SUBMITTED TO RABIA WASIF

Ghalib Ahmad
21-10895
Social issues in Oliver Twist
4/28/2019
Oliver Twist, distributed in 1838, is one of Charles Dickens' best-known and well-cherished works. It
was composed after he had effectively accomplished fame as the creator of The Pickwick Papers. It
has been adjusted as a film and a long-running Broadway melodic and has been viewed as an
example as far back as it was first distributed. The book initially showed up as a "sequential", that is
every section was distributed independently, all together, in a magazine called Bentley's Miscellany,
of which Dickens was manager. Every week, perusers hung tight enthusiastically for the following
portion in the story; this mostly represents the way that every part finishes with a suspense and cliff
hanger that would hold the reader's enthusiasm until the desired section was distributed. Dickens
uses the characters and key moments in the book to make a specific social issues,
pointing out the hypocrisy and flaws of institutions, including his society's government,
its laws and criminal system, and its methods of dealing with poor people. Interestingly,
he doesn't suggest any solutions; he merely points out the suffering inflicted by these
systems and their deep injustice. Dickens basically believed that most people were good
at heart but that their good impulses could be distorted by social ills.

There are a lot of issues which can be highlighted in this Dicken’s novel like
powerlessness of children and women, society and class, mob mentality, city versus
country side and other issues like pickpocketing and chain snatching.

Let’s begin with one of the most prominent social issues in Charles Dicken’s novel which
is Poverty. The theme of poverty remains one of the central problems that Charles
Dickens focuses and attempts to draw attention of his readers to. The problem of
poverty becomes a serious social and economic burden of English society of the late 19th
century. This is why Dickens chooses this theme as one of the central themes of his
novels. It is clear that Dickens noted the effect of industrialization on the Victorian
society as it created a massive urban development, resulted in a higher class division.
The influx of industrialization created a further division of these classes in which there
emerged the capitalists or bourgeoisie, who were industrialists such as Mr. Bounderby in
Hard Times, and working class, who were the industrial poor workers, of them many
lived under squalid condition with poor sanitation leading to fatal diseases and even
death. This is quite a big problem nowadays. Dickens spends a lot of his time on this
poverty narrative and working class in Oliver Twist. Dickens spends lot of time of
narrative energy in depicting the plight of poor and working class in Oliver Twist. He final
chapters of this novel serve to reinforce the moral superiority of the middle class.
Dickens also described superficial class and theme of poverty. He challenged the
Victorian idea of charity for the so called Deserving poor, he showed that the workhouse
was failed to solve the problem of poverty and unwanted children. Some of the quotes
show how bad poverty was.

"Please, sir, I want some more." [Chapter 2]

"Oliver Twist has asked for more!" [Chapter 2]

"I am very hungry and tired... I have walked a long way. I have been walking these
seven days." [Chapter 8]

"Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round
the bright fire, and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless starving wretch
to lay him down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets
at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may, can hardly open them in
a more bitter world." [Chapter 23].