Charles dickens and oliver twist

2. Features of the realistic method in the early novels of Dickens ("The Adventures of Oliver Twist")
Social Philosophy of Dickens and the Formation of the Realist Method The social philosophy of Dickens, in the form in ­which it has come down to us in most of his works, takes shape in the first period of his work (1837-1839). Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby , and the somewhat later Martin Chasseluit , which in their external construction are ­a kind of Fielding 's Tom Jones ­, were the first novels by Dickens to give a more or less coherent realistic picture of the new capitalist society. It is on these works, ­therefore, that it is easiest to trace the process of the formation of Dickensian realism, as it, in its essential features, took shape in this era. In the future, it is true, there is a deepening, expansion, refinement of the already achieved method, but the direction in which artistic development can go is given in these first social novels. We can see how in these books Dickens becomes the writer of his own time, the creator of the English social novel of a wide range. ⁵
The Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837-1839), ­begun at the same time as The Pickwick Club, being ­Dickens' first realist novel, thus creating a transition to a new period of his work. Here the deeply critical attitude of Dickens to bourgeois reality has already fully affected. Along with the traditional plot scheme of the adventure novel-biography, which was followed not only by writers of the 18th century like Fielding, but also by such immediate predecessors and contemporaries of Dickens as Bulwer-Lytton , there is a clear shift towards socio-political modernity. Oliver Twist was written under the influence of the famous Poor Law of 1834, which doomed the unemployed and homeless poor to ­complete savagery and extinction in the so-called workhouses. Dickens artistically embodies his indignation at this law and the position created for the people in the story of a boy born in a house of charity.
Dickens's novel began to appear in those days (since February 1837) when the struggle against the law, expressed in popular petitions and reflected in ­parliamentary debates, had not yet ended. Particularly strong indignation, both in the revolutionary Chartist camp and among the bourgeois radicals and conservatives, was caused by those Malthusian - colored clauses of the law, according to which husbands in workhouses were separated from their wives, and children from their parents. It is this side of the attack on the law that found the most vivid reflection in ­Dickensian novel.
In The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Dickens shows ­the starvation and horrendous abuse that children endure in a public house of charity. The figures of Mr. Bumble , the parish beadle , and other workhouse bosses ­open a gallery of satirical grotesque images created by Dickens.
Oliver's life path is a series of terrible ­pictures of hunger, want and beatings. Depicting the ordeals that fall on the young hero of the novel, Dickens unfolds a broad picture of the English life of his time.
First, life in the workhouse, then in the "teaching" of the undertaker, and finally, the flight to London, where Oliver ­falls into a den of thieves. Here is a new gallery of types: the demonic owner of the thieves' den Fagin , the robber Sykes, a tragic figure in his own way, the prostitute Nancy, in which the good principle constantly argues with evil and finally wins.
By virtue of their revealing power, all these ­episodes obscure the traditional plot scheme of the modern novel, according to which the protagonist must extricate himself from a difficult situation and win his place in the bourgeois world (where he actually comes from). For the sake of this scheme , Oliver Twist also finds his benefactor, and at the end of the novel ­becomes a rich heir. But this path of the hero to well-being, quite traditional for the literature of that time, is in this case less important than the individual stages of this path, in which the revealing pathos of Dickensian creativity is concentrated.
If we consider the work of Dickens as a ­consistent development towards realism, then Oliver Twist will be one of the most important stages in this development.
In the preface to the third edition of the novel, Dickens wrote that the purpose of his book was “one harsh and ­naked truth,” which forced him to abandon all the romantic embellishments that were usually full of works dedicated to the life of the scum of society.
“I have read hundreds of stories about thieves - charming little ones, mostly amiable, immaculately dressed, with a tightly stuffed pocket, experts on horses, bold ­in handling, happy with women, heroes behind a song, a bottle, cards or bones and worthy comrades, the most brave , but I have never met, with the exception of Hogarth, a genuine cruel reality. It occurred to me that to describe a bunch of such fellow-criminals as really exist, to describe them in all their ugliness and misery, in the miserable poverty of their lives, to show them as they actually wander or creep anxiously along the dirtiest paths of life, seeing in front of them, wherever they went, a huge black, terrible ghost of the gallows - that to do this meant trying to help society in what it badly needed, which could bring him a certain benefit. ⁶
Among the works sinning with such a romantic ­embellishment of the life of the scum of society, ­Dickens lists Gay's famous Beggar's Opera and Bulwer-Lytton 's novel Paul Clifford (1830), the plot of which, especially in the first part, in many details anticipated the plot of Oliver Twist ". But, arguing ­with this kind of "salon" depiction of the dark sides of life, which was characteristic of writers like Bulwer , Dickens still does not reject his connection with the literary tradition of the past. He names a number of eighteenth-century writers as his predecessors. Fielding, Defoe, Goldsmith , Smollett , Richardson, Mackenzie - all of them, and especially the first two, ­brought the scum and scum of the country onto the stage for the most good purposes. Hogarth is a moralist and censor of his time ­, whose great works will forever reflect both the age in which he lived and the human nature of all times - Hogarth did the same, without stopping at anything, did with strength and depth of thought, which were the lot of very few before him ... "
Pointing to his closeness to Fielding and Defoe, Dickens emphasized the realistic aspirations ­of his work. The point here, of course, is not in the closeness of the theme of "Moth Flanders " and "Oliver Twist", but in the general realistic orientation ­, which forces authors and artists to depict the subject without softening or embellishing anything. Some descriptions in Oliver Twist could well serve as an explanatory text for Hogarth's paintings, especially those where the author, deviating from direct following of the plot, dwells on individual paintings of horror and suffering.
Such is the scene that little Oliver finds in the house of a poor man weeping for his dead wife (Chapter V). In describing the room, the furnishings, and all the members of the family, Hogarth's method is felt - each object tells ­, each movement tells, and the picture as a whole is not just an image, but a coherent narrative seen through the eyes of a moral historian.
Simultaneously with this decisive step towards a ­realistic depiction of life, we can observe in Oliver Twist the evolution of Dickensian humanism, which is losing its abstract dogmatic and utopian character and is also approaching reality. The good beginning in Oliver Twist leaves the fun and happiness of the Pickwick Club and settles in other areas of life. Already in the last chapters of The Pickwick Club, the idyll had to ­collide with the gloomy side of reality (Mr. Pickwick in Fleet Prison). In "Olivier ­Twist", on fundamentally new grounds, humanism is separated from the idyll, and the good beginning in human society is increasingly combined with the world of real everyday disasters.
Dickens seems to be groping for new ways for his humanism. He had already broken away from the blissful utopia of ­his first novel. Good no longer means happy for him, but rather the opposite: in this unjust world, drawn by the writer, goodness is doomed to suffering, which far from always find their reward (the death of little Dick, the death of Oliver Twist's mother, and in the following novels, the death of Smike , little Nelly, Paul Dombey , who are all ­victims of cruel and unjust reality). This is how Mrs. Maley reasons in that woeful ­hour when her beloved Rose is threatened with death from a fatal illness: “I know that death does not always spare those who are young and kind and on whom the affection of others rests.”
But where, then, is the source of goodness in human ­society? In a certain social class? No, Dickens cannot say that. He resolves this issue as a follower of Rousseau and the Romantics. He finds the child, the uncorrupted soul, the ideal being who emerges pure and undefiled from all trials and who resists the plagues of society, which in this book are still largely the property of the lower classes. Subsequently, Dickens will stop blaming criminals for their crimes, and will blame the ruling classes for all existing evil. Now the ends have not yet been made, everything is in its infancy, the author has not yet drawn social conclusions from the new arrangement of moral forces in his novel. He does not yet say what he will say later— that goodness ­not only coexists with suffering, but that it mainly resides in the world of the ­destitute, unfortunate, oppressed, in a word, among the poor classes of society. In Oliver Twist, there is still a fictitious, as it were, supra -social group of “good gentlemen” who, in their ideological function, are closely related to the reasonable and virtuous gentlemen ­of the 18th century, but, unlike Mr. Pickwick, are well-off enough to do good deeds ( special power - "good money"). These are Oliver's patrons and saviors - Mr. ­Brownlow , Mr. Grimwig and others, without whom he would not have escaped the persecution of ­evil forces.⁷
But even within the group of villains, a close-knit mass of ­opposing philanthropic gentlemen and beautiful-hearted young men and women, the author looks for such characters that seem to him capable of moral rebirth. Such is, first of all, the figure of Nancy, a fallen being, in whom, nevertheless, love and self-sacrifice prevail and defeat even the fear of death.
In the preface to Oliver Twist cited above ­, Dickens wrote: “It seemed very rude and indecent that many of the persons acting in these pages were taken from the most criminal and low strata of the London population, that Cyke was a thief, Fagin a hoarder of stolen goods. things that the boys are street thieves and the young girl is a prostitute. But, I confess, I cannot understand why it is not ­possible to draw the lesson of the purest good from the most vile evil ... I did not see the reason when writing this book why the very dregs of society, if their language does not offend their ears, cannot serve as moral goals at least as much as the top of it.
Good and evil in this novel by Dickens have not only ­their "representatives", but also their "theorists". The conversations Fagin and his student have with Oliver are indicative in this respect: both of them preach ­the morality of shameless selfishness, according to which every person is “his own best friend” (chapter XLIII). At the same time, Oliver and little Dick are prominent representatives of the morality of philanthropy (cf. chapters XII and XVII).
Thus, the alignment of the forces of "good" and "evil" in "Oliver Twist" is still quite archaic. It is based on the idea of a society not yet divided ­into warring classes (a different idea appears later in the literature of the 19th century). Society is viewed here as a kind of more or less whole organism, which is threatened by various kinds of "ulcers" that can corrode it either "from above" (soulless and ­cruel aristocrats), or "from below" - depravity, begging, crime of the poor classes, or from the outside. the official state apparatus - the court, police officials, city and parish authorities, etc.