Oliver Twist- Charles Dickens

Gender
1. Fallen Woman- Nancy
  1. Fallen and degraded aspect- preface
  2. Sykes- there is something about a roused woman...strong passions ...which few men like to provoke
  3. Nancy " is an honour to her sex...here's ...wishing they were all like her"- Sykes
  4. ...her virtue and her life alike in danger...to preserve the one at the cost of the other
  5. "the girls gone mad, I think" replied Sykes savagely...Mr Fagan was sufficiently well acquainted with the manners and customs of that particular species of humanity which Nancy belonged to feel tolerably certain that it would be rather unsafe to prlong any conversation with her at present
  6. Nancy- "keep back the dog; he'll tear the boy to pieces...I don't care for that Bill" screamed the girl struggling violently with the man; "the child shan't be torn down by the dog, unless you kill me first"
  7. Oliver could see that he had some power over the girl's better feelings and for an instant of appealing to her compassion for his helpless state- when he's being asked to steal from brownlow..."if I could help you I would, but I have not the power
  8. Do you know who you are what you are? (Fagan)- "oh, yes, I know all about it' replied the girl, laughing hysterically and shaking her head from side to side, with a poor assumption of indifference
  9. I wish I had been struck dead...it is my living; and the cold wet dirty streets are my home, and you are the wretch that drove me to them long ago, and that'll keep me there, day and night, day and night, till I die"- talking to Fagan
  10. tearing at her hair and dress in a transport of frenzy..."its the worst of having to do with women" said the Jew "but they're clever, and we can't get on, in our line, without 'em"
    1. Nancy's doubtful character ...the creature was a disgrace to her sex (people say about her)
      1. Nancy- "the girls life had been squandered in the streets and the most noisome of the stews and dens of London but there was something of the women's original nature left in her still"
        Browlow to Mr. BUmble and his wife- "the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction" ...Bbumble- "the law is an ass, an idiot, if that's the law, the laws a bachelor"
      2. debased
      3. Nancy- "the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness but shich alone connected her with that humanity of which her wasting kife had iobliterated all outward chases when a very child"- loving children
        Nnancy to Rose- "you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood"
        Nancy- her cradle "for the alley and gutter mine as will be my death bed"
        Rose to Nancy- "do not a deaf ear to the entreaties of one of your own sex...do listen to me."
        Nancy about Sykes- "but I am drawn back to him after every suffering and every ill-usage"
        Nancy- " a woman lost almost beyond redemption"..."when such as me who has no certain roof but the coffin lid...pity us for having only one feeling of the woman left ...to would be something to die in the same hell in which I have live
        Rose- "her strong wish to win the outcast back to redemption and hope"
        Sykes about Nancy- "I though I had tamed her but she is as bad as ever"
  11. women- some with the last lingering tinge of their early freshness almost fading as you lookedand others with every mark and stamo of their sex utterly beaten out and presenting but one loathsome blank ot profligacy and crime, some mere girls, other but young women and non past the prime of life- formed the darkest and saddest portion of this dreary picture.
  12. Fagan- "as soon as the boy begins to harden she'll care no more for him than for a block of wood"
    1. Miss Nancy's hysterics were usually of that violent kind
      1. she felt the full hopelessness of her condition
        "the girl"- stands for a figure in society
  13. Jew- the sharpest girl I ever saw
  14. ...the jew scrutinised her narrowly., There was no flinching about the girl. She was as true and earnst in the matter as Toby Crackit could be
2. Oliver's mother- where she came, or where she was going to, nobody knows
3. New poor law- "instead of compelling man to support his family...took his family away from him, and made him a bachelor
4. Mr. Grimwig- "you old woman never believe anthing but quack doctors and lying story books
5. women can always put things in fewest words accept when it's blowing up and then they lengthens it out - Sykes
6. rose
  1. cast in so slight and exquisite a mould...so mild and gentle, so pure and beautiful, the Earth seemed not her element
  2. her heart was full...brushed away a tear
  3. think how young he is, think that he may never have known a mother's love, or even the comfort of a home
  4. The Dcctor- "bless the bright eyes of your sex, they never see whether for good or for bad more than one side of any question" - on Rose believing Oliver's tale
    1. "it seemed as ifthe oupourings of a fresh, young heart claimed common kindred with the loveliest things in natur"
      1. "a creature as fair and innocent of guile as one of God's own angel...fluttered between life and death"- continually compared to an angel
Religion
1. Dick - "he dreams of heaven and angels..."God bless you"..."the first that Oliver had ever heard invoked upon his head...and in all his years. he never once forgot it"
2. Oliver - an article direct from the manufactory of the very devil himself
3. Heaven is a long way off and they are too happy there to come down to the bedside of a poor boy - Oliver
  1. "raising herself with difficullty on her knees drew from her bosom a white hankerchief- Rose Mayley's own - and holding it up in her folded hands as high towards heaven as her feeble strength would let her, breathed one prayer for mercy to her maker
  2. Oliver to Fagan - "let me say one prayer, say only one upon your knees with me
4. he prayed to heaven to spare him from such deeds- Oliver
  1. Repition of angel, devil and jew
    1. The jew...looked less like a man than some hideous phantom, moist from the grave and worried by an evil spirit...every evil thought and blackest purpose lay working at his heart
5. Oliver read a chapter or two from the bible
  1. Rose to Nancy- "It is never to late for penitence and atonement"
underclass
1. I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil - Preface
2. Have they no lesson - Preface (about the slums)
3. best and worst shades of our nature- preface
4. a new burden having been imposed upon the parish- oliver's birth
5. workhouse- without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing- use of humour/irony
  1. It cannot be accepted that this system of farming would produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop
  2. Mr Limbkins - "I know that boy will be hung"- after Oliver asks "for more"
6. he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery-Oliver in the workhouse
7. Hunger and recent ill-usage are great assistants if you want to cry; and Oliver cried very naturally indeed
8. New poor laws- so the established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative...of being starved by gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it
9. what do paupers have to do with soul or spirit either? It's enough that we let them have live bodies- Mr Bumble
10. the impious and profane offense of asking for more
11. A man going to prison "for not playing the flute, or in other words for begging in the streets and doing nothing for his livelihood
12. these dreadful creatures, that are born to be murderers and robbers from their very cradles- Charlotte (living at the undertakers)
13. the sole places that seemed to prosper, amid the blight of the place, were the public houses...drunken men and women were positively wallowing in filth
14. Mr Bbedwin- "he was a dear, grateful, gentle child sir...I know what children are, sir,...and people who can't say the same, shouldn't say anything about them."
15. when we oppress and grind our fellow creatures we bestowed but one thought on the dark evidences of human error which like dense and heavy clouds are arising slowly it is true but not less surely to heaven to pour their after-vengeance on our heads
16. the beadle- "the great principle of out-of-door relief is, to give the paupers exactly what they don't want; and then they get tired of coming"
  1. Fagan about the artful dodger being sent to Australia after being caught for something minor- "why didn't he go out as a gentleman and not as a common prig, without honour or glory"
    1. abyss of crime and misery whence there was no escape
Crime
1. what a fine thing capital punishment is, dead men never repent, dead men never bring awkward stories to light
2. Fagan about Dodger " a great man and he'll make you one too if you take pattern of him
3. a most violent and deeply rooted antipathy to go near a police officer
4. Fagan to Oliver- "make 'em your models dear"
5. when Oliver is caught thieving and is chased by people - "there is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast
6. the wiley old jew had the boy in his toils...slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken it and change its hue forvever
7. ...to do a great right, you may do a little wrong; and you may take any means which the end to be attained will justify
8. Fagan about Oliver - "He's ours- ours for his life"
9. Fagan- "with this boy properly managed my dears, I could what I couldn't do with twenty of them"- to Sykes and Nancy
10. crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often it's chosen victims. ..Rose- "can you rally believe that this delicate boy has been a voluntary associate of the worst outcasts of society"
  1. crime as a perpetuating cycle- Nancy- "Syke's heavy hand upon her shoulder" mirrored in Sykes about Fagan- "I dont feel like myself when you lay that withered old claw on my shoulder"
11. lighting on a passage which attracted his attention...it was a history of the lives and trails of great criminals, and the pages were soiled and thumbed with use
12. any hunger worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets, at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may, can hardly open them in a more bitter world
  1. Fagan- "the gallows which has stopped many a bold fellow's career
13. "i saw it was not easy to train him to the business " replied the Jew; "he was not like other boys in the same circumstance"...I had no hold upon him to make him worse...his hand was not in. I had nothing to frighten him with; which we always must have in the beginning, or we labour in vain"
Empire
1. I knew a man that was hung in Jamaica for murdering his master- Grimwig
2. "Monks...went to a distant part of the New world...squandered all his money
nature/inheritance
1. "he comes of a bad family. Excitable natures"- Mr Bumble about Oliver
2. very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair
3. Mr Brownlow about Oliver- "the old idea of the resemblance between his features and some familiar face came upon him"
4. "...the picture above Oliver's head, and then to the boy's face. There was it's living copy."
5. ...another Jew- younger than Fagin, but nearly as vile and repulsive in appearance - Sykes
  1. the jew's red eyebrows, and a half-closing of his deeply-set eyes
6. judged by mere worldly considerations and probabilities his story is a very doubtful one
7. Oliver about Sykes and Fagan - "their look was as firmly impressed upon his memory as if it had been deeply carved in stone and set before him from his birth"
  1. Monks and Brownlow- "dragged on their heavy chain through a world that was poison to them both...nothing but death could break the rivets"
    1. "more and more as his nature developed itself"- Oliver when Mr Browlow adopts him and fills his mind with knowledge"
      1. How the two orphans (Rose and Oliver) tried diversity remembered its lessons in mercy to others and mutual love and fervent thanks to Him who had protected and observed them....gratitude to that Being whose code is mercy"
City
1. a lad of spirit need never want in London...it was the very place for a homeless boy, who must die in the streets unless someone helped him
2. LC Slums where the undertaker lives- crowded and densely inhabited...many of the tenements had shop fronts; but these were fast closed, and mouldering away, only the upper rooms being inhabited
  1. the kennel was stagnant and filthy. The very rats...were hideous with famine
    1. shadow of the gallows
3. a dirtier or more wretched place he had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with dirty odours
4. Fagan wasn't "bewildered by the darkness of the night or the intricacies of the way
5. Market
  1. tumult of discordant sounds that filled oliver twist with surprise and amazement
    1. Ssykes on the way to kill Nancy "slunk along in the deepest shadow"
  2. unwashed, unshaven, squalored and dirty figures constantly running to and fro...bursting out of the throng...quite confounded the senses
  3. Sykes "bestowed very little attention upon the numerous sights and sounds which so astonished the boy
6. East end/marshy ground- "always gloomy and black"- at night time
  1. Rose- "the quiet place, the pure air and all the pleasures and beauties of spring will restore you in a few days"
    1. the memories that peaceful country scenes call up are not of this world ...full taste of heaven itself ...purify our thoughts
      1. no languishing in a wretched prison or associating with wretched men; nothing but pleasant and happy thoughts ...the poor people were so neat and clean
7. "residents of none but low and desperate ruffians ....subsisted chiefly on plunder and crime"
8. Nancy- "crossed crowded streets, where clusters of persons were eagerly atching their opportunity to do the like...when she reached the more wealthy quarter of the town the streets were comparatively deserted"
  1. Nancy- "wrapping myself up so my shadow would not betray me"- her shadow is why later why Fagan does not trust her
    1. Nancy- "the girl had taken a few restless steps to and fro"
      1. Sykes- "unsteady of purpose and uncertain where to go...plunging further and further into the solitude and darkness"- after killing Nancy
        dark, dismal night
      2. Shadows on the wall have caught your whispers
        Sykes- it seemed as though the whole city had poured its population out to curse him
        Sykes- endeavouring to creep away in the darkness and confusion
  2. send him to some quiet country place where he may grow strong and well
Oliver
1. ...rather unequivocally poised between this world and the next; the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter- about his birth/metaphor for his class
2. an excellent example of the power of dress...it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have fixed his station in society
3. Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception
4. Nature or inheritance had implanted a good, sturdy spirit in Oliver's breast
5. "i inwented it"- Mr. Bumble - Oliver's name is invented/mispelling
6. boys in the workhouse- "guarded away from the sins of Oliver Twist"
7. "Critical moment of Oliver's fate"- when the man refuses to buy him from the workhouse because he doesn't get to escape
8. Hardened young rascal
9. instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed rather too much
10. A naughty orphan which nobody can't love
11. There's something in that boys face- Mr Brownlow
12. his spirit was roused at last; the cruel insult to his mother had set his blood on fire
  1. some further allusion was being made to his mother, recommenced kicking with a violence that rendered every other sound inaudible
    1. "How like a gentleman's son he is dressed again....regaining for him the inheritance for which, if this story is true, he has been fraudently denied"
    2. Innocent and unoffending child
13. end of chapter 7- change in the novel's direction- Oliver going to London
14. When oliver is found by Fagan they describe him "nothing but a gentlemen" and then "bowing with mock humility"
  1. Oliver sleeping- "he looked like death ...but in the guise it wears when life has just departed- when a young and gentle spirit has but in an instant fled to heaven, and the gross air of the word has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed"
    1. the feeble voice of the sick child recounting a weary catalogue of evils and calamities which hard men had brought upon him
15. "poor outcast boy...when desolate and deserted he stood alone in the midst of wickedness and guilt" - when asked to go and steal from Brownlow
MC/Wealthy
1. Mr Bumble had a great idea of his oratorical powers and his importance
2. Mr Bumble- in a tone of impressive pomposity
3. A beadle ordered to hold his tongue! A moral revolution
4. the freedom of the subject and the libert of the individual are among the first and proudest boasts of a true hearted englishman
5. "bleak dark and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed to draw round the bright fire and thank God they were home, and for the homeless, starving wretch to lay him down and die
6. Mr Gyles- "could not fail to remind them of his superior position in society...but death, fires and burglary makes all men equal. - the owner of the house oliver steals from and is caught in and waiting to be hung
  1. all the working class and criminal etc- "midnight had come upon the crowded city...midnight had come upon them all"
  2. Bbrownlow adopts Oliver "thus linked together a little society, his condition approached as nearly one of perfect happiness as can ever be known in this changing world
7. Rose- "there is a stain upon m name which the world visits on innocent heads, I will carry it into no blood but my own...I cannot help this weakness and it makes my purpose stronger"
8. Mr Bumble- "had dignity enough for two"
9. housemaids looking at Nancy- "its no good being proper in this world...brass can do better than gold what has stood the fire"
  1. Nancy to Rose- "if there were more like you, there would be fewer like me"

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Oliver Twist- Charles Dickens

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