Charles Dickens as a Social Reformer: A Study of Some of His Novels

"I wished to show", Dickens wrote in Preface to the third edition of Oliver Twist, "in little Oliver, the Principle of Good, surviving through every adverse circumstance, and triumphing at last" Oliver Twist can be considered as a plunge, from the sunny landscape of "Pick wick" to a confined world of darkness; an oppressive lurid intensity from the workhouse to the criminal slum and the jail. Almost all its scenes are bleak and gloomy. The workhouse where half starved boys whimper with hunger, the peep-holed backrooms of the three cripples, the ruined workhouse where monks ferrifies Bumble by night are the scenes which are tilled with terror and pity. The very outdoors is under a heavy sky of evil. Nancy lurks in black shadow on the slimy steps of London Bridge. Sikes wanders in horror-haunted flight away from and then back to the city and the murder clambers owe the titles of the barricaded house.