# Oliver Twist — Character guide

> Key figures in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

- [Oliver Twist](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/oliver_twist.md): Raised on starvation rations and apprenticed to an undertaker, Oliver runs to London and falls in with Fagin's boys before a kind gentleman named Mr. Brownlow takes him in. His passivity is not blankness but a kind of in
- [Fagin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/fagin.md): Fagin presides over a den of handkerchiefs, trinkets, and boys, lecturing Oliver on the crying sin of ingratitude while keeping his own accounts strictly. He is genuinely fond of his trade and his pupils in the way a man
- [Bill Sikes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/bill_sikes.md): Sikes seizes Oliver by the collar and drags him through a dark passage into a burglary, treating the boy as equipment and the dog as a companion. He is jealous of his share, quick with his fists, and utterly without Fagi
- [Nancy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/nancy.md): Nancy moves between the gang's squalid rooms and the respectable world she can only watch through windows, and she is the one who overhears Monks bargaining with Fagin over Oliver's fate. Her loyalty to Sikes and her pit
- [Mr. Brownlow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mr_brownlow.md): Brownlow first appears as the victim of a pickpocketing and ends as the boy's adoptive father, a man whose benevolence is as quick as his temper. He is surrounded by friends like the contrary Mr. Grimwig, whose gloomy pr
- [Monks](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/monks.md): Monks is the hidden hand behind Oliver's recapture: he strikes bargains with Fagin, laughs about drowning the proofs of the boy's identity, and speaks of hatred so earnest that Nancy would rather face anyone else. He is 
- [Rose Maylie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/rose_maylie.md): Rose belongs to the comfortable Maylie household that shelters Oliver after his fever, and her tenderness toward the boy becomes the emotional counterweight to the workhouse and the den. When Nancy reveals what she knows
- [Mr. Bumble](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mr_bumble.md): As the parish's appointed enforcer, Bumble presides over Oliver's earliest miseries, from starvation rations to the apprenticeship that sends the boy to the undertaker's. He speaks of Oliver's mother with smug contempt a
- [Noah Claypole](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/noah_claypole.md): Noah occupies the lowest rung of the undertaker's household yet claws for status by persecuting the newest apprentice, needling Oliver about his mother's death until the quiet boy erupts. His cowardice is laid bare when 
- [Charley Bates](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/charley_bates.md): Charley treats theft as sport, mimicking reading from stolen books and dissolving into ecstasies of laughter at Oliver's horror when the gang's plunder is revealed. His lively sense of the ludicrous keeps him buoyant in 
- [The Artful Dodger](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/the_artful_dodger.md): The Dodger moves through London's streets with the swagger of a man twice his age, sizing up marks and speaking in a slang that marks him as native to the underworld. He is the one who plucks Oliver from the road and del
- [Harry Maylie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/harry_maylie.md): Harry arrives at his mother's cottage in a fever of anxiety over Rose's illness, and his urgent questions reveal a heart wholly given to her. His mother warns that marrying a woman with a stain on her name could cost him
- [Mrs. Maylie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mrs_maylie.md): Mrs. Maylie presides over the rural household at Chertsey that takes Oliver in after the burglary, and her tenderness toward Rose reveals a woman whose love runs deeper than her reserve. When Rose falls dangerously ill, 
- [Mr. Grimwig](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mr_grimwig.md): Mr. Grimwig is Mr. Brownlow's perpetual sparring partner, forever predicting the worst of human nature while his friend insists on the best. He declares he will eat his own head if Oliver proves honest, and his bristling
- [Toby Crackit](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/toby_crackit.md): Toby Crackit lounges in Fagin's den with his legs higher than his head, admiring his own top-boots and sizing up Oliver as 'a fortin' for the old ladies' pockets in chapels.' He is vain, lazy, and casually cruel, forcing
- [Mr. Sowerberry](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mr_sowerberry.md): Mr. Sowerberry takes Oliver from the workhouse as an apprentice and promptly reduces him to a walking advertisement, dressing him in black and putting him at children's funerals because his sad expression makes a 'superb
- [Mrs. Sowerberry](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mrs_sowerberry.md): The undertaker's wife who treats Oliver harshly.
- [Mrs. Corney](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mrs_corney.md): Mrs. Corney runs the female side of the workhouse with a mixture of self-pity and calculation, doling out comfort and discipline according to what each may yield her. Her courtship by Mr. Bumble — conducted over tea and 
- [Mrs. Mann](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mrs_mann.md): The neglectful superintendent of the baby farm where Oliver lived.
- [Mr. Giles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mr_giles.md): The butler at Mrs. Maylie's house.
- [Brittles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/brittles.md): A servant at Mrs. Maylie's house.
- [Mr. Losberne](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mr_losberne.md): Mr. Losberne is the Maylies' physician and ally, a bluff, impulsive man whose professional competence is matched by a readiness to act on generous instinct. He takes Oliver under his care after the shooting, and later dr
- [Charlotte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/charlotte.md): The Sowerberrys' maidservant who later marries Noah Claypole.
- [Tom Chitling](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/tom_chitling.md): A slow-witted member of Fagin's gang.
- [Barney](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/barney.md): A Jewish servant at Fagin's den who speaks with a lisp.
- [Mr. Gamfield](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mr_gamfield.md): A brutish chimney sweep who nearly takes Oliver as an apprentice.
- [Mrs. Bedwin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mrs_bedwin.md): Mr. Brownlow's kind housekeeper.
- [Old Sally](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/old_sally.md): An old pauper nurse who attended Oliver's mother at his birth.
- [Dick](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/dick.md): A sickly orphan boy and Oliver's friend at the workhouse.
- [Mr. Limbkins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/mr_limbkins.md): A member of the parish board who deals with Oliver.
- [Blathers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/blathers.md): A police officer who investigates the burglary at Mrs. Maylie's.
- [Duff](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/duff.md): A police officer who investigates the burglary with Blathers.
- [Agnes Fleming](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters/agnes_fleming.md): Oliver's deceased mother, a tragic figure from the past.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/oliver_twist_se/characters