At one time he raved and blasphemed; and at another howled and tore his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray beside him, but he had driven them away with curses.”                                

(Dickens, 430)

We often find our protagonist stumbling into this half-awake dreamlike awareness because it can service the development of a character like Oliver, who often keeps his mouth shut.  Dickens describes the state as such, “Although Oliver had roused himself from sleep, he was not thoroughly awake. There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed…” (Dickens, 64).  Near the end of the book we see Fagin experiencing a similar state, though maybe straying farther than Oliver into madness, as he waits to be hanged (see right). 

Fagin is simply waiting to die with no possibility of escape and no semblance of control, resultantly his behavior becomes bizarre.  His inescapable end is an equalizing factor for him concerning Oliver, as it shows the two characters having similar encounters with death; both characters touch upon madness through delirium and hallucinations, though Fagin is the only one to get the full experience. The aforementioned commonality paints death as an equalizing inevitability; the fact that death is inescapable creates a dilemma for all people in that they must die despite fear of what it may be like and what it may entail. That fear drives Fagin close to madness and his semiconscious state is strikingly similar in its origins to those of Oliver’s vivid dreamlike hallucinations.  The statement this makes about death also adds to the underlying morality of Dickens larger commentary on class; effectively saying that all of man is equal in that we all live and die, and luxury should not be withheld for some, while despair is forced on others.

“As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window – Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled it’s wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood soaked the bed-clothes: still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious gripe almost maddening me with fear.”

(Bronte, 20-21)


Wuthering Heights has its own things to say about class, but for this work mystery and the supernatural serve to reveal motive and create tension rather than develop larger concepts.  For example, the dream Lockwood has about the ghost of Catherine Linton, when he stays at the Heights, implies some things about the motives of Heathcliff and alerts the reader to his inner strife; which may account for his callousness. The brutality of the dream itself, where Lockwood bloodies the ghost’s wrists by dragging them across the broken glass; and the ghost struggles not, wanting only to be let in, suggests something about the nature of the ghost; it’s desire to return into the house was strong as a result of desperation. 