Oliver Twist (II)

The second half of Oliver Twist creates a new narrative trajectory for poor, passive Oliver: he moves from an ad hoc, permanently dysfunctional family (Fagin, Nancy, Bill, and co.) to another ad hoc and presently dysfunctional family (Brownlow, Rose Maylie, and Leeford/Monks).  Both families transform themselves around Oliver's presence.  Oliver's preternatural innocence, which attracts Nancy and exerts at least some positive effect on Fagin, turns out to be wildly disruptive when it appears in a criminal context; if Oliver inspires Nancy and even Fagin to do good, their only reward for it is a brutal death, whether salvific or otherwise. (Mike Hale was on the button when he called Fagin's demise "outright martyrdom." More on that in a moment.)  By contrast, in the Brownlow household, the truth of Oliver's goodness inspires Rose Maylie to become a model of virtuous, heroic femininity and Mr. Brownlow to become an ideal patriarch.  Meanwhile, Leeford/Monks, here Brownlow's grandson, is shipped off to the Indies, leaving his half-brother Oliver to take his place as the good heir to Brownlow's estate.   (Which, one notes, Oliver is not persuaded to share.)   Turning the Brownlow-Maylie-Monks relationship into a matter of genetics and guardianship, rather than coincidence (we're near the end of the novel before Brownlow meets Rose), creates this parallel between the two "families"--a parallel emphasized further when Sikes brings Oliver back to Fagin to recuperate, instead of leaving Oliver behind at the Maylies.  Monks' erotic and, one suspects, potentially abusive fixation on Rose now doubles Bill Sikes' obsession with Nancy.  Nancy's spontaneous affection for Oliver anticipates Rose's apparently innate sentiments.  And Fagin, of all people, turns out to be a warped Brownlow.  

By the end of the adaptation, in fact, we are far, far away from the novel.  Bill Sikes, for example, still murders Nancy, but instead of accidentally hanging himself during his escapade on the roof, he deliberately hangs himself in a sewer drain.  (It's as though somebody decided to invert the location for his death.)  The Artful Dodger isn't transported; instead, after the dual traumas of Nancy's murder (for which he is partly and accidentally responsible) and Fagin's execution, he inherits Bill's still-lively dog and, we are led to believe, sets off to become a miniature replica of Bill himself.  While Oliver settles down to a pleasant existence with his newfound family, the Dodger, who has lost his family, winds up remaking himself according to the worst male role model he can find.  And then, of course, we have Fagin's fate.  The policemen sneer at him as a "Jew" and kill his pet bird; the jailers feed him bacon-soaked bread; the jury convicts him of something that suspiciously resembles the blood libel.  At his sentencing, Fagin refuses to pray to Christ in order to obtain "mercy," and one of the guards derisively snatches the yarmulke off his head.  What's interesting about this final overload of Victorian anti-Semitism is that it contradicts the adaptation's otherwise enthusiastic endorsement of nature over nurture.  Oliver's goodness transcends its context, but the ending suggests that Fagin's criminality is the only possible outcome of a culture this rabidly prejudiced.