Oliver Twist Essay -- English Literature

Oliver Twist Charles Dickens: Charles Dickens was a famous novelist who was born on February 7th, 1812, Portsmouth England. His novel Oliver Twist was greatly successful and was seen as a protest against the poor law of 1834. The novel revolves around a boy called Oliver Twist; the plot is about how Oliver goes from the work house to being an aristocrat. The novel exposes a lot of Victorian attitudes which Dickens experienced as he was in poverty himself. In Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens shows us many of the social injustices of those historic times. He was outraged by the way the poor and the young people in particular were treated. He thought that this description would move the government to bring about a change in the laws to ease the sufferings of the poor. Nancy is first introduced to us through Oliver’s eyes in chapter 9. We are told a description of a prostitute and not of the usual posh Victorian lady when dickens describes her as, ‘’they wore a good deal of hair, not very neatly turned up behind, and were rather untidy about the shoes and stockings. They were not exactly pretty.’’ To read this, it wouldn’t really promote a nice image of Nancy in addition to this you would end up thinking that she wasn’t a clean or much respected women. The image of Nancy is further strengthened when Dickens goes further into the description, ‘’but they had a great deal of color in their faces, and looked quite stout and hearty. Being remarkably free and agreeable in their manners’’ this tells us that they almost trying to sell them and completes their depiction of Nancy being a prostitute, by this time the reader would be fully convinced about her occupation. Nancy’s description is still better in co... ...Victorian people used to double standards and how she is thankful for him not being like one of them. Nancy’s love for Sikes reflects the moral ambiguity of her character. As she herself points out to Rose, devotion to a man can be ’’a comfort and a pride’’ under the right circumstances. But for Nancy, such devotion is ’’a new means of violence and suffering’’-indeed, her relationship with Sikes leads her to criminal acts for his sake and eventually to her relationship with Sikes leads her to criminal acts for his sake and eventually to her own demise. CONCLUSION: In my opinion Nancy is the most important character in Oliver Twist because she laid down her life for Oliver. She did not wanted Oliver to live the same life that she had lived. She paid the ultimate price by giving away her life to Oliver and that to by the hands of her own lover Sikes.