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Cait's Reviews > Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist
by
by
Cait's review
bookshelves: classics, owned, 1001, bloom-canon, victorian-neo-victorian-gothic, read-in-2011
Jul 27, 2009
bookshelves: classics, owned, 1001, bloom-canon, victorian-neo-victorian-gothic, read-in-2011
I swear Dickens named one of his characters Master Bates on purpose.
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Reading Progress
July 27, 2009
– Shelved
July 27, 2009
– Shelved as:
classics
September 7, 2009
– Shelved as:
owned
October 27, 2009
– Shelved as:
1001
October 4, 2010
– Shelved as:
bloom-canon
January 15, 2011
– Shelved as:
victorian-neo-victorian-gothic
October 2, 2011
–
Started Reading
October 4, 2011
– Shelved as:
read-in-2011
October 4, 2011
–
Finished Reading
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Actually, you're right. I've thought about it for the past two days and downgraded to 2 stars. The Master Bates joke ( as purposeful as it appears to be), Martin Jarvis's excellent narration, and the story managing to get significantly more exciting near the end were still only enough to make it just "ok". At least it was short?Did you see that the Victorians group is reading Our Mutual Friend and Bleak House starting mid November? Those are the top 2 on my Dickens tbr and I have a feeling I won't be disappointed.
Damn, the link didn't work. Stupid google books. Anyway, if you're interested, google "Manual Conduct in Great Expectations" and check it out on Google Books.
Here's the section in question. Good stuff. So basically Dickens was obsessed with jerking off. I did see that, and Bleak House and Copperfield are my top two...but I have to read Karamazov in November, so the chances of me being able to take on another monster are iffy.
How did I not catch that?!
I'm only 100 pages in, but that's exactly what I thought.
I only caught that when I read it aloud. Otherwise it would have sailed right over my head.
Hahaha! Somehow I didn't even notice. But that is pure gold.
It's all I thought of every time it was said. (I listened to the audiobook)
Yeah , Master Bates is just a name that really means masturbates. The name was given to Charley Bates , Dodger's "best mate".
He had some "hard times" in his life.
How can you say that when it one of the best novels to show the Victorian Realism in 19th century. Very pathetically the character of Oliver is depicted who even born in a shrouded mystery. Dickens kept the suspense alive throughout the novel.
There's a similar reference in Gulliver's Travels...I guess that must have been considered pretty witty & subversive back in the olde days.
Cait welcome to grade five. Grow up
i didn't notice until you pointed it out thank you for the giggles
I think it must have been on purpose for the effect of a double entendre but it could have just been on accident depending on if the word masturbates was used back then.
CaitHe did name Bates deliberately.
I’m sure he was considering possible reviewers 100 years hence!
Like Paul.
(Fair enough.)
(I agree: I suppose I should look up the history of the word, but I bet Dickens knew what he was saying.)