Mrs. Mann is in charge of the branch workhouse where Oliver lives with twenty or thirty other boys. She is supposed to look after them, but doesn’t feed them of clothe them properly. “He should be despatched to a branch workhouse some three miles out, […], without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing.” (p4). It was also very cold and they were neglected and mistreated. “for at the very moment when a child had contrived to exist upon the smallest portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world.” (p4).
As the narrator, Charles Dickens disagrees with her treatment of the children and describes it with irony as very wise and good. When he described how she took all of their money for herself, he wrote, “The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself.” (p4). Dickens is also ironic when he describes Oliver’s punishment. He talks as if Oliver thoroughly deserved it. “…had been locked up therein for atrociously presuming to be hungry.” (p5).
This evidence make the reader strongly dislike Mrs. Mann as Dickens exposes the cruel treatment she gives the children in her care. They would be shocked that people could do that to children.
Mr. Bumble came to Mrs. Mann’s house one day and told her that as Oliver was nine, he would have to be taken to the main workhouse. “ ‘Oliver being now too old to remain here, the board have determined to have him back into the house.’ ” (p7-8).
The workhouse doesn’t treat the poor people well at all. They aren’t fed properly, “They contracted […] with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal and issued three meals of thin gruel a day.” (p10). There was no heating, uncomfortable beds and they had to work all day for no pay. Families were also forced to be split up, and husbands and wives divorced so the husband couldn’t support the family. “kindly undertook to divorce married people.” (p11). Dickens is being ironic again in this sentence.
Oliver asks for more food because they aren’t given enough and he is desperate. He is also scared because a tall boy said if he didn’t get another bowl of gruel a day, he would eat the boy who slept next to him, and Oliver and the others believed him because they are only children. “at last, they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one by: who was tall for his age, […] hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel per diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next to him” (p11-12). He was very scared to ask for more, but he was so hungry, he did it. “Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. […] said: some what alarmed at his own temerity: ‘Please, sir, I want some more.’ ” (p12). Oliver wouldn’t have been desperate enough to ask if he had been treated properly.
Later on in the story, when Oliver meets Fagin, he is in an even worse situation. Fagin is a scary man who is a father figure to a group of young boys who pick pocket for him. Dickens wrote about him to represent wickedness and to show the public how difficult it is to break free from the cycle of crime. “a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair” (p63). It makes the reader disgusted with him and hate him. When they first meet, Fagin seems very welcoming, shaking his hand and bowing. All of the boys also seem to welcome him by shaking his hand and taking his cap. “The Jew grinned; and making a low obeisance to Oliver, took him by the hand; and hoped he should have the honour of his intimate acquaintance.” (p63). However, behind all this, Fagin and the people who live with him have an ulterior motive for Oliver. He is a commodity to them because Fagin wants to use him to pickpocket and the boys are trying to pickpocket him, because this is they way they have been brought up. “The young gentleman […] shook both his hands very hard, especially the one in which he held his little bundle […] and another so obliging as to put his hands in his pockets: in order that, as he was very tired, he might not have the trouble of emptying them, himself” (p63). Fagin is very open about his support of individualism, a social philosophy which stresses the importance of the individual above society. His use of Oliver as a commodity is an example of this. This is ironic, because in Victorian society, it was the rich and upper class people who were most supportive of this because they were capitalists, but Fagin supports it because it holds his illegal means of making money together. “a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company.” Fagin is the kind of man who people would have nightmares about, especially children like Oliver, but he isn’t scared. Oliver feels safe with him because he is the first person who has ever treated him kindly. He has other people who have also looked after him as substitute parents, including Mrs. Mann, Mr. Bumble and Mr. Sowerberry and Fagin. It is ironic that these people are meant to replace parents, because none of them care for him as a mother or father would. Although Fagin is taking care of Oliver, he is representing the corrupt city and the people in it because he is a criminal, and once someone gets into his style of life, they will never get out and they are trapped. Dickens says the corrupt city environment has the power to “blacken [the soul] and change its hue for ever.” Once someone goes into the corrupt city, they too will be corrupt forever, like Fagin’s cycle of crime. The most unusual family structure is made up of Fagin and his pick pockets, because although Fagin cares for them, keeps them healthy, trains them to what he does to make money, and teaches them to be loyal, he only does it for his own benefits. This ‘family’ is built around individualism and exploitation, and not out of selfless interest.
Oliver experienced cruelty throughout his life in the branch workhouse, workhouse and the apprenticeship at the undertakers. He has been starved, beaten, humiliated and neglected by nearly everyone whose care he has been in. Charles Dickens wrote about the appalling treatment of the children so everyone could read it and know what really goes on in the workhouses. However, Oliver survived it all, and most of the people who were horrible to him were punished. In the end, good will always triumph over evil.
