Oliver Twist Chapter Guide

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Recommended: CLASS during the Victorian AGE

Reginald Appiah
January 11, 2014
2nd Period, H Brit Lit
Oliver Twist: Chapter Notes

Chapter 1
Setting the stage for the story, this chapter clearly emphasizes the beginning of Oliver’s life and gives clues to his future social status. It was said that Oliver was born in a workhouse, consisting of churchwardens and overseers, and the child-bearer was a young and pale woman who was before found lying in the street. Ushered in by a surgeon and a drunken lady, the death of the young and perhaps divorced woman left her newborn-child, later named Oliver Twist, as an orphan. The beginning and the last two paragraphs really give notion to the situation Oliver Twist was being stationed to. In the second to last paragraph, the author indicates the importance of clothing and how it can symbolize social class. Even though Oliver can be born from any social class, his own class can be easily determined as easy as exchanging calico robes for yellow ones. The author summarizes the main difference in class distinction as of clothing, which is a rather depthless and cruel statement based on the Victorian society. Oliver is placed in the society as a parish child.

Chapter 2
After Oliver spends eight to ten months in the workhouse, decollate care is needed upon the infant orphan. Finding out that the workhouse authorities have no permanent female residence in the workhouse, the parish authorities send or “farm” young Oliver Twist to a branch workhouse, owned by an entrepreneur named Mrs. Mann. Mrs. Mann is a cruel lady known for running the juvenile service and encourages acts of starving the people of the service slowly. She keeps a big portion of the allowance used to feed the prisoners mainly to her and leads some of the young to death, somet...

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...oah and Charlotte, who was the maid of the house. The food given to him was rather small compared to the others. After Mr. Bumble’s announcement to Mr. Sowerberry of a recent death, Oliver began his first mission with Mr. Sowerberry to prepare for the burial of a pauper. Upon them meeting the husband of the dead, the husband notes that his wife starved to death and that he was put in prison when asking for her. The mother of the dead asked for a cloak to wear to her dead daughter’s funeral and bread to eat. Later on, the funeral takes place and is over in only four minutes. The burial of the coffin only a few feet deep gives thought to how compact the graves were. Mr. Sowerberry confiscates the cloak from the dead pauper’s mother and Oliver then confirms that he isn’t gratified about the undertaking. Mr. Sowerberry advises that Oliver will get used to it.
Chapter 6

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