Crime in the Victorian Age in 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 poverty and crime in the Victorian Age. In this novel, Dickens depicts the crime condition as the reflection of the Victorian Age. He expresses many kinds of crimes, causes of crimes and effects of crime in his Oliver Twist. This study aims at finding out the kinds of crime, the causes of crime and the effects of crime in Dickens’s Oliver Twist. Beside that, this study aims at finding out the kinds of crime happened in the Victorian Age that appears in Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

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

After analyzing the data, the writer finds: (1) The kinds of crime, namely the careless crime, the crime of passion and the crime of greed. (2) The causes of crimes that are divided into two factors: intern factor, namely emotional power, greed disposition and extern factor, namely environment influence, compulsion from other people and poverty influence. (3) The effects of crimes are presented in society reaction and the law punishment which can be found in the novel entitled Oliver Twist. Then, the writer analyzes the kinds of crimes in Oliver Twist which happen in the Victorian Age.

Finally, hopefully this study gave suggestion for further researchers to study the other aspects of this novel like suffering of the poor children, psychological aspects that are related to the author’s life and the broken law which depicts unfairness for the poor people. This study is also expected to be able to contribute to other writers who focus on the topic about the crime conflict.