Oliver Twist

• English
• Secundair onderwijs

Oliver Twist

by Charles Dickens

• The context 
• The author
• The story
• Please sir, I want some more

In what period was the story of Oliver Twist written?

1. The Golden Era (Queen Elizabeth I, end 16th C)
2. The Victorian Era (Queen Victoria, mid 19th C)
3. Georgian Era (King Georges, mid 18th C)
4. First World War (early 20th C)

Victorian London

• the world's largest city & capital of the British Empire
• population 
• social divide: The most unbounded wealth is the neighbour of the most hideous poverty...
• unsanitary conditions & epidemic diseases
• industrialization 
• crime rates                  During the continuance of a real London fog—which may be black, or grey, or more probably orange-coloured—the happiest man is he who can stay at home...

Education in Victorian London

• There was no legal obligation to send your children to school until 1880.
• For the Victorian middle class education was the responsibility of the parents, not the state 
• In the slums, not many people saw the value in a schooled education.
• Children were sent to work in factories, as apprentices or to sell goods on the streets.
• A law was passed requiring every child employed under the age of 13 to carry a certificate to prove they had received an adequate amount of schooling.
• By 1870 half of all British children still had no access to schooling at all.

Which picture shows Charles Dickens?

1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 

Charles Dickens

• 1812-1870 
• David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Christmas carol, Hard Times, ...
• middle class , but huge debts father (prison)
• age 12 started work at a shoe blacking factory
• magazine serials (Oliver Twist)
• realism, humour, satire, ...
• creation of well-known and typical characters 
• popular during his lifetime & afterwards
• Poet's Corner (Westminster Abbey) 

Guess who?
protagonist, orphan, innocent, charming

1. Fagin
2. Nancy
3. Oliver
4. The Artful Dodger

Guess who?
child, talks & dress like a grown-up, pickpocket, clever

1. Fagin
2. The Artful Dodger
3. Bill Sikes
4. Monks

Guess who?
prostitute, Sikes' lover, noble character, murdered

1. Rose Maylie
2. Agnes Fleming
3. Old Sally
4. Nancy

Before...

Chapter 1: Oliver Twist is born a sickly infant in a workhouse. The parish surgeon and a drunken nurse attend his birth. His mother kisses his forehead and dies, and the nurse announces that Oliver’s mother was found lying in the streets the night before. The surgeon notices that she is not wearing a wedding ring.

Chapter 2: Oliver is sent to a workhouse for 'juvenile offenders against the poor-laws'. When 9 years old, Oliver is sent to another workhouse which 'offers the poor the opportunity to starve slowly as opposed to quick starvation on the streets'.