CAPITALISM AND COMPASSION IN "OLIVER TWIST"

Author(s): ROBERT L. PATTEN

Source: Studies in the Novel , summer 1969, Vol. 1, No. 2, CHARLES DICKENS (summer
1969), pp. 207-221
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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CAPITALISM AND COMPASSION
IN OLIVER TWIST

ROBERT L. PATTEN

"... while it is generally accepted that Dickens did a great

deal of good, there is a genial vagueness about what exactly
he did and how he did it. It is easy to smile when a foreign
propagandist quotes Mr. Squeers as a typical modern English
schoolmaster, but it is not so easy to say what was exactly the
point of Dickens' satire in the early part of Oliver Twist."1

I
Oliver begins life as an "item of mortality."2 He is surrounded
by no "careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, [or]
doctors of profound wisdom" (p. 1); he has no father, no home, no
name. When his mother dies, he loses his only source of compassionate
nurture. Paradoxically, the tender sympathies and fussy ministrations
of solicitous relatives and advisors would have killed him in no time.
"There being nobody by, however, but a pauper old woman . . . and
a parish surgeon . . . Oliver and Nature fought out the point between
them" (pp. 1-2), and Nature finally induces him to breathe, cry, and
live.
The world into which Oliver is born treats him as a thing. The
parish surgeon refuses to recognize even his sex, referring to him
throughout the scene as "the child" or "it." To the inmates of the
workhouse, his cry merely advertizes that a new burden has been
imposed upon the parish. The narrator's mock-sophisticated tone and
genteel language, while satirizing the euphemistic conventions of New?
gate fiction, also sets Oliver's birth at a discreet distance, thereby
reinforcing the refusal to accept him as a human being with emotional
as well as physical needs.3 "What have paupers to do with soul or
spirit?" demands Bumble. "It's quite enough that we let 'em have live
bodies" (p. 41).
For the workhouse and parish authorities, Oliver is a statistic or
a "miserable little being" (p. 4) to be "farmed" and provided with a

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208 [ PATTEN

scientifically-calculated minimum diet. His new mother is not maternal

at all: her name is Mrs. Mann, and she is a very great experimental
philosopher, for by appropriating the greater part of the stipend alloted
to purchase that diet, she finds "in the lowest depth a deeper still." Her
conception of the needs of children extends only to providing the
minimum of food to sustain physical life, and like the experimental
philosopher whose horse perversely died just as he was about to prove
it could live without eating, Mrs. Mann's charges do unaccountably
happen to die, "in eight and a half cases out of ten," just as they are
managing "to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest
possible food," and are "gathered to the fathers" (p. 4) never known
in life.
Everyone who wants Oliver at all wants him as a means to
personal gain, and not for his sake. To the parish surgeon, who attends
by contract, Oliver's birth is the occasion for a fee. To Mrs. Mann,
Oliver, as long as he remains alive, is a source of income. To the
beadle, he is an object on which to exercise "porochial" authority, as
well as Bumble's invention in names. To the Board of Guardians, he
is a responsibility to be educated and taught a useful trade, such as
oakum picking. All their collective efforts are towards getting their
charges employed or otherwise off the parish rolls; to this end Bumble
even transports dying paupers to other parishes, to save the funeral
expenses. To Mr. Gamfield, Oliver is a convenient extension of a
sweep's broomhandle; knowing the workhouse diet, he is sure that
"Oliver would be a nice small pattern; just the very thing for register
stoves" (p. 14). Moreover, the reward offered for taking Oliver off the
hands of the parish will be a source of immediate cash to pay his
pressing bills, making the offer doubly attractive. To Sowerberry, Oli?
ver's size and melancholy expression make him a "delightful mute":
as he explains to his wife, "I don't mean a regular mute to attend
grown-up people, my dear, but only for children's practice. It would be
very new to have a mute in proportion, my dear. You may depend upon
it, it would have a most superb effect" (p. 29). Sowerberry's ingenious
speculation exceeds "even his most sanguine hopes" (p. 34).
From birth to funerals, then, all facets of life that Oliver has
experienced, up to his ninth year, seem to be regulated by the same
impulse, devoid of compassion, to use him as a means, a thing. No
wonder he conceives of human beings in an equally dehumanized form,
and is startled to hear a board speak. All the more remarkable, there?
fore, are the occasional moments when violent emotion asserts the
underground presence of a common humanity that seems everywhere
else to be denied: when Oliver successfully appeals to the magistrate

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 OLIVER TWIST | 209

against his apprenticeship to Gamfield, or by his "tears of agony"

arouses Bumble's "troublesome cough" (p. 23).

II

The "principle of Good" that Dickens wished to show "surviving

through every adverse circumstance, and triumphing at last" (p. lxii)
is closely related to the spirit of compassion. Compassion, however, is
wholly lacking in the abstract theorizing and planning of Mrs. Mann
or the board, whose Parish Seal, reproduced in the gold buttons of the
beadle's coat, is, ironically, of "the Good Samaritan healing the sick
and bruised man" (p. 21). Christ's parable answering the question
"Who is my neighbor?" unfavorably contrasts the social brotherhood
of priest, Levite, and traveller to the spiritual brotherhood of Samaritan
and traveller. Though outcast, heretic, and enemy, it is the Good
Samaritan who was "moved with compassion" at the traveller's plight;
it is the Good Samaritan who "came to him, and bound up his wounds,
pouring on them oil and wine; and he set him on his own beast, and
brought him to an inn, and took care of him" (Luke X: 33-34).
For Dickens, instinctive compassion and selfless benevolence are
natural to man; abstract Benthamite and Malthusian theories and
practices distortions. He quarrels less with the specific programs adopted
under such philosophical systems than with the point of view that
engenders them; as Steven Marcus says, "The wrong that Dickens
recognizes in what he attacks?the Benthamite ideology, legislation,
and administration, and the workhouse administration and attitude?
lies simply, irreducibly, undeniably in its violation of humanity, in its
offense against life."4
Even where the impulse towards compassion is manifest, however,
circumstances may threaten to vitiate its force. When Oliver, having
"fallen among robbers" through the aid of a bad Samaritan, is rescued
by Mr. Brownlow, who has a picture of the Good Samaritan over the
fireplace, he fears more than anything else that his new friend will turn
him out of doors to wander again, or worse, send him back to the
"wretched place" (p. 85) from which he came. (For Oliver, home and
homelessness have been equally dismal.)

"Have mercy upon a poor boy, sir!"

"My dear child," said the old gentleman, moved by the
warmth of Oliver's sudden appeal; "you need not be afraid
of my deserting you, unless you give me cause."
"I never, never will, sir," interposed Oliver.
"I hope not," rejoined the old gentleman. "I do not think
you ever will. I have been deceived, before, in the objects

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210 I PATTEN

whom I have endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly

disposed to trust you, nevertheless; and I am more interested
in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself.
The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love, lie
deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight
of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of
my heart, and sealed it up, for ever, on my best affections.
. Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them"
(p. 85).
Though Mr. Brownlow has so far escaped these dangers, Oliver
is well acquainted with those who have made coffins of their hearts.
Indeed, he has lived amongst them, as he has lived amongst the coffins
of Sowerberry's shop. As an undertaker's mute, whose figure and mien
are intended to serve as a symbol of and focus for grief, he has "had
many opportunities of observing the beautiful resignation and fortitude
with which some strong-minded people bear their trials and losses"
(p. 35). But like Brownlow and Dick, deep affliction has but strength?
ened and refined Oliver's best affections; it is not meat, but its very
lack, that has sustained his goodness.
When Oliver, recaptured by the thieves, does not return from his
errand to the bookseller, however, Mr. Brownlow begins to think
himself deceived once again. His suspicion is strengthened by Bumble's
report, which assails his faith. Eventually, in despair, he seals his heart,
apparently proof against Mrs. Bedwin's instinctive conviction, nurtured
by "lying books," that Oliver is true. To salve his wounds, he too turns
Philosopher.

Ill

For Dickens, the portmanteau term "philosopher" stands in Oliver

Twist for all those who calculate, who predicate their actions on the
assumption that human life can be dealt with quantitatively. Bumble's
heart is "waterproof"?tears, mere tokens of weakness, scarcely ever
penetrate his stern soul, which is moved to propose marriage by the
convincing testimony of teaspoons, sugar-tongs, and a genuine silver
milk-pot. The Poor Law Boards use the same kind of calculus in
administering their institutions; for them charity is a matter of pounds,
shillings, pence, dietaries, and allowances, not of spontaneous, freely
given compassion and care.5 Paradoxically, their charity is dispensed on
laissez-faire Malthusian and Benthamite capitalist principles.
Though ostensibly at war with this system, in reality the thieves
to whom Oliver falls captive are exponents of it, nighttime or under?
world petty capitalists. Fagin's familiar instruction to Noah Claypole

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 OLIVER TWIST | 211

on the true identity of "number one" rests on Hobbesian assumptions

about human nature extensively employed in Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations, where the entire economic system depends on the unfettered
exercise of self-interest, interpreted as a psychological as well as an
economic law. As an extension of this assumption, Benthamite utilitar?
ians insisted that a rational calculation of self-interest could be made;
Noah, disguised as Morris Bolter, finds Fagin's careful logic wholly
persuasive:
"Some conjurers say that number three is the magic number,
and some say number seven. It's neither, my friend, neither.
It's number one."
"Ha, ha!" cried Mr. Bolter. "Number one for ever."
"In a little community like ours, my dear," said the Jew,
who felt it necessary to qualify this position, "we have a
general number one; that is, you can't consider yourself as
number one, without considering me too as the same, and all
the other young people."
"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed Mr. Bolter.
"You see," pursued the Jew, affecting to disregard this
interruption, "we are so mixed up together, and identified in
our interests, that it must be so. For instance, it's your object
to take care of number one?meaning yourself."
"Certainly," replied Mr. Bolter. "Yer about right there."
"Well! You can't take care of yourself, number one,
without taking care of me, number one."
"Number two, you mean," said Mr. Bolter, who was
largely endowed with the quality of selfishness.
"No, I don't!" retorted the Jew. "I'm of the same impor?
tance to you, as you are to yourself."
"I say," interrupted Mr. Bolter, "yer a very nice man, and
I'm very fond of yer; but we ain't quite so thick together, as
all that comes to."
"Only think," said the Jew, shrugging his shoulders, and
stretching out his hands; "only consider. You've done what's a
very pretty thing, and what I love you for doing; but what at
the same time would put the cravat round your throat, that's
so very easily tied and so very difficult to unloose?in plain
English, the halter!"
Mr. Bolter put his hand to his neckerchief, as if he felt
it inconveniently tight; and murmured an assent, qualified in
tone but not in substance.
"The gallows," continued Fagin, "the gallows, my dear,
is an ugly finger-post, which points out a very short and sharp
turning that has stopped many a bold fellow's career on the
broad highway. To keep in the easy road, and keep it at a
distance, is object number one with you."
"Of course it is," replied Mr. Bolter. "What do yer talk
about such things for?"

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212 I PATTEN

"Only to shew you my meaning clearly," said the Jew,

raising his eyebrows. "To be able to do that, you depend upon
me. To keep my little business all snug, I depend upon you.
The first is your number one, the second my number one. The
more you value your number one, the more careful you must
be of mine; so we come at last to what I told you at first?that
a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so,
unless we would all go to pieces in company."
"That's true," rejoined Mr. Bolter, thoughtfully. "Oh!
yer a cunning old codger!" (pp. 293-94).

Fortunately, "Although Oliver had been brought up by philosophers,

he was not theoretically acquainted with the beautiful axiom that self
preservation is the first law of nature" (p. 58).
In the thieves' world, as in that of the classical economists, this
calculus of self-interest extends to acts of charity as well. After
Oliver's recapture Fagin loses no time in beginning Oliver's instruction
by lecturing to him on "the crying sin of ingratitude" in "wilfully
absenting himself from the society of his anxious friends":

Mr. Fagin laid great stress on the fact of his having taken
Oliver in, and cherished him, when, without his timely aid,
he might have perished with hunger; and he related the
dismal and affecting history of a young lad whom, in his
philanthropy, he had succoured under parallel circumstances,
but who, proving unworthy of his confidence, and evincing
a desire to communicate with the police, had unfortunately
come to be hanged at the Old Bailey one morning. Mr. Fagin
did not seek to conceal his share in the catastrophe, but
lamented with tears in his eyes that the wrong-headed and
treacherous behaviour of the young person in question, had
rendered it necessary that he should become the victim of
certain evidence for the crown ... (p. 114).

The language of sentimental benevolence, and the motive of calculated

self-interest, are skillfully intertwined in Fagin's subtle account.
Like the respectable daylight world, the thieves organize their
activities and express their occupations in capitalist terms. Fagin's gang
works on the apprentice system; Oliver, as the newest and least trained
member, is set to "work" on the most menial of tasks, picking the
marks out of pocket handkerchiefs. Meanwhile, he tries, through
pocket-picking games, to become as proficient as his models, Charley
Bates and the Dodger, who instruct Oliver in what Fagin describes as
"the catechism of his trade." The thieves all have special lines of work,
less repetitive but no less refined than the jobs on an assembly line, and
they go about their "business" in earnest, mastering the necessary

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 OLIVER TWIST I 213

skills, studying each "job" beforehand, assembling the necessary tools

and articles of dress. But though they implicitly accept the economic and
psychological bases of capitalism, they reject its bourgeois social forms.
Charley Bates, while urging Oliver to join the gang and make a fortune,
cannot help laughing at middle-class aspirations: "And so be able to
retire on your property, and do the gen-teel: as I mean to, in the
very next leap-year but four that ever comes, and the forty-second
Tuesday in Trinity-week" (p. 117). But Fagin continues to use
the language of laissez-faire capitalism for two reasons: because
the system, as a set of economic and psychological assumptions, is
useful to him, and because Oliver is more likely to be seduced if
the criminal activity is described in "respectable" terms. Oliver, indeed,
is much impressed by the stern morality of the respectable old
gentleman, who, "whenever the Dodger or Charley Bates came home
at night, empty-handed, . . . would expatiate with great vehemence
on the misery of idle and lazy habits, and would enforce upon them the
necessity of an active life, by sending them supperless to bed" (p. 56).
Fagin and his gang even have their own center of trade, Field Lane,
which emulates the commercial world of the City or the West End:

Near to the spot on which Snow Hill and Holborn Hill

meet, there opens: upon the right hand as you come out of
the city: a narrow and dismal alley leading to Saffron Hill. In
its filthy shops are exposed for sale, huge bunches of second?
hand silk handkerchiefs, of all sizes and patterns; for here
reside the traders who purchase them from pickpockets.
Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs
outside the windows, or flaunting from the door-posts; and the
shelves, within, are piled with them. Confined as the limits of
Field Lane are, it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop,
and its fried-fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony of
itself: the emporium of petty larceny: visited at early morn?
ing, and setting-in of dusk, by silent merchants, who traffic
in dark back-parlours; and who go as strangely as they come.
Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the rag-merchant,
display their goods, as sign-boards to the petty thief; here,
stores of old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments
of woollen-stuff and linen, rust and rot in the grimy cellars
(p. 162).
Contrasting to the daytime capitalist world, the thieves' world is
one of shadows, of early morning, of dusk, and of darkness. Graham
Greene, commenting on the "Manichean world" of the novel, observes
that "Fagin never appears on the daylight streets."6 The house in which
Oliver is incarcerated is the grave of former life: from its mouldering

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214 I PATTEN

shutters, its panelled walls and cornices black with neglect and dust,
Oliver concludes "that a long time ago, before the old Jew was born,
it had belonged to better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and
handsome" (p. 115). At Sowerberry's, the hard-hearted caused Oliver
to repose among the coffins; at Fagin's, he lives in an "infernal den,"
which Monks terms "as dark as the grave" (p. 169).
All the locales associated with the thieves are dilapidated, ruinous
buildings deserted by their former owners, left to the infestation of the
vermin that ply their trades by dark. In their nocturnal interview with
Monks, Mr. and Mrs. Bumble are entertained in a collapsing building,
"formerly used as a manufactory of some kind," which has already
partly succumbed to "the rat, the worm, and the action of the damp,"
and "sunk down into the water beneath" (p. 249). And Jacob's Island
(a prototype of Tom-all-Alone's), once a thriving place, has been
reduced by losses and chancery suits to a "desolate island indeed,"
with roofless warehouses and ownerless houses that stand as skeletal
remains of a flourishing past.
Thus the principles and settings of the daylight world are reflected
by the thieves' nighttime, nightmare world. The same attitude towards
human beings implicit in laissez-faire capitalism is implicit in the
Malthusian Poor Laws, and in the hearts of Bumble and Mrs. Mann,
Gamfield and the Sowerberrys and Mr. Fang, Bill Sikes and Noah. In
this novel, the only means of avoiding the metamorphosis into a
"philosopher," of which one terrible example is Monks, is to abandon
altogether the pursuit of wealth. Mr. Brownlow, Mrs. Maylie, and Rose
are not concerned with making money; Harry Maylie must renounce
all his wordly achievements and ambitions before he can marry Rose.
Oliver must inherit money; he cannot seek it through commerce. Those
who do establish their life on the basis of a "practical humanist kind of
Christianity"7 can extend to their fellow men free acts of charity and
compassion, and so come to be regarded as almost Providential figures.

IV

As leader of the gang, Fagin plays a complex role. He is decked

out in the trappings of a stereotyped stage-Jew?"red hair and whiskers,
hooked nose, shuffling gait, and long gabardine coat and broadbrimmed
hat"?and as a dealer in second hand clothes and trinkets pursues
"the Jewish occupation par excellence."8 But Professor Harry Stone
finds that despite a number of points of similarity between Fagin and
contemporary stereotypes of the Jew, he does not share in most of the
"traits of the literary Jew. He has no lisp, dialect, or nasal intona

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 OLIVER TWIST | 215

tion. . . . And Fagin goes through no act, ritual, or pattern which

identifies him as a Jew. ... It seems fair to assume that Fagin was a Jew
because for Dickens and his readers he made a picturesque and
believable villain."9
Indeed, Fagin is much more than a stereotype. As we have
already seen, in some respects he mirrors the values and activities of
that English bourgeois petty capitalist society which had declared him
a legal and social outcast and heretic, as the Jews had the Samaritans
two thousand years earlier.
But his alienation extends even further. Bill Sikes complains that
Fagin looks "like a ugly ghost just rose from the grave" (p. 121), an
image with profound implications, for in Fagin Dickens also portrays
the resurrection of the arch tempter. Professor Lauriat Lane, Jr. has
assembled most of the pervasive references to Fagin as the devil?his
red hair, his association with fire and toasting forks, his demoniacal
expressions, his nicknames of "the old gentleman" (also applied, in a
different context, to Mr. Brownlow) and "the devil," his power to leave
no footprints behind him?and concludes that the "plot-relation between
Fagin and Oliver exactly parallels that traditionally existing between
Satan and mankind."10
So Fagin is at once stereotype Jew, nighttime or underworld
capitalist, and devil. What makes him so consummately dangerous to
Oliver, in addition to his devilish luck, is his unequalled knowledge of
human nature. Like most of the others who have taken Oliver under
their protection, Fagin wants the boy for the material gain to be made
from him. But his desire to cause Oliver to fall into crime for Monks'
sake seems at times much less important than his desire to corrupt
Oliver for his own. Oliver's instinctive goodness challenges Fagin, who
by a judicious alternation of virtuous homily and pious, example, of
solitude and fellowship, of threat and unctuous affection, assails
Oliver's spirit mightily:

In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils; and,
having prepared his mind, by solitude and gloom, to prefer
any society to the companionship of his own sad thoughts in
such a dreary place, was now slowly instilling into his soul the
poison which he hoped would blacken it, and change its hue
for ever (p. 120).

Under the pressures of this treatment Oliver weakens. Life, which

at the very moment of his birth was signalled by struggle and crying,
tests his inherent merit severely. Oliver's progress is no easier than
Christian's; his innocent soul seems to shrink from further contamina

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216 I PATTEN

tion, and to be trying to leave the body altogether, though in a different

way from that of the coffin-hearted:

The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the
floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of
his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shews in
shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just
departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant,
fled to Heaven: and the gross air of the world has not had
time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed (p. 128).

Fagin's consummate villainy, then, lies in his capacity to recognize

Oliver's need for compassion. He treats his prey as a human being
with psychological as well as physical wants, perverting the very texts
of benevolism and natural human compassion to his own diabolic ends,
just as he exploits the most un-Christian aspects of capitalism. He is
therefore the focus of the several attitudes the novel sees as anti-human
and dehumanizing. Rather than ignoring Oliver's humanity, Fagin
attempts instead to enlist to his own side Oliver's best instincts, his
desire to please, his eagerness for friendship, his sense of humor, his
loyalty. Fagin remarks to Bill: "Once let him feel that he is one of us;
once fill his mind with the idea that he has been a thief, and he's ours!"
(p. 126).
Though his techniques are less crude than those of others, Fagin
is one of many hunters in this novel. "There is a passion for hunting
something deeply implanted in the human breast," Dickens remarks
when the crowd takes off after Oliver. And the first requisite for most
hunters is that the object of pursuit be denied any human attributes:
the passion is for hunting something. In Oliver Twist Dickens sympa?
thizes with any human being subjected to this dehumanizing process;
his genius for investigating the psychology of the hunted human being
provides a literary parallel to the earlier artistic exploration of the
psychology of the hunted animal by Stubbs and Ward. It is for this
reason that Dickens' attitude towards Sikes shifts towards the close of
the novel, when he, like Oliver before him, is the dehumanized object
of mob pursuit. Similarly, when Fagin is finally trapped, Dickens
explores with extraordinary intensity his psychology as he becomes
aware of the implacable and unremitting hatred of the trial audience:
"in no one face?not even among the women, of whom there were
many there?could be read the faintest sympathy with himself, or any
feeling but one of all-absorbing interest that he should be condemned"
(p. 358).
Two further points remain to be made about Fagin. The first is
that he, like Monks and Sikes, is strangely self-consuming. All three

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 OLIVER TWIST | 217

are frequently on fire with inner passion and the tortures of an evil
conscience. Monks has desperate fits, sometimes biting his hands and
covering them with wounds; it is from one of these seizures that he
dies. Fagin in the condemned cell, haggard, feverish, bloodless, seems
to be similarly engaged in biting his hand. A comic parallel to this
motif is provided by Grimwig's reiterated threat to "eat his head,"
though it is comic only because the misanthropy which occasions this
threat is tempered by considerable hidden benevolence.
In a scene which brilliantly externalizes this inner fire, Bill Sikes
during his flight after murdering Nancy pauses to work like a demon
to help extinguish the raging fire at a country farm:

Hither and thither he dived that night: now working at

the pumps, and now hurrying through the smoke and flame,
but never ceasing to engage himself wherever noise and men
were thickest. Up and down the ladders, upon the roofs of
buildings, over floors that quaked and trembled with his
weight, under the lee of falling bricks and stones, in every
part of that great fire was he; but he bore a charmed life, and
had neither scratch nor bruise, nor weariness nor thought, till
morning dawned again, and only smoke and blackened ruins
remained (pp. 328-29).

But no amount of physical exertion can extinguish his inner fire, nor
expiate his terrible crime; not for him the peaceful countryside that
Oliver escapes to, but a raging inferno instead that travels with him
wherever he goes.
The second point about Fagin's last days is that he drives away
with curses the venerable men of his own faith who offer "their chari?
table efforts." As he has lived without mercy, so he dies without any
expectation or hope of it; indeed, Fagin is already enduring the torments
of the hell he sought to propagate in life. In this sense, he does enact
"a pattern which identifies him as a Jew"; he is, as he repeats and
repeats, "an old man," unable to conceive of any but a retributive and
punitive justice, or of any life beyond mortality.

V
Newgate fiction in general, and Oliver Twist in particular, exte
the Godwinian debate on the origin of human evil. The discu
between Mr. Losberne and Rose Maylie concerning Oliver's pr
character, while he lies unconscious from his bullet wound, is re
by Mrs. Maylie, who, ignorant of his true nature, nevertheless d
to try to save him: "my days are drawing to their close; and may
be shewn to me [God have mercy upon me MS] as I shew

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218 ( PATTEN

others!" (p. 192). Her faith is amply rewarded, for in this novel
Dickens postulates the invincibility of the human soul, no matter how
hard the hearts, how niggardly the food, how subtle the evil, that it
meets.
Thus Oliver is rescued from a world of darkness, enclosure,
deprivation, and bondage, associated with London, and restored to
his rightful world of light, fields, nourishment, and freedom, associated
with the country. The possibility of such a transformation of world, and
with it of soul, obtains for others as well: Charley Bates, after reflecting
on Fagin's example, resolves to turn his back upon scenes of the past
and reform. He succeeds in the end, after hard work and steady
application, and "is now the merriest young grazier in all Northampton?
shire" (p. 367).
The most intense presentation of this possibility for transformation
occurs when Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow meet Nancy (and Noah)
on London Bridge. The hour, midnight, the place, the bridge, the
symmetrically-constructed parties, all suggest a meeting in time and
space of these two worlds, a crossing-point from night to day, and from
city to country. The elements conspire to encourage reformation: a
heavy mist obscures most of the buildings, warehouses, ships, and
steeples, but reveals the tower of St. Saviour's and the spire of St.
Magnus, while the heavy bell of St. Peter's tolls "for the death of
another day" (p. 310). Nancy's spirit prompts her too, seemingly in
league with almost supernatural forces that dimly image to her, in the
guise of a "coffin," what the reader can interpret as emblematic both
of her past sins against humanity, rectified by her compassion for
Oliver, and of her fast-approaching fate:

"... I have such a fear and dread upon me to-night that I

can hardly stand."
" A fear of what?" asked the gentleman, who seemed to
pity her.
"I scarcely know of what," replied the girl. "I wish I did.
Horrible thoughts of death, and shrouds with blood upon them,
and a fear that has made me burn as if I was on fire, have
been upon me all day. I was reading a book to-night, to
wile the time away, and the same things came into the print."
"Imagination," said the gentleman, soothing her.
"No imagination," replied the girl in a hoarse voice.
"I'll swear I saw 'coffin' written in every page of the book in
large black letters,?aye, and they carried one close to me,
in the streets to-night."
"There is nothing unusual in that," said the gentleman.
"They have passed me often."
"Real ones/' rejoined the girl. "This was not" (p. 312).

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 OLIVER TWIST [ 219

But nothing can persuade her to cross the bridge, to renounce her
companions, to betray Bill. The only thing she will take from the
encounter is Rose Maylie's handkerchief, a token of her fleeting contact
with the realms of light.
The significance of this token is developed throughout the novel:
handkerchiefs serve as indices to the antagonistic principles, capitalistic
or compassionate, that guide the action of Oliver Twist. A survey of
the motif provides a convenient summary of the novel's development.
Under the careful administration of the board, Oliver is deprived not
only of adequate food, but also of handkerchiefs, an inadvertently
benevolent dispensation, since according to the narrator's speculation
Oliver would no doubt have done away with himself if he had possessed
the article in question,

by tying one end of his pocket-handerkerchief to a hook in

the wall, and attaching himself to the other. To the perform?
ance of this feat, however, there was one obstacle: namely,
that pocket-handkerchiefs being decided articles of luxury,
had been, for all future times and ages, removed from the
noses of paupers by the express order of the board, in council
assembled: solemnly given and pronounced under their hands
and seals (p. 12).

(The Parish Seal, one recalls, is of the Good Samaritan.)

In no particular is the plenitude of the thieves' life more graphically
instanced than their wealth of handkerchiefs, which festoon the upper
regions of Fagin's rooms, and provide the principal article of commerce
to be observed in Field Lane. These handkerchiefs are the gang's stock
in trade, their wares, and so Oliver is put to work in their manufactory.
But the thieves' material wealth indicates no greater wealth of compas?
sion than was Oliver's lot under the Board of Guardians.
Nancy, however, treats handkerchiefs in a less materialistic way.
Her motherly concern for Oliver's welfare must be manifested circum?
spectly, but before he sets out with Sikes for the "crib at Chertsey,"
Nancy, "scarcely looking at the boy, threw him a handkerchief to tie
round his throat" (p. 134). In this instance an expression of compas?
sion, a handkerchief around the throat can instead suggest a noose, as
Fagin reminds Noah. And Bill Sikes, who sports "a dirty belcher
handkerchief round his neck" (p. 76), eventually ties his own halter,
after failing to drown Bull's-eye by tying a handkerchief with a stone
in it around the dog's neck. In such fitting ways do the villains of the
novel destroy themselves, while the hero escapes the fate predicted for
him by the smug gentleman in the white waistcoat.

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220 I PATTEN

A handkerchief can also be a manifestation of false gentility, as

when Bumble, taking tea with Mrs. Corney, spreads one over his
knees "to prevent the crumbs from sullying the splendour of his shorts"
(p. 149). Or it can indicate an attempt to cover up the inner soul,
which blazes out nonetheless, as is the case with Monks' neckerchief,
partly hiding a "broad red mark, like a burn or scald" (p. 315).
Thus the exchange of the handkerchief at London Bridge betokens
the free exchange of charity between Rose Maylie and Nancy, so
markedly in contrast to the essentially commercial exchanges that take
place elsewhere in the novel. It signifies also an exchange between two
women, who for that moment, and in the sight of God, are equals. And
in contrast to the handkerchief-halters that others wear, it becomes an
emblem of mercy.
For Rose Maylie's handkerchief appears once again, when Bill
accuses Nancy of betraying him. Her entreaty to her lover to spare her
life fails, as does her plea to let her appeal to Rose and Mr. Brownlow
for mercy to them both. Staggering and bleeding from Bill's savage
attack, she makes one more appeal for mercy, but this time her
thoughts are turned inward, on her own fate, and on her Maker:

raising herself, with difficulty, on her knees, [she] drew from

her bosom a white handkerchief?Rose Maylie's own?and
holding it up, in her folded hands, as high towards Heaven as
her feeble strength would allow, breathed one prayer for
mercy to her Maker.
It was a ghastly figure to look upon. The murderer stag?
gering backward to the wall, and shutting out the sight with
his hand, seized a heavy club and struck her down (pp.
322-23).

BRYN MAWR COLLEGE

NOTES
1 Humphry House, The Dickens World, 2nd ed. (London, 1942), p. 10.
2 Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, ed. Kathleen Tillotson (Oxford, 1966), p. 1.
All subsequent references are to this edition.

3 From Bentley's to 1841, the second paragraph referred to Oliver as "he,"

but in 1846 Dickens changed the personal pronoun to the impersonal "it," rein?
forcing the similarity in attitude between the surgeon and the narrator, and
providing additional support for Professor Steven Marcus's observation that
"Dickens's passionate aversion to the doctrines of the political economists took
expression in a style which curiously corresponds to their notion of man's relation

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 OLIVER TWIST | 221

to other men and to society" (Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey [London,

1965], pp. 66-67). Readers familiar with Professor Marcus's stimulating book
will note many points of agreement between his essay on Oliver Twist and this
one.

4 Ibid., p. 59.
5 However, the converse, acting on impulse, can result in foolish mistakes, as
Mr. Losberne shows on several occasions.
6 "The Young Dickens," The Lost Childhood and Other Essays (London,
1951), p. 55.
7 House, p. 131.
s Harry Stone, "Dickens and the Jews," VS, II (1959), 233.
9 Ibid., p. 234.
!0 Lauriat Lane, Jr., "The Devil in Oliver Twist," Dickensian, LII (1956), 134.

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