INTRODUCTION

The themes that are found in Sarah Water’s Fingersmith are incredibly similar to the themes that we find in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.  Although the stories may seem very different at times, the underlying themes share much, but not all, in common.  There are a number of reasons why Fingersmith can be viewed as an adaptation of Oliver Twist.  An adaptation can have similarities but it must also have its own unique differences.  Sarah Waters did an excellent job of conveying the ideas like trust, greed, identity, and many others while changing subtle (and not so subtle) parts of her story. 

Her character Sue even attends a showing of the play Oliver Twist (Waters, 3).  This shows that she wanted people to know that this was meant to be an adaptation.  It is certainly possible that characters from both books were likely created to resemble the authors. In others words Oliver could be an adaptation of Dickens and Sue and Maud could be an adaptation of Waters.  It is widely known that Dickens liked to write about London and the settings but the reasons that he chose to put the characters in Oliver Twist were best stated by himself:  “ ‘I saw no reason, when I wrote this book, why the very dregs of life, so long as their speech did not offend the ear, should not serve the purpose of a moral, at least as well as its froth and cream’ “. (www.Fidnet.com).

Charles Dickens and Sarah Waters both led a fairly normal life as children.  Sarah had one sister and Charles had seven brothers and sisters but during their childhood they both had families and fathers who could be there for them.  As Charles got older however, his father was eventually put into debtor’s jail for running up bills and Dickens was sent to work 10 hour days in a warehouse.  Waters on the other hand had never experienced a loss like Dickens.  Either way, both writers grew up in England and both wrote about the Victorian era.

Sarah Waters wrote about the Victorian era from a modern perspective however Dickens wrote about the Victorian era during the Victorian era.  The two novels share many values but Dickens view of the Victorian world was obviously first person giving him a sense of his surroundings and giving him the ability to say that he had been through it.  Waters can only look back through history and try to understand what it was like, not having lived through it.  Both Dickens’ and Waters’ interpretations of that time are both motivated by hidden agendas.

            Waters is a writer who tries to emphasize the aspect of lesbianism in her work.  She is a lesbian herself and says, "I'm writing with a clear lesbian agenda in the novels. It's right there at the heart of the books." (Afterellen.com)  This shows that there may be a certain level in bias in her depiction of the Victorian world and her life as a lesbian affects her books.  Even Dickens who lived during the time had a social agenda and used books like Oliver Twist as an avenue to publish his feelings on current social institutions.  Since he lived and worked very hard and fairly long hours doing manual labor in a warehouse, he was able to see exactly what condition the working class faced.  He also was born and raised in a fairly decent family in good social standing and therefore had even more perspective on the different levels of society.  So it is fair to say that this theme of different social classes was put in his book because he felt that it was an important part of what he believed.