If you read Oliver Twist, you realize quite early that Oliver suffers misfortune partly because he has no family. Dickens doesn't portray Oliver as a super kid but rather as a child with a kind heart despite his childhood problems. Dickens satirizes the Christian/Victorian world mainly because it neglects the poor and children. If you treat children as sinners rather than good and innocent, what would spur you to show love towards them instead of treating them as guaranteed deviants?
"Such a cold wind blowing at the very gate of heaven-thank God, outside the gate!-is the so-called doctrine of Adoption. When a heart hears that it is not the child of God by origin, from the first of its being, but may possibly be adopted into his family, its love sinks at once in a cold faint: where is its own father, and who is this that would adopt it?"
Thanks for sharing
I had not realised the significance of the orphan as the new hero. My eyes have been opened. Shocking
If you read Oliver Twist, you realize quite early that Oliver suffers misfortune partly because he has no family. Dickens doesn't portray Oliver as a super kid but rather as a child with a kind heart despite his childhood problems. Dickens satirizes the Christian/Victorian world mainly because it neglects the poor and children. If you treat children as sinners rather than good and innocent, what would spur you to show love towards them instead of treating them as guaranteed deviants?
"Such a cold wind blowing at the very gate of heaven-thank God, outside the gate!-is the so-called doctrine of Adoption. When a heart hears that it is not the child of God by origin, from the first of its being, but may possibly be adopted into his family, its love sinks at once in a cold faint: where is its own father, and who is this that would adopt it?"