The Myth of the Picaro by Alexander Blackburn

Author:Alexander Blackburn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 1979-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

The Escape of Oliver Twist

In the Preface to the Third Edition of Oliver Twist (1838) Dickens states that his intention had been to write a protest against romances of roguery: “I had read of thieves by scores—seductive fellows (amiable for the most part), faultless in dress, plump in pocket, choice in horseflesh, bold in bearing, fortunate in gal lantry, great at a song, a bottle, pack of cards, or dicebox, and fit companions for the bravest. But I had never met (except in Hogarth) with the miserable reality. It appeared to me that to draw a knot of such associates in crime as really do exist: to paint them in all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all the squalid poverty of their lives . . . would be to attempt a something which was greatly needed” (pp. xvii-xviii). Hogarth had not been exceptional, however, and in the same preface Dickens declares that Cervantes, Defoe, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, Goldsmith, and MacKenzie had also shown the “false glitter” (p. xx) of roguery.

Dickens had a thorough knowledge of picaresque novels and anatomies of roguery, judging by the catalogue of books in his library at the time of his death. Side by side with A Select and Impartial Account of the Lives, Behaviour, and Dying-Words of the most remarkable Convicts were English translations of Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzmán de Alfarache, El Buscón, and Cervantes’s rogue anatomy, Rinconete y Cortadillo.59

There are significant parallels between Rinconete y Cortadillo and Oliver Twist. Cervantes describes how two idle young rogues, one a proficient pickpocket, the other a cardsharp, journey to Seville to join the monkish Monipodio’s gang of thieves. Here are prototypes of Artful Dodger, Charley Bates, and Fagin. But one significance of these parallels is that both Cervantes and Dickens center interest on picardía, not on the picaro: both are anatomizing the objectively observed world of roguery.

This is not to say that Dickens lacks interest in the literary character of the picaro. One of the typical picaresque patterns had been the struggle of an unwanted child against a hostile environment, and this, as Sherman Eoff has shown, is an evident pattern in the early chapters of Oliver Twist.60 Oliver, a lonely orphan reminiscent of Lazarillo, is born into a hostile and brutal world. He is systematically starved by Mr. Bumble, as Lazarillo had been by the priest of Maqueda and Pablos by the schoolmaster Cabra. Potentially a picaro, Oliver, “a parish child—the orphan of a workhouse—the humble, half-starved drudge—to be cuffed and buffeted through the world—despised by all, and pitied by none” (Oliver Twist, chap. 1), takes to the road, falls in with evil companions, and is well on his way to delinquency when the story takes a sudden nonpicaresque turn with the appearance on the scene of benevolent Mr. Brownlow. Then, having learned from Mr. Brownlow what charity is, Oliver has his natural rebelliousness fortified against corrupting influences, and eventually he escapes from picardía.

Dickens, although interested in the picaresque novel, was determined to prevent his hero from becoming a picaro.

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