Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Theses Department of English Summer 8-2013 'This World of Sorrow and Trouble': The Criminal Type of Oliver Twist Megan N. Samples Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_theses Recommended Citation Samples, Megan N., "'This World of Sorrow and Trouble': The Criminal Type of Oliver Twist." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2013. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_theses/156 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "THIS WORLD OF SORROW AND TROUBLE": THE CRIMINAL TYPE OF OLIVER TWIST by MEGAN SAMPLES Under the Direction of Dr. Paul Schmidt ABSTRACT This thesis looks at the criminals of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist as a criminal type: im- poverished, unattractive people who lack family roots. It establishes connections between the criminal characters themselves as well as the real-world conditions which inspired their stereo- types. The conditions of poverty and a lack of family being tied to criminality is founded in real- ity, while the tendency for criminals to be unattractive is based on social bias and prejudice. It also identifies conflicting ideologies in the prevailing Victorian mindset that begins to emerge as a result of research into the criminal type. INDEX WORDS: Oliver Twist, Criminals, Criminology, Phrenology, Victorian culture, Dickens "THIS WORLD OF SORROW AND TROUBLE": THE CRIMINAL TYPE OF OLIVER TWIST by MEGAN SAMPLES A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2013 Copyright by Megan Nichole Samples 2013 "THIS WORLD OF SORROW AND TROUBLE": THE CRIMINAL TYPE OF OLIVER TWIST by MEGAN SAMPLES Committee Chair: Paul Schmidt Committee: LeAnne Richardson Michael Galchinksy Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University August 2013 iv DEDICATION This paper, its research, and the work that went into it is dedicated to the family and friends who supported its undertaking, specifically, Lochlin Samples, my husband and best friend, and Leanne Davis, the world's best study partner. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Schmidt, Dr. Galchinsky, and Dr. Richardson for their contribu- tions to this work. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...........................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................... vii 1. INTRODUCTION................................................................................................1 2. CRIMINALITY AND POVERTY ......................................................................7 2.1. Poverty as a symptom of moral depravity .......................................................7 2.2. A feudalistic social structure in a time of upward mobility .......................... 13 2.3 A disparity between perception and reality.................................................... 15 2.3. Oliver Twist's vile poverty as deceptively simple ........................................... 18 3. CRIMINALITY AND APPEARANCE ............................................................ 20 3.1. The story of the pictures ................................................................................. 21 3.2. Physiognomic approaches to Dickens ............................................................ 22 3.3. The Criminal Physicality................................................................................ 24 3.3.1. Oliver ......................................................................................................... 24 3.3.2. The Artful Dodger ..................................................................................... 26 3.3.2 Nancy ......................................................................................................... 29 3.3.3 Fagin .......................................................................................................... 31 3.3.4 Sikes ........................................................................................................... 35 3.3.5 Monks ......................................................................................................... 38 4 CRIMINALITY AND UNROOTEDNESS .......................................................... 41 5. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 49 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 51 APPENDIX .................................................................................................................. 57 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Oliver Introduced to the Respectable Old Gentleman………………..…...….………57 Figure 2: Oliver's Reception by Fagin and the Boys…………………………..………..………58 Figure 3: Master Bates Explains a Professional Technicality…………………………..………59 Figure 4: Monks and the Jew……………………………………………………………….…...50 Figure 5: Mr. Fagin and His Pupils Recovering Nancy…………………………………………61 Figure 6: Sikes Attempting to Destroy His Dog………………………………………………...62 Figure 7: The Last Chance...…………………………………………………………………….63 Figure 8: Fagin in the Condemned Cell…………………………………………...………….…64 1 1. INTRODUCTION In 1858, Sir Henry Holland referred to his own time, the Victorian era, as "an age of transition," as historian Walter Houghton notes (1). Although this is logically true of any time frame, perhaps Holland's observation was most apropos in regard to nineteenth century England. The Industrial Revolution was changing the face of technology, the economy, and society as a whole. John Stuart Mill noted the infancy of change, claiming that "mankind have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet acquired new ones," in 1831(1). A few short years later, in February of 1837, a twenty-five year old Charles Dickens began publication of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. Not only did his second novel characterize the beginning of a quite transformative writing career for Dickens, but it creatively, and perhaps unknowingly, documented one of the beginning points of immense social transition which England was undergoing in the 1800s. One of the most important points of change at the time was a new sense of mobility, both in the social and physical sense. The emergence of social mobility meant people had the ability to affect their own social status; one's rank was no longer determined only by birth, a blessing for Dickens. The new transportation of railways and steamboats brought to this new order the option of nomadically following opportunities, casting off the medieval feudal system forever (5-6). In 1830 though, Bulwer Lytton pointed out the "age of destruction" that inevitably precedes the "sluffing-off" of old ways (3). One of the relatively newer elements in Victorian society was an interest in criminality, and with this new attention, people began to make observations and assumptions about the criminal realm. Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1838) is 2 evidence of the observations and assumptions being made of the criminal class and shows how some of the old ways hang on in social thought. The criminal realm of Oliver Twist betrays a conflicting mindset of the old and new ways of life. Readers may note a new wave of circumstances and ideas coming to shore, but the undercurrent of old traditions and assumptions was still strong below. This piece will aim at establishing the criminal characters of Oliver Twist as types and showing how the type is indicative of conflicting ideologies, what Houghton explains as a result of replacing old ways of thinking with dogmatic substitutes while new mindsets are being worked out. Through the framework of criminality in the novel, I will argue that a strict caste system, along with other ancient relics which the Victorians sought to forsake, was strongly rooted in the changing, more mobile society. Houghton already explains that the Victorians relied on dogmatic tendencies in an attempt to rebuild a prevailing national mindset after the Industrial Revolution (138), but I will show how these tendencies manifest themselves in the criminal aspect of Dickens' text. There is most definitely no shortage of criticism into Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. Within the past fifteen years, (and certainly before) scholars have approached the work with a broad range of viewpoints and focuses. I would like to outline some of the dominant trends in Oliver Twist criticism so as to highlight the ways in which my study will deviate. Most notably, scholars have approached the historical aspects of the text and investigated the level of accuracy with which Dickens portrays Victorian London. This trend is shown in works like Sheila Sullivan's "Dickens' Newgate Vision: Oliver Twist, Moral Statistics, 3 and the Construction of Progressive History" and "The Black Hole of London: Rescuing Oliver Twist" by Jim Barloon. Some have looked specifically into issues surrounding poverty, like Humphry House's "Poverty in Oliver Twist," Holly Furneaux's " 'Worrying to Death'- Reinterpreting Dickens' Critique of