4 Pedestals for a Prostitute: The best part of Oliver Twist
No one ever thinks they’d fall in love with a prostitute, but when they do, they fall hard. This is why the best part of Oliver Twist is when Dicken’s pushes his readers so far that they fall helplessly in love with such a character as this.
So, if the only thing you knew about the orphan boy— whose sick step brother tormented his mother from afar, in life and death, and engineered his capture by a criminal child abuser with hopes of making him into a thief, just to keep him from his inheritance out of spite — is that he “wanted some more”, then please prepare to add something more sublime to the list.
And her name is Nancy.
Charles Dicken’s and his Insight into the Human Condition:
Dickens is famous for crafting eccentric characters, and intertwining life stories in thrilling ways to birth mind-blowing plots with sarcasm and uncommon wit.
I mean who else includes a description like this in a scene where the person in question is about to get pulverized by an angry woman?
“…tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble’s soul; his heart was waterproof. Like washable beaver hats that improve with rain, his nerves were rendered stouter and more vigorous, by showers of tears, which, being tokens of weakness, and so far, tacit admissions of his own power, please and exalted him.” 😭
Dicken’s characters are genuinely some of the most amusing and ridiculous beings you’d find in English literature. He used each of them to give uncommon insight into human nature. But he usually crafted each character entirely around only one aspect of human nature.
Nancy was different.
She was not fundamentally incorruptible like Oliver, odious like Fagin, or abominable like her lover Bill. She was complex, and beautiful, good and evil like a Greek deity.
And like a deity, Dickens used his words to craft her four ancient philosophical pedestals to grace her threadbare stockings on.
You may be familiar with them already. They are called the four loves.
Nancy the Prostitute: Dickens’ Goddess of Human Love
Eros, Storge, Philia and Agape.
Those are the four loves according to the not-really-that-ancient Greeks. They became very popular when Clive Staples Lewis, author of the Chronicles of Narnia, threw a Christian light on them to explain the nature of God’s love.
We will never know whether Dickens intended to make a goddess out of Nancy by making her embody the four loves, but what I know is that she was a badass.
Love like Eros: Nancy and Bill
This is the love of passion and desire — romantic love. And it’s funny that in Greek mythology, Eros is the god of love and the son of Chaos (the analogies one could draw from this!).
In Oliver Twist, Nancy is described as a lady of “free and agreeable manners” which was the 1834 way of saying “sis was werking the streets”. It was therefore understandable, that she should fall in love with a hardened criminal psycho who eventually murdered her. 💔
Nancy loved Bill so much that when she had the opportunity to leave him for a saner more human life, she chose to crawl back to the gutters to be with him.
‘I wish to go back,’ said the girl. ‘I must go back, because — how can I tell such things to an innocent lady like you? — because among the men I have told you of, there is one: the most desperate among them all; that I can’t leave: no, not even to be saved from the life I am leading now.
Nancy was faithful to Bill until her end, which she faced bravely. Thankfully, the memory of how he murdered her (He did because Fagin told him Nancy betrayed the gang — a lie!) haunted him insane till his death.
In the book, eros emerges as the most easily corrupted kind of love because it is the one which Nancy slinks away to, in fear, when she encounters something more sublime.
Love like Storge: Nancy and Rose
Storge is affection. The kind that exists between family members, because even if they irritate you sometimes or do you dirty, you still love them in some way.
It is also the kind of love people experience as a response to goodness, purity and beauty. Like when you see a cute little puppy wagging its tail at you, or a baby clasps your finger in its palm, or you see a gorgeous sunset.
Rose Maylie was the opposite of Nancy. For one, even if she was an orphan, she had the benefit of a surname because she was taken in by kind people. On the other hand, Nancy was raised by Fagin — a criminal who used and abused children as instruments of crime.
Rose was pure in every way Nancy was tainted, but when they encountered each other on that faithful night when Nancy brought crucial news about Oliver’s safety, each experienced a deep storge for the other. Rose reacted to Nancy’s bravery, and Nancy to Rose’s purity.
Although Rose wanted to take Nancy away from the world of darkness she knew, all Nancy asked for was:
‘Let me have that to think of. And yet — give me something that you have worn: I should like to have something — no, no, not a ring — your gloves or handkerchief — anything that I can keep, as having belonged to you, sweet lady. There. Bless you! God bless you.’
It was Rose’s handkerchief that Nancy withdrew from her bosom and raised high to heaven, the moment she was stuck the blow that ended her life.
Love like Philia: Nancy and her Gang
Great books have been written on the premise of philia alone. The Lord of the Rings, for instance, starts with philia and ends with it. Philia is the love of friendship.
Nancy’s gang was created and maintained by Fagin the Jew. It included the Artful Dodger (a child groomed into a creative thief), Charley Bates (Dodger’s sidekick who laughed as much as he lived), and Bill Skies (her wicked love and independent contractor for the main gang).
While everyone feared or loathed Fagin, there was a comradeship between Nancy, Dodger and Charley. They would do what they could to protect each other, even at the cost of their lives. This is why, even when Nancy had the opportunity to give up Fagin, knowing her it would affect her friends, she withheld:
‘That man must be delivered up by you,’ said the gentleman.
‘I will not do it! I will never do it!’ replied the girl. ‘Devil that he is, and worse than devil as he has been to me, I will never do that.’
‘You will not?’ said the gentleman, who seemed fully prepared for this answer.
‘Never!’ returned the girl
Love like Agape: Nancy and Oliver
This is a love that is clothed in magnanimity — greatness of spirit. Magnanimity is the ultimate pop culture virtue, it’s the stuff that heroes are made of. When Iron Man does the ‘snap’ to reverse everything Thanos had done, knowing fully well he would die, that’s magnanimity.
Nancy embodied a sort of Iron (wo)Man before Robert Downey was even born. She put her life on the line for Oliver to have the life she could never even dream of. Safety, comfort, education, a wholesome family and a bright future.
How? She outed the plans Oliver’s half-brother, Monks, had made with the devilish Fagin, that would have condemned Oliver to a base existence.
And even though she protected Fagin as best she could, because he was the leader of her gang, that information put her life dreadfully at risk. It was because of the information she gave that Fagin incited Bill to kill her.
Nancy died for Oliver.
Four pedestals for a prostitute, crafted by a master wordsmith.
If you ever hear of Oliver Twist, or enter a discussion about the book, always keep in mind that the real hero of the story was a woman of the streets.
And here’s the real lesson of the book: no matter how battered by circumstances a person may be, they can love and love to the fullest!
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Since Dickens could make people fall in love with a hardcore prostitute, this writer thought they could do the same, but with noodles (read here)
