Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (smart books to read .TXT) 📕
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Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy’s Progress was Charles Dickens’ second novel, following The Pickwick Papers, and was published as a serial in the magazine Bentley’s Miscellany between 1837 and 1839. It details the misadventures of its eponymous character, Oliver Twist, born in a Victorian-era workhouse, his mother dying within minutes of his birth. He is raised in miserable conditions, half-starved, and then sent out as an apprentice to an undertaker. Running away from this situation, he walks to London and falls under the influence of a criminal gang run by an old man called Fagin, who wants to employ the child as a pickpocket.
The novel graphically depicts the wretched living conditions of much of the poor people of Victorian times and the disgusting slums in which they were forced to live. It has been accused of perpetrating anti-Semitic stereotypes in the character of Fagin, almost always referred to as “the Jew” in the book’s early chapters. Interestingly, while the serial was still running in the magazine, Dickens was eventually persuaded that he was wrong in this and removed many such usages in later episodes. He also introduced more kindly Jewish characters in such later novels as Our Mutual Friend.
Oliver Twist was immediately popular in serial form, with its often gripping story and lurid details. It has remained one of Dicken’s best-loved novels, and the story has often been made into films and television series, as well as into a very popular musical, Oliver!.
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- Author: Charles Dickens
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“So you wanted to get away, my dear, did you?” said the Jew, taking up a jagged and knotted club which lay in a corner of the fireplace; “eh?”
Oliver made no reply. But he watched the Jew’s motions, and breathed quickly.
“Wanted to get assistance; called for the police; did you?” sneered the Jew, catching the boy by the arm. “We’ll cure you of that, my young master.”
The Jew inflicted a smart blow on Oliver’s shoulders with the club; and was raising it for a second, when the girl, rushing forward, wrested it from his hand. She flung it into the fire, with a force that brought some of the glowing coals whirling out into the room.
“I won’t stand by and see it done, Fagin,” cried the girl. “You’ve got the boy, and what more would you have?—Let him be—let him be—or I shall put that mark on some of you, that will bring me to the gallows before my time.”
The girl stamped her foot violently on the floor as she vented this threat; and with her lips compressed, and her hands clenched, looked alternately at the Jew and the other robber: her face quite colourless from the passion of rage into which she had gradually worked herself.
“Why, Nancy!” said the Jew, in a soothing tone; after a pause, during which he and Mr. Sikes had stared at one another in a disconcerted manner; “you—you’re more clever than ever tonight. Ha! ha! my dear, you are acting beautifully.”
“Am I!” said the girl. “Take care I don’t overdo it. You will be the worse for it, Fagin, if I do; and so I tell you in good time to keep clear of me.”
There is something about a roused woman: especially if she add to all her other strong passions, the fierce impulses of recklessness and despair; which few men like to provoke. The Jew saw that it would be hopeless to affect any further mistake regarding the reality of Miss Nancy’s rage; and, shrinking involuntarily back a few paces, cast a glance, half imploring and half cowardly, at Sikes: as if to hint that he was the fittest person to pursue the dialogue.
Mr. Sikes, thus mutely appealed to; and possibly feeling his personal pride and influence interested in the immediate reduction of Miss Nancy to reason; gave utterance to about a couple of score of curses and threats, the rapid production of which reflected great credit on the fertility of his invention. As they produced no visible effect on the object against whom they were discharged, however, he resorted to more tangible arguments.
“What do you mean by this?” said Sikes; backing the inquiry with a very common imprecation concerning the most beautiful of human features: which, if it were heard above, only once out of every fifty thousand times that it is uttered below, would render blindness as common a disorder as measles: “what do you mean by it? Burn my body! Do you know who you are, and what you are?”
“Oh, yes, I know all about it,” replied the girl, laughing hysterically; and shaking her head from side to side, with a poor assumption of indifference.
“Well, then, keep quiet,” rejoined Sikes, with a growl like that he was accustomed to use when addressing his dog, “or I’ll quiet you for a good long time to come.”
The girl laughed again: even less composedly than before; and, darting a hasty look at Sikes, turned her face aside, and bit her lip till the blood came.
“You’re a nice one,” added Sikes, as he surveyed her with a contemptuous air, “to take up the humane and gen—teel side! A pretty subject for the child, as you call him, to make a friend of!”
“God Almighty help me, I am!” cried the girl passionately; “and I wish I had been struck dead in the street, or had changed places with them we passed so near tonight, before I had lent a hand in bringing him here. He’s a thief, a liar, a devil, all that’s bad, from this night forth. Isn’t that enough for the old wretch, without blows?”
“Come, come, Sikes,” said the Jew appealing to him in a remonstratory tone, and motioning towards the boys, who were eagerly attentive to all that passed; “we must have civil words; civil words, Bill.”
“Civil words!” cried the girl, whose passion was frightful to see. “Civil words, you villain! Yes, you deserve ’em from me. I thieved for you when I was a child not half as old as this!” pointing to Oliver. “I have been in the same trade, and in the same service, for twelve years since. Don’t you know it? Speak out! Don’t you know it?”
“Well, well,” replied the Jew, with an attempt at pacification; “and, if you have, it’s your living!”
“Aye, it is!” returned the girl; not speaking, but pouring out the words in one continuous and vehement scream. “It is my living; and the cold, wet, dirty streets are my home; and you’re the wretch that drove me to them long ago, and that’ll keep me there, day and night, day and night, till I die!”
“I shall do you a mischief!” interposed the Jew, goaded by these reproaches; “a mischief worse than that, if you say much more!”
The girl said nothing more; but, tearing her hair and dress in a transport of passion, made such a rush at the Jew as would probably have left signal marks of her revenge upon him, had not her wrists been seized by Sikes at the right moment; upon which, she made a few ineffectual struggles, and fainted.
“She’s all right now,” said Sikes, laying her down in a corner. “She’s uncommon strong in the arms, when she’s up in this way.”
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