Ghosts of Abolition in Oliver Twist

abstract:Oliver Twist the hero and the myth, the serialized fiction and the novel, were all born at the crux of British emancipation, and though numerous critics have noted that Dickens's novel is built around social historical realities of the early 1830s, it remains to tell that story from a viewpoint that includes the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, the period of slave-apprenticeship, and the compensation to former slave owners. Though often considered separately, this article argues that Dickens considered the effects of abolition to intertwine discursively with the New Poor Law, Vagrancy Acts, and legislative reforms concerning animal cruelty. The article emphasizes the West Indian plot involving Oliver's half-brother Monks as crucial in unifying the novel's concern with social justice. In arguing that the various reforms participated in the creation of new categories for defining populations, Ian Hacking's concept of "historical ontology" is used to consider the ways institutions and legislative bodies create new kinds of persons over time. Dickens's use of metaphor and metonymy translate social realities into fictional characters. Though Oliver is financially rewarded with an inheritance from the West Indian estate, it is Dickens's novel that relieved his readers' social anxieties with a literary compensation.