As regular readers of this column will know, one of the highlights of
my year is to watch the Broughton Primary School's summer musical production,
which this year is Oliver!.
Both the musical and Dickens' novel 'Oliver Twist' are rollercoasters
of emotion, with memorable characters that we come to love (or
hate!). One of the best characters in the story is Nancy, the
prostitute and former thief, who acts as a kind of go-between between
Fagin and Bill Sikes, who is her pimp and her lover. Nancy plays a
pivotal rôle in the ending of the story when she rescues Oliver and
delivers him to Mr Brownlow. For this act of kindness, Nancy is
brutally murdered by Sikes. Nancy's death is shocking but it was
based on a real-life murder of a prostitute called Eliza Grimwood,
probably by her pimp and lover, William Hubbard, in 1838.
What
makes Nancy such a great character is that she is such a tragic
figure. She doesn't seem to have a sense of her own worth so she is
trapped in the life she has. In 'It's a fine life' she
sings “Not for me, the happy home / Happy husband, happy wife /
Tho' it sometimes touches me... / For the likes of such as me... /
Mine's a fine...fine... life!”. And in Chapter 46 of the novel she
says “I am chained to my old life. I loathe and hate it now, but I
cannot leave it. I must have gone too far to turn back,-- and yet I
don’t know.” One of the tragedies of her life is that she doesn't
seem to believe that redemption is possible for her, that she doesn't
deserve anything better than what she has.
However,
the thing that touches us most about Nancy is that she loves a man
who doesn't love her, and worse than that, a man that
abuses her.
And though we're screaming at her, she stays loyal to him. Even
when helping Oliver, she is careful not to betray Skies. Her loyalty
is most obviously seen in the song “As long as he needs me” where
Nancy describes how despite what he does to her, she will stay true
to him. The song hints that perhaps she sees something loveable in
Sikes that we don't see, but the impression we get is that she is
deluded or deluding herself about this. The real reason she stays
with him is probably that she's lonely and Sikes gives her enough
attention and 'needs' her. We know, though Nancy doesn't seem to,
that Sikes could quite easily find another woman to do what Nancy
does.
Nancy's situation perhaps reflects the thoughts and feelings of many
people who face domestic abuse; trapped by a false sense of loyalty
and love for their abusers. There may be an answer for those like
Nancy in realising that redemption is possible. Throughout the
gospels Jesus encountered people who were hope-less, who were
rejected by society and thought little of themselves. He showed them
that they were precious to God and through that encounter their lives
were changed. Redemption is possible for us all; even Nancy, and
even Sikes.
