During the Victorian Era, as the development of capitalism, the gap between the rich and the poor became more and more significant. Wealthy people control most of the parts of power and business, while the poor’s life becomes harder and harder. The harsh living conditions of people had made them do things that violated their real intention or went against their moral bottom line just for surviving. It never excludes that some people’s nature is bad and evil. Criminals are known as someone who has a lot of negative impacts to the whole society, whatever reason they have. However, during the Victorian Era, there are various reasons that people went on the way of being criminals.
“Money is not everything, but we can do nothing without money.” This is a consensus of people, while in the Victorian Era, people thought even more severe, which poverty is the original sin. Money is extremely important in people’s life, that this forms a chain of contempt inevitably, that wealthy people have a stereotype on poor people, for example poverty is sin and should be prisoned in prison. The author fully described this phenomenon of Oliver’s situation in the workhouse, “he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery.” (Dickens ch2) Oliver’s living condition in the workhouse has fully reflected this, both from the treatment he received and the attitude of the others. Just because he’s poor and vulnerable, all the others can behave unscrupulously to him, especially those who are at a higher level than him, that he must obey without reason. This shows the strict hierarchy system, and the thought of poverty is sin and poor people’s destiny should be limited or prisoned in the society. People shouldn’t be judged by whether they are wealthy or not, but this actually decides how people treat you, even the same as in the contemporary period, so that poverty is the criminal to all the misfortune that the poor suffered.
Since poor people became poorer and wealthy people became wealthier, people who are under poverty are forced to do things against the law to maintain their basic living. People at high social status have a monopoly on the upper stages of work, so that lower stages are quite hard to find a work that can afford the daily cost, so they are forced to be a criminal, just to maintain basic survival. Fagin usually made the homeless and orphaned children to do the theft for him, that he trained them to do this: “The merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box in one pocket of his trousers, ... the two boys followed him closely about ... the Dodger trod upon his toes, or ran upon his boot accidently, while Charley Bates stumbled up against him behind ... ” (Dickens ch9) Fagin is forcing the kids to do something bad in the name of helping those vulnerable children. Fagin is training the boys to become pickpockets and thieves, which benefits Fagin’s gang. The children had no other means for survival, so what Fagin taught them is an ability to survive for the children, even though it’s quite not encouraged, that being a thief could let them have the ability for living, while not being a thief is a threat to their lives. Being a criminal for these people is obviously not what they preferred to do, but must do just for surviving under such harsh conditions.
Besides from the external reason to be a criminal, sometimes it could be born with this kind of characteristics, which they are born with. Poor person's certainly hateful. They might be poor, but there’s a reason for their current situation, which they are either lazy to strive for, or just simply due to their nature. In chapter 16 of the novel, Bill Sikes’s behavior of “‘Serve him right!’ cried Sikes, struggling to disengage himself from the girl’s grasp. ‘Stand off from me, or I’ll split your head against the wall’” (Dickens ch16) has fully shown his evil nature as a human being. From what Bill Sikes did in the novel, we can see that he’s totally different from the other criminals such as the kids in Fagin’s gang, in which he's born a criminal, born to be someone evil, threatening others. He's violated and “antisocial” inborn, he always did things that are illegal, which he tries to solve problems and “persuade” people against him through violent ways, indicating his human nature is bad and evil as instinctive. Not every criminal is forced to become what they are currently, while some of them are quite suitable for this since their human nature is like this that they are used to, and we cannot change it, because one’s nature cannot be changed.
Therefore, crime is quite rampant in the Victorian Era because of quite a lot of different reasons, whether due to exterior factors or by nature. Oliver Twist is obviously someone being forced to be a criminal that he’s poor since he’s an orphan, and he didn’t have any means to survive, he was forced to be a criminal as he’s in Fagin’s gang for living. This is quite a common appearance for the poor and those who didn’t have ability for living by themselves in that time period, but however, it’s not everyone the same as Oliver, which that their human nature is evil, that they only have interest on being an “antisocial” person, such as Bill Sikes in the novel. Therefore, Dickens had conveyed the different reasons of why there’s such a lot of criminals in the Victorian Era according to the social background.
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