Child labour in 19th Century England Reflected on Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist

ABSTRACT

Oliver Twist is one of didactic novels in the nineteenth century written by Charles Dickens. It was created to criticize the social condition in the Victorian Age. In this novel, Dickens depicts social condition as the reflection of the Victorian Age. He expresses many kinds of social problems, such as poverty, starvation, child labour, the New Poor Law, and crime in his Oliver Twist. However, this study specifically aims at finding out the condition of child labour, which happens to the main character in Dickens’s Oliver Twist. Beside that, this study aims at finding out whether or not the condition of child labour in Dickens’s Oliver Twist reflect the condition of child labour in 19th century England.

In this study, the writer uses genetic structuralism to analyze the novel. Genetic structuralism gazes the literary work from two points of views; intrinsic and extrinsic. It connects literature and society structure through the view of the world or ideology that is expressed. The primary data are taken from the novel entitled Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, and the secondary data are taken from many books, articles, and text, dealing with the theory of child labour.

After analyzing the data, the writer finds that in 19th century England, there are many places and kinds of job which used children as labours. However, in Dickens’s Oliver Twist, it can be found only four kinds of job which happened to the main character, Oliver Twist, i.e. apprenticed child, chimney sweep, undertaker boy or shop keeper, and criminality. The condition pictured by Dickens’s Oliver Twist is truly reflecting the real condition of 19th century England. This shows the bad condition at the era of Industrial Revolution.

Based on the above finding, it is recommended to the next researchers who are interested in analyzing the same data, Oliver Twist, to analyze other aspects of novel analysis such as character, plot, and theme. Moreover the writer suggests for further researchers to study the other aspects of the novel like suffering of the poor children, psychological aspects related to the author’s life, and the broken law, which depicts unfairness for the poor people. This study is also expected tobe able to contribute to other writers who focus on the topic about the child labour since there is not much study discussing about child labour.