so equally among its inmates, and Oliver, and Mr.
Brownlow, and Mr. Losberne, that to this day the villagers have never been able
to discover to which establishment they properly belong.
Master Charles Bates, appalled by Sikes‛s crime, fell into a train of reflection
whether an honest life was not, after, all, the best. Arriving at the conclusion
that it certainly was, he turned his back upon the scenes of the past, resolved to
amend it in some new sphere of action. He struggled hard and suffered much, for
some time; but, having a contented disposition, and a good purpose, succeeded in
the end; and, from being a farmer‛s drudge, and a carrier‛s lad, he is now the
merriest young grazier in all Northamptonshire.
And now, the hand that traces these words, falters, as it approaches the
conclusion of its task; and would weave, for a little longer space, the thread of
these adventures.
I would fain linger yet with a few of those among whom I have so long moved, and
share their happiness by endeavouring to depict it. I would show Rose Maylie in
all the bloom and grace of early womanhood, shedding on her secluded path in life
soft and gentle light, that fell on all who trod it with her, and shone into their
hearts. I would paint her the life and joy of the fire-side circle and the lively
summer group, I would follow her through the sultry fields at noon, and hear the
low tones of her sweet voice in the moonlit evening walk; I would watch her in all
her goodness and charity abroad, and the smiling untiring discharge of domestic
duties at home; I would paint her, and her dead sister‛s child happy in their love
for one another, and passing whole hours together in picturing the friends whom
they had so sadly lost; I would summon before me, once again, those joyous little
faces that clustered round her knee, and listen to their merry prattle; I would
recall the tones of that clear laugh, and conjure up the sympathising tear that
glistened in the soft blue eye. These, and a thousand looks and smiles, and turns
of thought and speech—I would fain recall them every one.
How Mr. Brownlow went on, from day to day, filling the mind of his adopted child
with stores of knowledge, and becoming attached to him, more and more, as his
nature developed itself, and showed the thriving seeds of all he wished him to
become—how he traced in him new traits of his early friend, that awakened in his
own bosom old remembrances, melancholy and yet sweet and soothing—how the
two orphans, tried by adversity, remembered its lessons in mercy to others, and
mutual love, and fervent thanks to Him who had protected and preserved them—
these are all matters which need not to be told. I have said that they were truly
happy; and without strong affection and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that
Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great attribute is Benevolence to all things
that breathe, happiness can never be attained.
Within the altar of the old village church there stands a white marble tablet,
which bears as yet but one word: “AGNES.” There is no coffin in that tomb; and
may it be many, many years, before another name is placed above it! But, if the
spirits of the Dead ever come back to earth, to visit spots hallowed by the love—
the love beyond the grave—of those whom they knew in life, I believe that the
shade of Agnes sometimes hovers round that solemn nook. I believe it none the
less because that nook is in a Church, and she was weak and erring.
26.
The conclusion of Oliver Twist demonstrates the “truth” of all of the
following adages EXCEPT
27.
A.
Virtue is its own reward.
B.
God helps those who help themselves.
C.
As you reap, so shall you sow.
D.
The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son.
E.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
The fate of Mr. and Mrs. Bumble is an example of (a)
A.
poetic justice.
B.
dramatic irony.
C.
propaganda.
D.
paradox.
E.
pathetic fallacy.
28.
The second sentence of this chapter, “The little that remains to their
historian to relate, is told in few and simple words,” clearly introduces what part
of the novel‛s narrative structure?
29.
A.
falling action
B.
peripeteia
C.
anti-climax
D.
anagnorisis
E.
denouement
According to Dickens, which of the following is not essential to personal
happiness?
30.
A.
wealth
B.
work
C.
companionship
D.
compassion
E.
gratitude
The final idea Dickens leaves with his reader is that what is, indeed,
possible?
A.
happiness
B.
redemption
C.
reformation
D.
social reform
E.
social mobility
QUESTIONS FOR ESSAY AND DISCUSSION
1.
Some critics believe that the women featured in Dickens‛s works are
either evil, comical, or the epitome of his ideal of romantic love. Into which of
these categories do you think the following characters might fall: Nancy, Mrs.
Corney/Bumble, Rose?
2.
Considering that the book was originally written and published in monthly
installments, discuss how Dickens used chapter breaks, foreshadowing, and cliffhanger endings to maintain reader suspense and interest.
3.
To what extent is Oliver Twist a social commentary? Are there times when
the commentary slips into propaganda? Explain.