2 - The Image of the Child

Summary

OLIVER TWIST, NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP, DOMBEY AND SON

Probably the most famous scene in Oliver Twist (1838), perhaps one of the most well-known scenes in all of Dickens's works, is the one in which Oliver asks for more. In the popular imagination this is a novel associated with the idea of going hungry. Which means that there is a special significance to be attached to any subsequent scene in which Oliver states he does not need any more, because he is no longer hungry. There is one occasion on which he is directly asked whether he is hungry or not, when his emphatic answer is ‘No’ (OT 126). This is during his convalescent period after first arriving at Mr Brownlow's house. His interlocutor is a doctor, who has quite correctly diagnosed at least one important contributing factor to Oliver's physical weakness. Oliver Twist was written during a period when the medical profession, and in particular the Lancet, was at the forefront of attacks on the Poor Law Commissioners over their refusal to attribute the high mortality rates in the workhouses to the inadequate diet offered to the inmates.1 Oliver's well-being is guaranteed once he has arrived in a house where the debate about nutritional values focuses on the relative merits of ‘beautiful strong broth’ and port wine (OT 130), rather than on the relative merits of giving meat to paupers or witholding it, which is where the issue lies for Mr Bumble (OT 93).

But Oliver's residence with Brownlow is interrupted, and after his abduction by Sikes and Nancy he is returned to the way of life and dietary habits of the lower classes. It is actually while he is in the Sikes/Nancy household, on the evening before the expedition to Chertsey, that his appetite falls off again, not this time because he has been well fed, but from aversion. This is when the main meal of the day takes the form of a dish of sheeps’ heads (OT 201). The sheep's head was a recognized meal during the nineteenth century, but it would have been unusual in an urban working-class household, where the staple diet consisted of bread, potatoes, and tea. Oliver is not squeamish over his food, having consumed without hesitation a plate of ‘bits’ originally intended for the Sowerberrys’ dog (OT 74).