Adaptation and Identity Within Fingersmith
Sarah Waters adapts her novel Fingersmith from Dickens’s Oliver Twist using the raw material model of adaptation. She offers elements of Oliver Twist and inverts these ideas to present an entirely new work. This creative upheaval of character, plot and narration in the text allows the reader to make the connection to Oliver Twist while at the same time reaching an entirely different audience. Fingersmith’s character Sue is comparable to Oliver Twist’s Oliver in many ways. Both Sue and Oliver are portrayed as orphans. As a result of this social stigma, they are both on a quest for their true identity which has been kept secret from each of them. Sue and Oliver are both inherently good; although Sue’s self-perception is tainted by the belief her birth mother was a criminal. Sue and Oliver are both very sensitive about their dead mothers. In Fingersmith, Sue attacks John Vroom and holds a pair of kitchen shears to his throat because he is making fun of her dead mother and how she “fizzed” when she was hung (84). This scene is reminiscent of a similar scene in Oliver Twist when Noah Claypool tells Oliver, “but yer must know, work’us, your mother was a regular right down bad’un. . .’and it’s a great deal better, work’us that she died when she did, or else she’d have been hard laboring in Bridewell, or transported, or hung, which is more likely than either, isn’t it?” (47). Oliver reacts violently to this comment, striking Noah. This scene demonstrates a definite connection between the two novels and is another example of adaptation by the use raw material. Waters introduces female characters switched at birth to adapt the idea of identity within Oliver Twist and changes it to suit a contemporary audience. Creating female protagonists is one way Waters connects the nineteenth century Victorian Era to contemporary twentieth century readers.
In each of these novels, the authors approach narration quite differently. Oliver Twist is a third-person narrative. Fingersmith is a first-person narrative which fluctuates between Sue and Maud creating a change in perspective within the novel. Waters uses a narrative technique which is also present in Oliver Twist when Dickens uses the narrator to speak to the reader in order to create momentum within the plot. This is demonstrated in Oliver Twist when the narrator states, “And now I come to a very important passage in Oliver’s history, for I have to record an act, slight and unimportant perhaps in appearance, but which indirectly produced a most material challenge in all his future prospects and proceedings” (46). This passage is directly addressed to the reader in order to defend the plot or propel it forward. A similar technique is used by Waters in Fingersmith. The narrator [Sue] says, “You are waiting for me to start my story. Perhaps I was waiting, then. But my story has already started-I was like you, and didn’t know it” (14). Waters changes the narration within the novel several times. In the beginning Sue it the narrator, it then shifts to Maud and shifts back to Sue at the end of the novel. This allows the reader the perspective of both characters intensifying the motives which drive them to react. Although the narrative approach is different, each text speaks to the reader at pivotal moments within the plot. These details connect the novels and demonstrate differences do not take away from the adaptation, but enhance the adaptation.
There are definite connections between Oliver Twist and Fingersmith. Waters makes the connections to the original text of Oliver Twist though they are skewed, twisted, reversed and manipulated in order to create a completely new and original work that stands on its own merit. Those who have read Oliver Twist will see the connections clearly and will recognize that Fingersmith is an adaptation of Oliver Twist. Waters reaches out to a new, twentieth century contemporary audience, an audience that may have never read Oliver Twist. Costantini indicates, “On the literary scene, young writers have joined the ranks of the earlier postmodern revivalists. These writers have contributed to keeping alive the interest in the Victorian past, but they have also introduced some thematic and formal innovations which require critical attention” (17). Waters makes Fingersmith relevant to our time as she explores the themes of identity, as in Oliver Twist.
Through gender and characterization, Waters creates women characters that evolve and reach an acceptance of their identity once they come to accept the injustice which has surrounded their past. Waters portrays pornography and lesbianism and creates a genuine and legitimate representation in this novel. It would be challenging to find references of pornography and lesbianism in a Dickens novel, although documents prove these were elements of Victorian culture, albeit hidden. Waters introduces these themes and juxtaposes these with female protagonists to create a commentary on similar themes of sexuality and identity with Oliver Twist. This creates an adaptation written for a contemporary twentieth century audience which questions the basis of the representation of sexuality and identity in nineteenth century Victorian England.