Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist: From Children Victimization to Psychological Improvement

Abstract

Charles Dickens is one of the novelists who have penned many novels and literary stories dealing with violence and abuse against innocent children as dramatic content for a work of fiction in an attempt to elucidate such crimes. The Parish Boy’s Progress author’s social activist reputation is always of great importance to critics. Many critics draw attention to the fact that Dickens always has the moral desire and the vital will to help these weak children and improve their psychological side and response to life in the Victorian age, planning to reform the modern system of life for the world of the family as a whole and the child in particular. Dickens shows that the Victorian era has witnessed a huge industrial revolution that brings with it the cruelest childhood abuse ever, impacting their psychology. Thus, Dickens wants to save some of the colorful childhood delights of these deprived children, as these flowers have physically and psychologically withered because they are deprived of the dew of goodness and happy life. So far, Dickens’s narratives, and stories, alongside his novels reveal that he has supported the family as a big unit in general and the vulnerable children as a small important unit. By appropriating historical, sociological, and analytical research approaches of Dickens's work Oliver Twist’s famous characters and themes, this paper provides evidence that poor children and orphans are mainly victims of exploitation and psychological abuse in the Victorian era. Additionally, the structure of the paper is constructed on an inclusive view of Dickens’s Oliver Twist apropos of the adopted theme of children's victimization.