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SMT S.B.Gardi Department of English M.K.Bhavnagar University.
Name :- Goswami Mahir Pari C.
Roll no :- 21
Topic name :- Discuss the portrait of woman characters in
"Oliver Twist"
Submitted to :- Department of English
Paper name :- The Victorian Literature
E - mail :- goswamimahirpari786@gmail.com
Enrollment no :- 20691084201180021
Brief introduction about author :- Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
Born :- Charles John Huffam Dickens,7 February 1812Landport, Hampshire, England.
Died:- 9 June 1870 (aged 58)Higham, Kent, England,Resting place.Poets' Corner,
Westminster Abbey
Occupation :- Writer
Nationality :- British
Notable works :- The Pickwick Papers,
Oliver Twist,
Nicholas Nickleby,
A Christmas Carol,
David Copperfield,
Bleak House,
Little Dorrit,
A Tale of TwoCities,
Great Expectations,
Brief history of novel :-
Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse in 1830s England. His mother, whose name no one knows, is found on the street and dies just after Oliver’s birth. Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in a badly run home for young orphans and then is transferred to a workhouse for adults. After the other boys bully Oliver into asking for more gruel at the end of a meal, Mr. Bumble, the parish beadle, offers five pounds to anyone who will take the boy away from the workhouse. Oliver narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a brutish chimney sweep and is eventually apprenticed to a local undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. When the undertaker’s other apprentice, Noah Claypole, makes disparaging comments about Oliver’s mother, Oliver attacks him and incurs the Sowerberrys’ wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away at dawn and travels toward London.
Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter in the London house of his benefactor, Fagin . It turns out that Fagin is a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him. After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing mission with two other boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an elderly gentleman, Oliver is horrified and runs off. He is caught but narrowly escapes being convicted of the theft. Mr. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen, takes the feverish Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health. Mr. Brownlow is struck by Oliver’s resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home, but two young adults in Fagin’s gang, Bill Sikes and his lover Nancy, capture Oliver and return him to Fagin.
Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named Monks are set on recapturing Oliver. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Oliver’s mother left behind a gold locket when she died. Monks obtains and destroys that locket. When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagin’s designs, but a member of Fagin’s gang overhears the conversation. When word of Nancy’s disclosure reaches Sikes, he brutally murders Nancy and flees London. Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently hangs himself while trying to escape.
Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts Monks and wrings the truth about Oliver’s parentage from him. It is revealed that Monks is Oliver’s half brother. Their father, Mr. Leeford, was unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair with Oliver’s mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks has been pursuing Oliver all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived of his share of the family inheritance. Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to sign over Oliver’s share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered that Rose is Agnes’s younger sister, hence Oliver’s aunt. Fagin is hung for his crimes. Finally, Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside.
Women character in Oliver Twist
1.) Nancy
2.) Rose maylie
3.) Agen's Fleming
4.) Mrs. Maylie
5.) Mrs. Corney
6.) Mrs. Bedwin
7.) Monkes's mother
8.) Mrs. Sowerberry
9.) Mrs.Mann
Nancy
Nancy is a fictional character in the novel Oliver Twist and its numerous theatre , television and motion picture adaptations. She is a member of Fagin's gang and the lover , and eventual victim, of Bill Sikes .
Though it is never explicitly stated in the novel, it is strongly implied that Nancy is a prostitute as well as a thief. Dickens expressly asserted this in his preface to the novel's 1841 edition ("the boys are pickpockets, and the girl is a prostitute").
Despite her criminality , Nancy is portrayed as a
sympathetic figure, whose concern for Oliver overcomes her loyalty to Sikes and Fagin. By the climax of the novel she is emaciated with sickness and worry, and filled with guilt about the life she is leading.
Background
Nancy was tainted and played at a young age by
Fagin , the receiver of stolen goods who persuades downtrodden youths to do his bidding. Her exact age is not mentioned in the book, although she says she has been a thief for 12 years (and began working for Fagin when she was half Oliver's age). From this it can be deduced that she is probably around seventeen. She is typically depicted in her teens or mid 20s in film versions of the novel. She apparently looks older than her years, as she tells Rose Maylie "I am younger than you would think, to look at me, but I am well used to it."
Nancy is one of the members of Fagin's gang that few, if any, know about in central London, since she has recently moved from the suburbs — something referred to by Sikes when he and Fagin, concerned that Oliver might inform on them, are trying to convince her to attend his impending trial after he is mistakenly arrested for pickpocketing ("No one around here knows anything about you"). Her excuse for not attending is that she does not wish anyone to know about her; nevertheless, she winds up attending it, presumably after having been physically threatened by Sikes.
Description
In the novel she drinks heavily. She is described thus when she first appears:
“ A couple of young ladies called to see the young gentlemen; one of whom was named Bet, and the other Nancy. They wore a good deal of hair, not very neatly turned up behind, and were rather untidy about the shoes and stockings. They were not exactly pretty, perhaps; but they had a great deal of colour in their faces, and looked quite stout and hearty." ”
In the original illustrations by George Cruikshank , Nancy is depicted as stout and fleshy, with a round, bulbous face.
By the end of the novel Nancy has dramatically lost weight through anxiety. She is described as "so pale and reduced with watching and privation, that there would have been considerable difficulty in recognising her as the same Nancy who has already figured in this tale."
In the preface Dickens says in writing dialogue for Nancy, he deliberately avoided using the crude language that would have been used by a real person like Nancy:
“ No less consulting my own taste, than the manners of the age, I endeavoured, while I painted it in all its fallen and degraded aspect, to banish from the lips of the lowest character I introduced, any expression that could by possibility offend; and rather to lead to the unavoidable inference that its existence was of the most debased and vicious kind, than to prove it elaborately by words and deeds. In the case of the girl, in particular, I kept this intention constantly in view. ”
Instead Nancy and her friend Bet are introduced using faux-genteel terminology, portrayed as if seen though Oliver's innocent eyes, but recognisably ironic to the reader. Bet's brash refusal to get something for Fagin is described as "a polite and delicate evasion of the request" showing "the young lady to have been possessed of natural good-breeding." [5] Nancy's visit to the magistrates is described in similar language. Only later, when Nancy speaks to Rose, does she explicitly describe herself as degraded and corrupted. Their criminal enterprises are spoken of in euphemisms, creating for the reader a "game of guessing the crime".
Relationship to Oliver
Nancy, who is fiercely protective of Oliver and harbors a great deal of motherly affection and pity for him, tries to prevent him from being kidnapped a second time, after Oliver has finally managed to find safety in the household of the Maylie family, whom Sikes tried unsuccessfully to rob. She gives Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow , Oliver's benefactor, information about Oliver's evil half-brother Monks , who is in league with Fagin. However, she has managed to keep Bill's name out of it. But Fagin has sent a spy (Noah) out after her, and when the spy reports on what he has heard and seen, Fagin, furious at what she has done, tells Sikes about her actions. However, he twists the story just enough to make it sound as if she informed on him, knowing that this will probably result in her being murdered and thus silenced. It is her murder and the subsequent search for Sikes, her killer, that helps bring down Fagin's gang.
Nancy commits one of the most noble acts of kindness in the story when she ultimately defies Bill, in order to help Oliver to a better life, and she is subsequently martyred for it . Her character represented Dickens' view that a person, however tainted by society, could still retain a sense of good and redeem for past crimes. One of the main reasons Dickens puts Nancy in Oliver Twist is so that she can be contrasted with the pure, gentle Rose Maylie .
Role of the character
Dickens was criticized for using a character that was a thief. Dickens, however, defended his decision in the Preface to the story when it appeared in novel-form, explaining that it was his intention to show criminals, however petty, in "all their deformity", and that he had thought that dressing Nancy in anything other than "a cheap shawl" would make her seem more fanciful than real as a character.
Nancy is one of literature's earliest examples of the
stock character of the “ tart with a heart ”—the stereotypical character of a tragic or fallen woman who makes her way through life through crime but is still a good and compassionate person.
Rose Maylie
Rose Fleming Maylie is a character in Charles Dickens ' novel Oliver Twist, who is eventually discovered to be Oliver's maternal aunt. Though she plays a significant role in the novel, she is often omitted from dramatisations of the story.
Role
Rose is portrayed as pure, innocent and beautiful. Seventeen years old at the time of the novel's events, she is set up as a dramatic foil to Nancy , who is around the same age and sees her own degradation in contrast to Rose.
Biography
Rose is an orphan whose original surname was Fleming. She is raised from childhood by Mrs. Maylie, who adopted her from a poor family who were looking after her. She refers to Rose as her niece. Rose is haunted by the thought that she may be illegitimate, and so she rejects the suit of Mrs. Maylie's son Harry for fear that marriage to her may harm his career in the church.
Bill Sikes and Toby Crackit, two thieves, break into the Maylies' house, accompanied by Oliver, who they use to get access, as he is small enough to climb through a window. Oliver is shot and wounded by Giles, the butler of the Maylies.
Later, Rose learns about Oliver's plight from Nancy. She offers to help Nancy escape from Sikes, but Nancy refuses to leave him. Rose teams up with Mr. Brownlow to rescue Oliver. It is later revealed that she is Oliver's aunt. Her sister Agnes Fleming was Oliver's mother. Like Oliver, she was a victim of
Monks ' plotting.
Towards the end of the novel Rose becomes seriously ill and is apparently on the point of death. Harry hastens to her side and declares his love for her. She recovers and the couple are married.
Notable portrayals
Rose Maylie is completely omitted from the musical
Oliver! and the film thereof. She is also missing from the 1948 and 2005 film versions of the novel. Often Rose's familial relationships differ from those of the original novel, with Mr. Brownlow (with whom she had no connection before bonding over their acquaintances with Oliver in the novel) occasionally appearing as her uncle or adopted guardian.
Minor character of Oliver Twice
Agnes Fleming
Oliver’s mother. After falling in love with and becoming pregnant by Mr. Leeford, she chooses to die anonymously in a workhouse rather than stain her family’s reputation. A retired naval officer’s daughter, she was a beautiful, loving woman. Oliver’s face closely resembles hers.
Mrs. Maylie
A kind, wealthy older woman, the mother of Harry Maylie and adoptive “aunt” of Rose.
Mrs. Corney
The matron of the workhouse where Oliver is born. Mrs. Corney is hypocritical, callous, and materialistic. After she marries Mr. Bumble, she hounds him mercilessly.
Mrs.Bedwin
Mr. Brownlow’s kindhearted housekeeper. Mrs. Bedwin is unwilling to believe Mr. Bumble’s negative report of Oliver’s character.
Monks's mother
An heiress who lived a decadent life and alienated her husband, Mr. Leeford. Monks’s mother destroyed Mr. Leeford’s will, which left part of his property to Oliver. Much of Monks’s nastiness is presumably inherited from her.
Mrs.Sowerberry
Sowerberry’s wife. Mrs. Sowerberry is a mean, judgmental woman who henpecks her husband.
Mrs.Mann
The superintendent of the juvenile workhouse where Oliver is raised. Mrs. Mann physically abuses and half-starves the children in her care.
Conclusion
:- in that way we can see it how the women character are portrait in Oliver Twist and how to play Vital role in this novel.
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