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- No, Dickens was not a social progressive
In his depiction of Fagin, a criminal and thief, in the novel "Oliver Twist", Dickens invokes many significant anti-Semitic tropes which, though common at the time, had been denounced and could have been challenged by Dickens considering he positioned himself as a champion of the underdog.
The argument
"Oliver Twist" is one of Dickens' most famous novels and is often heralded as a sympathetic portrayal of the working class. Its overall design supports that reading: the novel deals with issues of morality and how people can behave morally regardless of their social situation, and Dickens' sympathy with the underdog is displayed through the characters of Oliver and Nancy, whose circumstances rather than their natures account for what becomes of them. That is what makes the treatment of the novel's main antagonist so hard to reconcile with the rest of it. Fagin, a criminal, is presented using noted anti-Semitic stereotypes. He is presented as predatory and evil throughout, and the terms in which he is drawn — miserly, selfish, and a threat to English children — are not incidental period colour but a set of images which dated back to the medieval persecution of Jewish communities. Nadia Valdman notes that "Dickens' Jewish villain stands outside the sociological analysis of crime that the novel otherwise attempts". That is the precise charge: everywhere else the book explains criminality by circumstance, and for Fagin alone it does not. Valdman suggests that this presentation of Fagin through anti-Semitic stereotypes undermines the novel's overall message, and shows that Dickens' writing was subject to many of the prejudices of his era despite his sympathy with the underdog. Nor is this only a later verdict applied to an earlier writer by readers with different assumptions. Many argued at the time that Dickens' portrayal was unfair, including his friend Eliza Davis, who argued that Dickens "encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew". On this argument, a writer who reproduced one of his society's oldest bigotries — and who was told at the time that he was doing so — cannot be counted a social progressive.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Although Dickens' portrayal of Fagin can be considered anti-Semitic, it is perhaps unfair to suggest that it undermines the otherwise sensitive analysis of crime and class in "Oliver Twist", which firmly emphasises that morality and class are not tied together. Additionally, although these prejudices are inexcusable, they were incredibly common in the Victorian era and it is not true to suggest that Dickens' prejudice was worse than many other people writing at the time. In later editions of the novel, he ensured edits were made to tone down anti-Semitic elements of Fagin's character, and in his later novel "Our Mutual Friend", the Jewish character of Riah was a deeply moral presence in the story, with Dickens even noting anti-Semitism when Riah says, "Men say, 'This is a bad Greek, but there are good Greeks. This is a bad Turk, but there are good Turks.' Not so with the Jews ... they take the worst of us as samples of the best ...".
Rejecting the premises
1. Dickens’ portrayal of Fagin does not necessarily undermine the message of “Oliver Twist”. 2. Anti-Semitic prejudices were common in the Victorian era. 3. When criticised by a Jewish woman, Dickens removed anti-Semitic tropes from later versions of the novel and in a later novel, “Our Mutual Friend”, created a sympathetic Jewish character to critique anti-Semitic attitudes.