Some Recollections of Mortality Versus Oliver Twist: Comparative Essay

Choose one of Dickens’ journalistic essays and relate it to any one of his novels.

Dickens’ 1863 journalistic essay ‘Some Recollections of Mortality’ (hereafter: ‘Mortality’) explores the human fascination with death, and the wretched conditions in which it often occurs. By comparing his essay to passages concerning death in Oliver Twist (1837–1839), interesting observations can be made particularly about the carelessness regarding death, ways to look upon it, and death as spectacle within contemporary popular culture.

Carelessness towards the dead is vividly depicted by Dickens through a focus on location and dehumanisation, highlighting the detrimental outcomes of poverty. Oliver encounters death with Mr. Sowerberry in a visibly poor area, as reflected in the people: “bodies half doubled,” “crouching mechanically,” depicted as physically lower, mirroring their lower-class status (37–38). The houses are “mouldering,” and overtaken by “decay,” anticipating scenes of death (38). He likens the poor to rodents, as the line: “the very rats, which here and there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with famine,” is echoed later on the same page: “they seemed so like the rats he had seen outside,” highlighting their malnutrition, typical of depictions in the anti-Poor Law movement (38). This dehumanisation is carried further when the dead body is described as “something covered with an old blanket,” implying its lack of recognisable form (38). Interestingly, a brief passage in ‘Mortality’ gruesomely depicts, “lying on the towing-path with her face turned up towards us, a woman, dead a day of two,” indicating that her ‘humanness’ is recognisable, but the carelessness implied strikes a similar chord to Oliver Twist (‘Mortality’, 106). In fact, the carelessness towards the dead body is almost violent in ‘Mortality’ as “the stumbling hoofs had been among the hair, and the tow-rope had caught and turned the head” eliciting a “cry of horror,” (‘Mortality’, 107). Whereas the depiction in Oliver Twist elicits sympathy for the starved body, in ‘Mortality’ the mistreatment of the dead body is more horrific, eliciting shock.

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This carelessness frequently translates into a numbness Dickens uses to describe the way we look at death, “something that could not return a look,” (‘Mortality,’ 106). Noticeably, selfishness is a recurring theme, not only “as who would say, ‘Shall I, poor I, look like that, when the time comes!’” but also when death becomes a business, as for Mr. Sowerberry who—rather than expressing concern that a “new system of feeding” has made coffins “narrower and more shallow,”—remarks: “three or four inches over one’s calculation makes a great hole in one’s profits,” (‘Mortality’ 105; 26–27). This insensitivity, “like looking at waxwork,” is perhaps unsurprising given the prevalence of death in the late Nineteenth Century (‘Mortality,’ 106). White provides the statistic that “forty three children out of every 100 born there would die before their first birthday as late as 1896,” and indeed the birth and death of the baby in ‘Mortality,’ seems almost a matter of routine as the girl “cleaned the cold wet door-steps immediately afterwards” (88; ‘Mortality,’ 109). It seems also a matter to routine to the clergymen who “compressed” the service “into four minutes,” by a grave “so full, that the uppermost coffin was within a few feet of the surface,” (41). Dickens’ description of “purposeless, vacant staring at [death]” serves to emphasise that it has become the norm (‘Morality,’ 106). Yet there is still something haunting about death, particularly with Nancy’s ‘look of death’: it is her eyes which Sikes cannot endure. Ledger suggests: “Nancy’s glassy dead eyes synecdochally reprise the murder scene to a chilling effect,” as evidenced by Sikes before his death: “‘The eyes again!’” (Ledger, 71; 412). Rather than responding vacantly, Sikes responds with terror, undoubtedly indicating his guilt, literally laid bare by the “brilliant light” of the morning (384). Thus, Dickens employs the look of death, and the looking at death, to emphasise its normality, as well as its possible indicting effect.

The most visceral aspect of death in Dickens is the depiction of death as spectacle, awakening a primal hunger to seek justice and indict someone. Dickens compellingly describes the masses as they crowd by the morgue in Paris, who “took in a quantity of mire with [them]” (‘Mortality,’ 103). ‘The Mass’ is ever-present in Dickens’ work, perhaps unsurprisingly, as “Greater London, at 6.58 million people, was home to one in five of the population of England and Wales,” an overwhelming amount of people which leads predictably to an animalistic herd-instinct (White, 204). In ‘Mortality’ Dickens describes a gruesome urge to see the dead body: “unholy fire kindled in the public eye, and those next the gates beat at them impatiently, as if they were of the cannibal species and hungry,” one man even “made a pounce,” becoming almost completely animal (‘Mortality,’ 105). A strikingly similar cannibalistic impatience is felt in the pursuit of Sikes, where the sheer cacophony, “shouted,” “roared,” “cried,” blurs the animal and the human, and as a “cluster” the people become indistinguishable from each other, forming essentially a tidal-wave of “wrath and passion,” (410–411). Arguably, this depiction of death, or anticipated death, as a spectacle undermines the sympathy garnered for the dead earlier on in Oliver Twist, though perhaps the desire to see Sikes dead is justified given his guilt in the murder. Regardless, Ledger reminds us that “it is well known that Dickens’ public performances of his Sikes and Nancy reading were electrifying,” thereby problematising death in Oliver Twist as it becomes a form of entertainment (73).

The fascination surrounding death, particularly the violent ones, shows Dickens’ awareness of popular culture, and renders his fiction a response to reality; in his words: “IT IS TRUE,” (lvii). A common occurrence at the time, witness statements of jealous murders gave “detailed and often sensational accounts,” suggesting Dickens portrayed events in a similar vein, particularly taking inspiration from William Hone’s 1815 pamphlet regarding a “frenzied knife attack,” (Ledger, 66–69). The violence describing Nancy and Sikes is almost unbearable: “nearly blinded with the blood that rained down from a deep gash in her forehead,” “there was a sudden jerk, a terrific convulsion of the limbs,” (383). Dickens never shies away from gruesome detail, sensationalising deaths perhaps to respond to the bloodthirst of the public. Indeed, the desire for the morbid is laid bare in the disappointment felt when it does not happen. The “ragged boys” in Oliver Twist, attracted by “the spectacle,” who “varied their amusements by jumping backwards and forwards over the coffin” uttered “very loud complaints at the fun being over so soon,” (40–41). Similarly, the crowd in ‘Mortality,’ is disappointed when it turns out the man was killed by a falling stone: “we could have wished he had been killed by human agency—his own, or somebody’s else’s: the latter, preferable,” expressing their desire for violence (‘Mortality,’ 103). “Dickens’ transformation of this raw material of popular culture,” is thus undeniable, as he uses his real-life observations to inform his novel and sensationalise death, and to highlight the violence present in reality in a way that the reader cannot escape it (Ledger, 29). Structurally, too, the plot is propelled by violent death, as Schor states: “Nancy, of course, tells her story only to die,” and it is her murder which indicts Fagin’s gang and thus brings the novel to an end, suggesting to some extent that death is necessary to restore order (27).

To conclude, the exploration of death in ‘Some Recollections of Mortality’ provides useful parallels to death in Oliver Twist, where death seems to elicit sympathy as well as amplify carelessness and insensitivity. Most significantly, however, the portrayal of death in Oliver Twist, as informed by popular culture, frequently comes to its apex in episodes of violence, where it becomes a spectacle both to provide entertainment and highlight the violence present in reality.

Primary Texts

1. Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Ed. Kathleen Tillotson. Oxford World’s Classics edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Chapters IV, V, XLVII, XLVIII, L.
2. Dickens, Charles. ‘Some Recollections of Mortality’. In Selected Journalism 1850–1970. Ed. David Pascoe. London: Penguin Books, 1997. Pp. 102–110
3. “First published in All the Year Round, 16 May 1863. The text here is taken from The Uncommercial Traveller.” (102)

Secondary Sources

1. John, Juliet. ‘‘Personal’ Journalism: Getting Down into the Masses’. In Dickens and Mass Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. 103–131
2. Ledger, Sally. ‘Dickens, popular culture and popular politics in the 1830s: Oliver Twist’. In Dickens and the Popular Radical Imagination. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. 65–106
3. Schor, Hilary M. ‘The uncanny daughter: Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and the progress of Little Nell’. In. Dickens and the Daughter of the House. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. 19–46
4. White, Jerry. London in the Nineteenth Century: ‘A Human Awful Wonder of God’. London: Jonathan Cape, London, 2007.