Oliver Twist: Character Analysis and Key Relationships
Oliver Twist: Character Analysis
Major Characters
Fagin
Fagin is a conniving career criminal who takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him. He is also a buyer of other people’s stolen goods. He rarely commits crimes himself, preferring to employ others to commit them—and often suffer legal retribution—in his place. Dickens’s portrait of Fagin displays the influence of anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Nancy
Nancy is a young prostitute and one of Fagin’s former child pickpockets. Nancy is also Bill Sikes’s lover. Her love for Sikes and her sense of moral decency come into conflict when Sikes abuses Oliver. Despite her criminal lifestyle, she is among the noblest characters in the novel. In effect, she gives her life for Oliver when Sikes murders her for revealing Monks’s plots.
Rose Maylie
Rose Maylie is Agnes Fleming’s sister, raised by Mrs. Maylie after the death of Rose’s father. A beautiful, compassionate, and forgiving young woman, Rose is the novel’s model of female virtue. She establishes a loving relationship with Oliver even before it is revealed that the two are related.
Mr. Brownlow
Mr. Brownlow is a well-off, erudite gentleman who serves as Oliver’s first benefactor. Mr. Brownlow owns a portrait of Agnes Fleming and was engaged to Mr. Leeford’s sister when she died. Throughout the novel, he behaves with compassion and common sense and emerges as a natural leader.
Monks
Monks is a sickly, vicious young man, prone to violent fits and teeming with inexplicable hatred. With Fagin, he schemes to give Oliver a bad reputation.
Bill Sikes
Bill Sikes is a brutal professional burglar brought up in Fagin’s gang. Sikes is Nancy’s pimp and lover, and he treats both her and his dog Bull’s-eye with an odd combination of cruelty and grudging affection. His murder of Nancy is the most heinous of the many crimes that occur in the novel.
Supporting Characters
Mr. Bumble
Mr. Bumble is the pompous, self-important beadle—a minor church official—for the workhouse where Oliver is born. Though Mr. Bumble preaches Christian morality, he behaves without compassion toward the paupers under his care. Dickens mercilessly satirizes his self-righteousness, greed, hypocrisy, and folly, of which his name is an obvious symbol.
Agnes Fleming
Agnes Fleming is 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.
Mr. Leeford
Mr. Leeford is Oliver and Monks’s father, who dies long before the events of the novel. He was an intelligent, high-minded man whose family forced him into an unhappy marriage with a wealthy woman. He eventually separated from his wife and had an illicit love affair with Agnes Fleming. He intended to flee the country with Agnes but died before he could do so.
Mr. Losberne
Mr. Losberne is Mrs. Maylie’s family physician. A hot-tempered but good-hearted old bachelor, Mr. Losberne is fiercely loyal to the Maylies and, eventually, to Oliver.
Mrs. Maylie
Mrs. Maylie is a kind, wealthy older woman, the mother of Harry Maylie and adoptive “aunt” of Rose.
Harry Maylie
Harry Maylie is Mrs. Maylie’s son. Harry is a dashing young man with grand political ambitions and career prospects, which he eventually gives up to marry Rose.
The Artful Dodger
The Artful Dodger, whose real name is Jack Dawkins, is the cleverest of Fagin’s pickpockets. Though no older than Oliver, the Dodger talks and dresses like a grown man. He introduces Oliver to Fagin.
Charley Bates
Charley Bates is one of Fagin’s pickpockets. Charley is ready to laugh at anything.
Old Sally
Old Sally is an elderly pauper who serves as the nurse at Oliver’s birth. Old Sally steals Agnes’s gold locket, the only clue to Oliver’s identity.
Mrs. Corney
Mrs. Corney is 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.
Noah Claypole
Noah Claypole is a charity boy and Mr. Sowerberry’s apprentice. Noah is an overgrown, cowardly bully who mistreats Oliver and eventually joins Fagin’s gang.
Charlotte
Charlotte is the Sowerberrys’ maid. Charlotte becomes romantically involved with Noah Claypole and follows him about slavishly.
Toby Crackit
Toby Crackit is one of Fagin and Sikes’s associates, crass and not too bright. Toby participates in the attempted burglary of Mrs. Maylie’s home.
Mrs. Bedwin
Mrs. Bedwin is Mr. Brownlow’s kindhearted housekeeper. Mrs. Bedwin is unwilling to believe Mr. Bumble’s negative report of Oliver’s character.