It is a very good example of a social novel because it calls the public´s attention to different problems people began to be aware of in those times: child labour, recruitment of children as criminals, the difference between the rich and the poor, women´s role in society and so on.
Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous films and television adaptations. A recent example is the film by Roman Polansky in 2005. Watch the trailer and draw your own conclusions.
Excerpt from Chapter 1. Being born in a workhouse!
Analyse Victorian Stereotypes about the poor after reading and listening to this extract. What does this extract talk about and what can we learn about the period? Connect it with what we have read in chapter 2.
What is a workhouse is how is this important for Oliver´s personality and his further development?
Below you have some quotations from the novel. These quotes make reference to some topics presented in class, read them and try to explain them.
CHAPTER 1. THE WORKHOUSE.
"...and what an excellent example of the power of dress young Oliver Twist was. Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; - it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have fixed his station in society. But now he was enveloped in the old robes, that had grown yellow in the same service; he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once - a parish child - the orphan of a workhouse - the humble, half-starved drudge - to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, depised by all, and pitied by none"
CHAPTER 2. THE BOARD.
"... so the established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative 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 waterworks 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... kindly undertook to divorce poor married people... 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 appliants for relief, undr 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"
3. VICTORIAN LONDON AND LIFE IN THE CITIES.
" The houses on either side were high and large, but very old; and tenanted by people of the poorest class.... A great many of the tenements... which had become inseure from age and decay, were prevented from falling into the street by huge beams of wood which were reared against the tottering walls, and firmly planted in the road; but even these crazy dens seemed to have been selected as the nightly haunts of some houseless wretches, for many of the rough boards which supplied the place of door and window, were wrenched from their positions to afford an apertude wide enough for the passage of a human body. The kennel was stagnant and filthy; the very rats that here and there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with famine"
"...and what an excellent example of the power of dress young Oliver Twist was. Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; - it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have fixed his station in society. But now he was enveloped in the old robes, that had grown yellow in the same service; he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once - a parish child - the orphan of a workhouse - the humble, half-starved drudge - to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, depised by all, and pitied by none"
CHAPTER 2. THE BOARD.
"... so the established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative 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 waterworks 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... kindly undertook to divorce poor married people... 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 appliants for relief, undr 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"
3. VICTORIAN LONDON AND LIFE IN THE CITIES.
" The houses on either side were high and large, but very old; and tenanted by people of the poorest class.... A great many of the tenements... which had become inseure from age and decay, were prevented from falling into the street by huge beams of wood which were reared against the tottering walls, and firmly planted in the road; but even these crazy dens seemed to have been selected as the nightly haunts of some houseless wretches, for many of the rough boards which supplied the place of door and window, were wrenched from their positions to afford an apertude wide enough for the passage of a human body. The kennel was stagnant and filthy; the very rats that here and there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with famine"
Do you want to know more about Charles Dickens and the Victorian period?
Let´s do this webquest!!!
http://www.michellehenry.fr/webquests/DICKENS/dickenswq.htm
