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Starvation in the Workhouse
Harry Furniss
lithograph from pen-and-ink
1910
14 x 9.4 cm vignetted
Dickens's in Charles Dickens Library Edition (1910), facing III, 16.
[Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"Please, Sir, I want some more." The master gazed in stupified astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with wonder; the boys with fear. [13]
The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook's uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
"Please, Sir, I want some more."
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupified astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.
"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.
"Please, Sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."
The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle. . . . [Chapter 2, "Treats of Oliver Twist's Growth, Education, and Board," 13]
Whereas Dickens's description of "Oliver's Asking for More" (Chapter 2, "Treats of Oliver Twist's Growth, Education, and Board") suggests that he succumbs to group pressure when he approaches the well-fed master of the workhouse on behalf of the entire body of starving juvenile inmates, Furniss's interpretation depicts Oliver as a plucky rebel confronting insensitive, bloated authority.
Almost two centuries after this scene in the workhouse appeared before the British reading public in the initial (February 1837) number of The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress, it remains familiar to even non-English speakers as a result of dramatisations on stage and film, and even through such cartoons as Oliver Asks for a Doggy Bag in The New Yorker Magazine (2 December 1992). Perhaps few modern readers would identify the plate's stinging social criticism of the workhouse system with an obscure Victorian periodical entitled Bentley's Miscellany, in which the novel first appeared in twenty-four monthly instalments, each with a single-page steel engraving by the celebrated caricaturist George Cruikshank.
To grab a sizeable readership for his new serial, Dickens began the first instalment with the death of a young woman in the workhouse, then quickly moved ahead a decade to show her ill-fed, abused, neglected child confronting a personification of the callous administrators of the new Poor Law. Having been raised in Mrs. Mann's baby farm, on his ninth birthday, the boy returns to "learn a useful trade" (picking oakum, in fact), if he does not succumb to the workhouse regimen, which tends to starve boys to death. In James Mahoney's redrafting (see below) of the famous scene for the The Household Edition in 1871, a rake-thin Oliver innocently gestures towards the fat master with his bowl. Nothing separates the the viewer from the naieve boy in penitential uniform, and the focal point of the picture is clearly the boy and the master, the largest figures in the picture. Whereas in the original 1837 steel engraving the overfed "master" scowls at the temerity of the scrawny waif, while the eight other survivors of the starving system look on in suspense, Mahoney has turned the master's face away from the reader, and has repositioned the matron, who now expresses merely modest astonishment (centre rear) at Oliver's unorthodox behaviour. Both the original steel and the the later composite woodblock engraving seem to have influenced Furniss's conception of the scene.
Although the lineaments of the scenario are much the same in Furniss's 1910 reinterpretation, the overall effect is far more kinetic and emotionally charged — and not without some comic distortion and melodramatic exaggeration. In particular, Furniss has given the tiny protagonist a look of stern defiance wholly absent in previous interpretations in this David-versus-Goliath confrontation of scrawny underdog taking on the corpulent establishmentarian figure in what amounts to Socialistic propaganda. Whereas previous illustrators have focussed on the plump, incredulous functionary and the emaciated petitioner, Furniss presents the entire social context of the dramatic moment, placing the eight other boys, individually realised, in the foreground so that the reader approaches the lithograph as if it were a theatrical scene, including two shocked elderly female assistants (upper centre).
Left: Cruikshank's original version of Oliver's Asking for More (1837, 1846). Right: Eytinge's Oliver and Little Dick (1867).
Left: Charles Pears' early 20th c. revision, focussing on the two contrasting figures, Oliver Twist and the Master of the Workhouse. Centre and right: Clayton J. Clarke's (Kyd's) early 20th c. studies of the rake-then Oliver presenting his plate to the Master of the Workhouse (off-left in e ach case): Oliver Twist (No. 4 in John Player's Cigarette Cards) and Oliver Twist, a watercolour in The Characters of Charles Dickens (c. 1900).
Above: Mahoney's 1871 engraving of the gaunt Oliver's acting as a spokesperson for his fellow starving inmates, Uncaptioned Headpiece for Chapter One; although the famous incident actually occurs in the second chapter, the Household Edition uses it as a keynote.
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.
Dickens, Charles. The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1838; rpt. with revisions 1846.
_____. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 55 vols. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley and John Gilbert. New York: Sheldon and Co., 1865.
_____. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867.
_____. Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Household Edition. 22 vols. Illustrated by James Mahoney. London: Chapman and Hall, 1871. Vol. I.
_____. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. London: Educational Book Company, 1910. Vol. III.
_____. The Adventures of Oliver Twist. Works of Charles Dickens. The Waverley Edition. Illustrated by Charles Pears. London: Waverley, 1912.
Forster, John. "Oliver Twist 1838." The Life of Charles Dickens. Ed. B. W. Matz. The Memorial Edition. 2 vols. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1911. Vol. I, Book 2, Chapter 3.
Vann, J. Don. "Oliver Twist." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985, 62-63.
Created 31 December 2014
Last modified 13 February 2020