What is the main target of Charles Dickens's social criticism in the novel Oliver Twist?

Charles Dickens was a social commentator who often brought attention to the deprivation of the poor. Specifically, in Oliver Twist, Dickens rails against the treatment of the poor in workhouses and the Poor Law of 1834.

While the concept of providing food and work for the poor is idealistically positive, the reality of these workhouses and orphanages differed, and Dickens felt that the misuse of funding, the living conditions, and the treatment of the individuals...

Charles Dickens was a social commentator who often brought attention to the deprivation of the poor. Specifically, in Oliver Twist, Dickens rails against the treatment of the poor in workhouses and the Poor Law of 1834.

While the concept of providing food and work for the poor is idealistically positive, the reality of these workhouses and orphanages differed, and Dickens felt that the misuse of funding, the living conditions, and the treatment of the individuals in these institutions were inhumane and cruel.

In the early chapters, Dickens satirizes Victorian social institutions. Once he is born, Oliver Twist is marked for his position in society:

But now that he was enveloped in the old calico robes which had grown yellow...he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once...to be cuffed and buffeted through the world--despised by all, and pitied by none.

When no woman can be found to care for poor Oliver--"the workhouse authorities replied with humility"--he is "dispatched to a branch-workhouse where" the "offenders against the poor laws" were sent. There the woman in charge "appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use."

Of course, Dickens also draws a sociological link between crime and poverty, as further on in the novel, Oliver is taken into the world of crime with one of literature's depraved villains, Fagin. Sadly, Oliver is exploited time and time again, yet his innate goodness prevails. Like Tiny Tim, Oliver is another example that underscores Dickens's contention that class rank does not have any correlation with integrity or virtue.