Oliver Twist, written by Charles Dickens, is an intense denigration of society's treatment of the poor. In this depicted time period, wealth and class ascertained an individual's status. This dull but true reality has forced many into a predetermined fate as in Oliver's case. When Oliver is first born, Dickens reveals how the boy will be dealt with: "the workhouse orphan - the humble and half-starved servant - to be handcuffed and slapped around the world - despised by all and pitied by none" (Dickens 3). Society submitted to the idea of ​​the poor, considering them inferior beings. In Dickens's era, laws and institutions were created to “favor” the poor; however, these were actually intended to appease the “better” part of society. Even when the upper classes claim to want to alleviate the dilemma of the lower classes, they only end up aggravating and aggravating it. The rules required the division of poor families to ensure that they did not continue to repopulate the lower class, as it was argued that this rank was inherently immoral. Poor children were placed in these institutions in the belief that the state could raise them according to society's standards compared to their "thin" parents. The workhouses, founded by the middle class, were intended to raise poor children after the age of nine. However, these institutions replicated the vices they were supposed to “erase” by feeding and clothing children as little as possible. The middle-class characters' assumption that the lower class is made up of inbred criminals supports their image of themselves as a pristine and virtuous group in society. These characters placed in positions of power, such as Mrs. Mann and Mr. Bumble, infer that they are morally superior to their poor, simply b...... middle of paper ......rs From the seventeenth century . Ed. Jane M. Bingham. New York: Sons of Charles Scribner, 1988. 181-191. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Network. January 16, 2014.Hochman, Baruch and Ilja Wachs. "Oliver Twist." Dickens: The Orphan Condition. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1999. 32-54. Rpt. in Children's Literature Review. Ed. Dan Ferguson. vol. 162. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Literature Resource Center. Network. January 17, 2014. "Oliver Twist." Literature and its Times: Profiles of 300 major literary works and the historical events that influenced them. Joyce Moss and George Wilson. vol. 2: From civil wars to frontier societies (1800-1880). Detroit: Gale, 1997. 261-267. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Network. January 16, 2014. "Oliver Twist." Novels for students. Ed. Jennifer Smith. vol. 14. Detroit: Gale, 2002. 126-151. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Network. January 15. 2014.