Many of the middle class were anxious to establish that they belonged to that class and were anxious to be in any way associated with the lower class. They therefore viewed the lower classes as idlers, who didn’t work and who relied upon charity. Victorian society dictated that if you were rich or economically successful this was a sign that God favoured you because you were honest, hardworking and a successful individual. They therefore thought that poverty was a sign of a weakness of the poor and should be eradicated through an imposition of middle class morality.
The poor law of 1834 allowed poor people in society to receive public help but this was only permitted if they lived and worked in public workhouses. If the poor begged they were punished by imprisonment. If people got in debt and couldn’t afford to get out of it they were imprisoned, often, with their whole family. This fate befell the authors family when Charles was young. They also made workhouses as miserable as they possibly could in order to stop the poor relying on public assistance. They believed that if the conditions were intolerable it would discourage paupers from being idle and greedy.
The workhouses as depicted by Dickens were horrible places, and were the last resort for anyone. Families were split apart, husbands to one side, mothers to another and children taken away. The state became the new guardians of workhouse children, whether they were orphans or not. The meals provided were inadequate and this was an attempt to encourage residents to find work to support themselves.
“So they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they) of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it.”
Because of the conditions inside the workhouse many people chose to die in the streets faster, rather than to die slowly inside the workhouse. In order to gain public assistance the poor had to pay through misery and suffering. We could therefore come to the conclusion that workhouses were institutional abuse and put poor people through unnecessary suffering many times over.
“Hunger and recent ill-usage are great assistants if you want to cry; and Oliver cried very naturally indeed.”
The old, the sick and the very young suffered more than the able bodied benefited from the laws. Dickens attempted to demonstrate this incongruity through the figure of Oliver Twist, an orphan born and raised in a workhouse for the first ten years of his life. His story illustrates the hypocrisy of the petty middle-class bureaucrats, who treat a small child cruelly while voicing their belief in the Christian virtue of giving charity to less fortunate. Dickens is hugely sarcastic when he writes-
“No, no, Sir’, sobbed Oliver, clinging to the hand which held the well known cane;”
The legal system in the nineteenth century was very unfair and was exposed as a sham by Dickens. Men, women and children were sent to prison for petty crimes and families were incarcerated in debtors jails. Such was the fate of Dickens’ father. Conditions there were horrendous and many of the prisoners suffered from starvation and bad living conditions. Oliver is wrongly arrested and is put in a cell at the police station. The conditions depicted are dreadful.
“This cell was in shape and size something like an area cellar, only not a light. It is most intolerably dirty…”
In court the aptly named judge, Mr Fang, shows no sympathy or mercy for Oliver and allows him to faint through lack of water. He gives him three months in prison despite the fact that he is clearly innocent. Dickens here was criticising the legal system which jailed children on spurious charges.
“Has he any parents inquired Mr Fang
He says they died in his infancy, your worship,’ replied the officer, bazarding the usual reply.”
The conditions in London at the time of Dickens are also characterised as atrocious. There was filth and excrement all over the streets, the city was full of disease. The squalid streets and lack of sanitation were the causes of the diseases and many people died because of these factors. London also had a high percentage of criminal activity occurring, most of which was of a pretty nature. This was usually carried out by young boys.
Jack Dawkins, known as the Artful Dodger is a charming rogue. Fagin’s best pupil. He is dirty, wild yet endearing boy. Fagin on the other hand is a master criminal, whose speciality is selling stolen property. He employs a gang of thieves and is always looking for new recruits. He is a man of high intelligence although does not use it enough or to a good end. The London in which such criminality thrives is depicted thus-
“It was market morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire; and a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above.”
Dickens vision of the lower classes is not without hope in that there are characters like Nancy who show generosity of spirit which Dickens obviously admired. He appears to maintain that given the right circumstances, as Oliver is by his new guardians, the poor of London can allow their better nature to flower. The author in no way condones criminal activity as can be seen by the fates of Sikes and Fagin. He does however give us hope in his description of Oliver when Mr Brownlow visits the sisters-
“The boy stirred and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known.”
Dickens appears to give us hope for the future while at the same time launching a withering attack upon social injustice.
In the novel therefore we see Dickens highlighting and commenting upon the society which his novel takes place. He attacks the legal and judicial system, the poor laws and the inadequacy of poor relief as a whole. His critical views of a morality, which underscored the framing and administration of the poor laws is evident throughout the novel. Conditions for the poor are harshly exposed and therefore held up to ridicule. Perhaps the author’s most bitter resentment was saved for those who were employed to administer the system. Dickens clearly despised them and focused his most scathing remarks upon them.
