Analysis Of Oliver Twist And The Parish Boy's Progress By Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy 's Progress is Charles Dickens’ second novel and was published between 1837–1839 as a serial. The novel describes the journey of young Oliver Twist an Orphan, who starts his life in a workhouse and eventually flees to London, in the hope of a better life, where he is recruited by Fagin, an elderly Jewish criminal, who is leading a gang of juvenile pickpockets.

In Oliver Twist, Dickens broaches the issue of several contemporary topics of the Victorian era, such as the mob mentality, the helplessness of children and institutional cruelty. When it comes to state cruelty in particular, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, generally known as the New Poor Law and with it the establishment of the workhouse as the bases of the welfare system of the Victorian United Kingdom is criticized by Dickens in his first example of a social novel. I argue, that Dickens criticizes the welfare system and the conditions of the workhouses while also blaming it for the shaming of the paupers and thereby promoting the forming of criminal societies to avoid availing oneself of welfare. Therefore, I am going to first show Dickens’ own impression of the workhouse and his experience with the welfare system, which influenced his descriptions in Oliver Twist. This novel was partly published in protest of the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act, an act to reduce the cost of the poverty relief system in England and Wales. Next, I would like to focus on Dickens’