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Abstract:“The plot of Oliver Twist is very complicated and very unsatisfactory. It is a conventional plot…”( Kettle, 1951) It is based on the family secrets. Such beginning has its social bases. Dickens was good at using such way to tell his story, he used his special way to develop the plot.
Key Words: social situationcontradictions
1.1The plot based on the social situation
The story happened in London. It was not accidental that the author had chosen London as the background of the story, because London , as a big industrial city , had serious contradiction of the capitalism.
The Early Victorian period extends from the Reform Bill of 1832 to 1868. The first fourteen years were filled with unrest, alarm, and they contrasted with the growing prosperity and general good feeling of the succeeding twenty-two years when England, having committed herself to industrialism and free trade, became for a time “the workshop of the world”. During this period of time, many great changes took place in the society. England in the 1830s was rapidly undergoing a transformation from an agricultural rural economy to an urban, industrial nation. The growing middle class hoped to achieve an economic influence equal to, if not greater than, that of the British aristocracy.
The young Dickens saw of all these and caught them. Oliver Twist opens with a bitter invective directed at the nineteenth-century English Poor Laws. Dickens meant to demonstrate the incongruity of the Poor Laws through the figure of Oliver Twist, an orphan born and raised in a workhouse for the first ten years of his life. It seems that Dickens did not want to tell the readers where the workhouse, when Oliver was born, who was his mother (her name was unknown)… for such things were very common and usual in that time. He meant to demonstrate 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 the less fortunate through this story.
In Oliver Twist, Dickens presented the everyday existence of the lowest members of English society. He went far beyond the experiences of the workhouse extending his depiction of poverty to London’s squalid streets dark alehouses and thieves’ dens. He gave voice to those who had no voice, establishing a link between reality and literature with his social commentary.
1.2 Dickens’ ways of solving contradictions
“Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to have been a long and troubled dream. Feebly raising himself in the bed, with his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked anxiously round.
‘What room is this? Where have I been brought to?’ said Oliver. ‘This is not the place I went to sleep in.’
He uttered these words in a feeble voice: being very faint and weak; but they were overheard at once; for the curtain at the bed’s head was hastily drawn back; and a motherly lady, very neatly and precisely dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair close by, in which she had been sitting at needle-work.
‘ Hush, my dear ,’ said the old lady softly. ‘ You must be very quiet, or you will be ill again; and you have been very bad, --as bad as bad could be, pretty nigh. Lie down again; there’s a dear!’ With these words, the old lady very gently placed Oliver’s head upon the pillow; and smoothing back his hair from his forehead, looked so kindly and lovingly in his face, that he could not help placing his little withered hand on hers, and drawing it round his neck.
‘Save us!’ said the old lady, with tears in her eyes, ‘ what a grateful little dear it is. Pretty creature! What would his mother feel if she had sat by him as I have, and could see him now!’
(From “Oliver Twist”, ChapterXII)
In this chapter, Oliver was brought back to a very comfortable room by Mr. Bownlow, who was a generous man. Not only did he withdrew his accusation ofOliver, he took the boy home with him and nursed him out of his fever. This is a very important part in the book. Such plot appears in this novel several times. It is not accidental, “it is a very usual model in Dickens’ works”(Kettle, 1961:188). The warm , comfortable room contrasted with the dirt, terrible Fagin’s dens. The old kind lady contrasted with those people in the workhouse and others Oliver met before. We are impressed deeply by this contrast Dickens has used in his book,and we can see Dickens used this way to develop the plot in the whole book. “Contrast was a way Dickens liked and always used.”(Pan Yaoquan, 1980:100) The major action of Oliver Twist moves back and forth between two worlds: the filthy slums of London and the clean, comfortable houses of Brownlow and the Maylies. The fist world was real and frightening, while the latter was idealized, almost dreamlike, in its safety and beauty.
The greatness of the English realists lies not only in their satirical portrayal of the bourgeosie and in the exposure of the greed and hypocrisy of the ruling classes, but also in their profound humanism which is revealed in their sympathy for the labouring people. Charles Dickens was “the greatest English realist of the time” “With a striking force and truthfulness, he creates pictures of bourgeois civilization, describing the misery and sufferings of common people.” (Wu weiren, 2002:153-154) However, Dickens’ way of solving contradictions by using love is only his hope. It is his limitation.
In addition, when Oliver Twist was first published, it appeared in monthly installments, each two or three chapters long. Dickens knew that each installment had to be exciting enough to leave the readers eager for the next one. He deliberately ended each section with unresolved situations or unanswered questions. To find out what happened to the boy, readers had to buy the next month’s magazine. To understand Dickens’ technique, we compare it to writing a television soap opera. Each segment is exciting in itself, at the same time it continues what happened the time before and makes the readers eager to find out what happens next. It is because the author was good at using coincidences to develop the plot.
Conclusion
Dickens has his own ways of developing the plot. The plot is based on the social situations of that time. As a great critical realist, Dickens used his pen to expose the darkness of the society. He wrapped it all up in a complicated, puzzliing mystery story. “Without coincidences there would be no stories” Dickens knew well of this. He believed the love and kindness could solve all the contradictions. In order to develop the plot, Dickens has used many kinds of skills: contrast, detailed descriptions, humor, satire, etc.
Bibliography
1. Dickens, Charles.“Oliver Twist” [M], Oxford University Press, 1994
2.Kettle, Arnold.“An Introduction to the Novel” [M], Toronto: University of Tortonto Press, 1951: 166
3.Kettle, Aronld. “ Dickens: Oliver Twist”, George H. Ford, Lauriat Lane, “The Dickens Critics” (C) Irhaca: Cornell University Press, 1961:182-183.
4.Wu, Weiren “History and Anthology of English Literature (2)” [M], Foreign Language Teaching And Study Press, 2002:153-154, 157.
5.潘耀泉,“狄更斯创作的艺术特色”,《外国文学研究》[J],1980,第2期,第100页。
6.杨建明,“谈狄更斯作品中几个解决社会矛盾的方法”,《艺谭》[J],1985,第1期,第132页。
Key Words: social situationcontradictions
1.1The plot based on the social situation
The story happened in London. It was not accidental that the author had chosen London as the background of the story, because London , as a big industrial city , had serious contradiction of the capitalism.
The Early Victorian period extends from the Reform Bill of 1832 to 1868. The first fourteen years were filled with unrest, alarm, and they contrasted with the growing prosperity and general good feeling of the succeeding twenty-two years when England, having committed herself to industrialism and free trade, became for a time “the workshop of the world”. During this period of time, many great changes took place in the society. England in the 1830s was rapidly undergoing a transformation from an agricultural rural economy to an urban, industrial nation. The growing middle class hoped to achieve an economic influence equal to, if not greater than, that of the British aristocracy.
The young Dickens saw of all these and caught them. Oliver Twist opens with a bitter invective directed at the nineteenth-century English Poor Laws. Dickens meant to demonstrate the incongruity of the Poor Laws through the figure of Oliver Twist, an orphan born and raised in a workhouse for the first ten years of his life. It seems that Dickens did not want to tell the readers where the workhouse, when Oliver was born, who was his mother (her name was unknown)… for such things were very common and usual in that time. He meant to demonstrate 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 the less fortunate through this story.
In Oliver Twist, Dickens presented the everyday existence of the lowest members of English society. He went far beyond the experiences of the workhouse extending his depiction of poverty to London’s squalid streets dark alehouses and thieves’ dens. He gave voice to those who had no voice, establishing a link between reality and literature with his social commentary.
1.2 Dickens’ ways of solving contradictions
“Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to have been a long and troubled dream. Feebly raising himself in the bed, with his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked anxiously round.
‘What room is this? Where have I been brought to?’ said Oliver. ‘This is not the place I went to sleep in.’
He uttered these words in a feeble voice: being very faint and weak; but they were overheard at once; for the curtain at the bed’s head was hastily drawn back; and a motherly lady, very neatly and precisely dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair close by, in which she had been sitting at needle-work.
‘ Hush, my dear ,’ said the old lady softly. ‘ You must be very quiet, or you will be ill again; and you have been very bad, --as bad as bad could be, pretty nigh. Lie down again; there’s a dear!’ With these words, the old lady very gently placed Oliver’s head upon the pillow; and smoothing back his hair from his forehead, looked so kindly and lovingly in his face, that he could not help placing his little withered hand on hers, and drawing it round his neck.
‘Save us!’ said the old lady, with tears in her eyes, ‘ what a grateful little dear it is. Pretty creature! What would his mother feel if she had sat by him as I have, and could see him now!’
(From “Oliver Twist”, ChapterXII)
In this chapter, Oliver was brought back to a very comfortable room by Mr. Bownlow, who was a generous man. Not only did he withdrew his accusation ofOliver, he took the boy home with him and nursed him out of his fever. This is a very important part in the book. Such plot appears in this novel several times. It is not accidental, “it is a very usual model in Dickens’ works”(Kettle, 1961:188). The warm , comfortable room contrasted with the dirt, terrible Fagin’s dens. The old kind lady contrasted with those people in the workhouse and others Oliver met before. We are impressed deeply by this contrast Dickens has used in his book,and we can see Dickens used this way to develop the plot in the whole book. “Contrast was a way Dickens liked and always used.”(Pan Yaoquan, 1980:100) The major action of Oliver Twist moves back and forth between two worlds: the filthy slums of London and the clean, comfortable houses of Brownlow and the Maylies. The fist world was real and frightening, while the latter was idealized, almost dreamlike, in its safety and beauty.
The greatness of the English realists lies not only in their satirical portrayal of the bourgeosie and in the exposure of the greed and hypocrisy of the ruling classes, but also in their profound humanism which is revealed in their sympathy for the labouring people. Charles Dickens was “the greatest English realist of the time” “With a striking force and truthfulness, he creates pictures of bourgeois civilization, describing the misery and sufferings of common people.” (Wu weiren, 2002:153-154) However, Dickens’ way of solving contradictions by using love is only his hope. It is his limitation.
In addition, when Oliver Twist was first published, it appeared in monthly installments, each two or three chapters long. Dickens knew that each installment had to be exciting enough to leave the readers eager for the next one. He deliberately ended each section with unresolved situations or unanswered questions. To find out what happened to the boy, readers had to buy the next month’s magazine. To understand Dickens’ technique, we compare it to writing a television soap opera. Each segment is exciting in itself, at the same time it continues what happened the time before and makes the readers eager to find out what happens next. It is because the author was good at using coincidences to develop the plot.
Conclusion
Dickens has his own ways of developing the plot. The plot is based on the social situations of that time. As a great critical realist, Dickens used his pen to expose the darkness of the society. He wrapped it all up in a complicated, puzzliing mystery story. “Without coincidences there would be no stories” Dickens knew well of this. He believed the love and kindness could solve all the contradictions. In order to develop the plot, Dickens has used many kinds of skills: contrast, detailed descriptions, humor, satire, etc.
Bibliography
1. Dickens, Charles.“Oliver Twist” [M], Oxford University Press, 1994
2.Kettle, Arnold.“An Introduction to the Novel” [M], Toronto: University of Tortonto Press, 1951: 166
3.Kettle, Aronld. “ Dickens: Oliver Twist”, George H. Ford, Lauriat Lane, “The Dickens Critics” (C) Irhaca: Cornell University Press, 1961:182-183.
4.Wu, Weiren “History and Anthology of English Literature (2)” [M], Foreign Language Teaching And Study Press, 2002:153-154, 157.
5.潘耀泉,“狄更斯创作的艺术特色”,《外国文学研究》[J],1980,第2期,第100页。
6.杨建明,“谈狄更斯作品中几个解决社会矛盾的方法”,《艺谭》[J],1985,第1期,第132页。