Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist contains a number of elements relevant to the topic of sexuality.  Oliver's mother is guilty of pre-marital sex, a crime for which she dies unknown and penniless at the beginning of the novel.  It is because of this transgression that Oliver must undergo all that he does.  The story is the narrative of the sins of the mother being meted out upon the son.  In the novel, Dickens prides himself on decoding the semiotics of criminality and deviance.  This is in marked contrast to Oliver, who remains a semiotic naif throughout the novel.  Consider an early scene in which Nancy the prostitute is introduced.  She is introduced in such a way that the reader is meant to be able to read the signs of sexual promiscuity although Oliver is not.
 

When this game had been played a great many times, a couple of
young ladies called to see the young gentleman; one of whom was
named Bet, and the other Nancy.  They wore a good deal of hair,
not very neatly turned up behind, and were rather untidy about
the shoes and stockings.  They were not exactly pretty, perhaps;
but they had a great deal of colour in their faces, and looked
quite stout and hearty.  Being remarkably free and agreeable in
their manners, Oliver thought them very nice girls indeed.  As
there is no doubt they were.

The visitors stopped a long time.  Spirits were produced, in
consequence of one of the young ladies complaining of a coldness
in her inside; and the conversation took a very convivial and
improving turn.  At length, Charley Bates expressed his opinion
that it was time to pad the hoof.  This, it occurred to Oliver,
must be French for going out; for directly afterwards, the
Dodger, and Charley, and the two young ladies, went away
together, having been kindly furnished by the amiable old Jew
with money to spend.

'There, my dear,' said Fagin.  'That's a pleasant life, isn't it?
 

After having served the gang of thieves and actually getting Oliver back in their clutches, Nancy begins to develop the proverbial heart of gold.  She seeks to help Oliver by communicating to his benefactors.  This involves an encounter with Rose, Oliver's aunt.  Rose's failure to condemn Nancy and treat her with disdain--despite the fact that she bears all the signs of prostitution--is presented as quite moving to Nancy.  Nancy's response seems to suggest that the policing of sexual deviance depends upon a reading of the signs of sexual deviance.  And that once one bears the signs of sexual deviance, one is condemned forever.
 
 
 

When she reached the more wealthy quarter of the town, the
streets were comparatively deserted; and here her headlong
progress excited a still greater curiosity in the stragglers whom
she hurried past.  Some quickened their pace behind, as though to
see whither she was hastening at such an unusual rate; and a few
made head upon her, and looked back, surprised at her
undiminished speed; but they fell off one by one; and when she
neared her place of destination, she was alone.

It was a family hotel in a quiet but handsome street near Hyde
Park.  As the brilliant light of the lamp which burnt before its
door, guided her to the spot, the clock struck eleven.  She had
loitered for a few paces as though irresolute, and making up her
mind to advance; but the sound determined her, and she stepped
into the hall.  The porter's seat was vacant.  She looked round
with an air of incertitude, and advanced towards the stairs.

'Now, young woman!' said a smartly-dressed female, looking out
from a door behind her, 'who do you want here?'

'A lady who is stopping in this house,' answered the girl.

'A lady!' was the reply, accompanied with a scornful look. 'What
lady?'

'Miss Maylie,' said Nancy.

The young woman, who had by this time, noted her appearance,
replied only by a look of virtuous disdain; and summoned a man to
answer her.  To him, Nancy repeated her request.

'What name am I to say?' asked the waiter.

'It's of no use saying any,' replied Nancy.

'Nor business?' said the man.

'No, nor that neither,' rejoined the girl.  'I must see the
lady.'

'Come!' said the man, pushing her towards the door.  'None of
this.  Take yourself off.'

'I shall be carried out if I go!' said the girl violently; 'and I
can make that a job that two of you won't like to do.  Isn't
there anybody here,' she said, looking round, 'that will see a
simple message carried for a poor wretch like me?'

This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook,
who with some of the other servants was looking on, and who
stepped forward to interfere.

'Take it up for her, Joe; can't you?' said this person.

'What's the good?' replied the man.  'You don't suppose the young
lady will see such as her; do you?'

This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast
quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who
remarked, with great fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to
her sex; and strongly advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly,
into the kennel.

'Do what you like with me,' said the girl, turning to the men
again; 'but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this
message for God Almighty's sake.'

The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was
that the man who had first appeared undertook its delivery.

'What's it to be?' said the man, with one foot on the stairs.

'That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie
alone,' said Nancy; 'and that if the lady will only hear the
first word she has to say, she will know whether to hear her
business, or to have her turned out of doors as an impostor.'

'I say,' said the man, 'you're coming it strong!'

'You give the message,' said the girl firmly; 'and let me hear
the answer.'

The man ran upstairs.  Nancy remained, pale and almost
breathless, listening with quivering lip to the very audible
expressions of scorn, of which the chaste housemaids were very
prolific; and of which they became still more so, when the man
returned, and said the young woman was to walk upstairs.

'It's no good being proper in this world,' said the first
housemaid.

'Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire,' said
the second.

The third contented herself with wondering 'what ladies was made
of'; and the fourth took the first in a quartette of 'Shameful!'
with which the Dianas concluded.

Regardless of all this: for she had weightier matters at heart:
Nancy followed the man, with trembling limbs, to a small
ante-chamber, lighted by a lamp from the ceiling. Here he left
her, and retired.
 

CHAPTER XL

A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAMBER

The girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the
most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was
something of the woman's original nature left in her still; and
when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that
by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which
the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened
with the sense of her own deep shame, and shrunk as though she
could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought
this interview.

But struggling with these better feelings was pride,--the vice of
the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high
and self-assured.  The miserable companion of thieves and
ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the
scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the
gallows itself,--even this degraded being felt too proud to
betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a
weakness, but which alone connected her with that humanity, of
which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when
a very child.

She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the figure which
presented itself was that of a slight and beautiful girl; then,
bending them on the ground, she tossed her head with affected
carelessness as she said:

'It's a hard matter to get to see you, lady.  If I had taken
offence, and gone away, as many would have done, you'd have been
sorry for it one day, and not without reason either.'

'I am very sorry if any one has behaved harshly to you,' replied
Rose.  'Do not think of that.  Tell me why you wished to see me.
I am the person you inquired for.'

The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle manner,
the absence of any accent of haughtiness or displeasure, took the
girl completely by surprise, and she burst into tears.

'Oh, lady, lady!' she said, clasping her hands passionately
before her face, 'if there was more like you, there would be
fewer like me,--there would--there would!'

'Sit down,' said Rose, earnestly.  'If you are in poverty or
affliction I shall be truly glad to relieve you if I can,--I
shall indeed.  Sit down.'

'Let me stand, lady,' said the girl, still weeping, 'and do not
speak to me so kindly till you know me better.  It is growing
late.  Is--is--that door shut?'

'Yes,' said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer
assistance in case she should require it.  'Why?'

'Because,' said the girl, 'I am about to put my life and the
lives of others in your hands.  I am the girl that dragged little
Oliver back to old Fagin's on the night he went out from the
house in Pentonville.'

'You!' said Rose Maylie.

'I, lady!' replied the girl.  'I am the infamous creature you
have heard of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from
the first moment I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on
London streets have known any better life, or kinder words than
they have given me, so help me God!  Do not mind shrinking openly
from me, lady.  I am younger than you would think, to look at me,
but I am well used to it. The poorest women fall back, as I make
my way along the crowded pavement.'

'What dreadful things are these!' said Rose, involuntarily
falling from her strange companion.

'Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,' cried the girl, 'that
you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and
that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and
drunkenness, and--and--something worse than all--as I have been
from my cradle.  I may use the word, for the alley and the gutter
were mine, as they will be my deathbed.'

'I pity you!' said Rose, in a broken voice.  'It wrings my heart
to hear you!'
 

This is Nancy's sad and tragic end.  Nancy's demise is complex because it both lauds her and condemns her.  It allows Dickens to suggest that prostitutes might be capable of humanity, self-sacrifice, and reform; yet it also allows him to sentence her to the most harsh sentence a bourgeois society could pass out.  Notice how Dickens has Christianized Nancy in her death.  Interestingly, Dickens was fascinated with this scene and loved performing it dramatically in his reading tours.  His last reading tour, which included this scene, may have promoted his demise (it has been suggested).
 
 
 
 

Without one pause, or moment's consideration; without once
turning his head to the right or left, or raising his eyes to the
sky, or lowering them to the ground, but looking straight before
him with savage resolution:  his teeth so tightly compressed that
the strained jaw seemed starting through his skin; the robber
held on his headlong course, nor muttered a word, nor relaxed a
muscle, until he reached his own door.  He opened it, softly,
with a key; strode lightly up the stairs; and entering his own
room, double-locked the door, and lifting a heavy table against
it, drew back the curtain of the bed.

The girl was lying, half-dressed, upon it.  He had roused her
from her sleep, for she raised herself with a hurried and
startled look.

'Get up!' said the man.

'It is you, Bill!' said the girl, with an expression of pleasure
at his return.

'It is,' was the reply.  'Get up.'

There was a candle burning, but the man hastily drew it from the
candlestick, and hurled it under the grate.  Seeing the faint
light of early day without, the girl rose to undraw the curtain.

'Let it be,' said Sikes, thrusting his hand before her. 'There's
enough light for wot I've got to do.'

'Bill,' said the girl, in the low voice of alarm, 'why do you
look like that at me!'

The robber sat regarding her, for a few seconds, with dilated
nostrils and heaving breast; and then, grasping her by the head
and throat, dragged her into the middle of the room, and looking
once towards the door, placed his heavy hand upon her mouth.

'Bill, Bill!' gasped the girl, wrestling with the strength of
mortal fear,--'I--I won't scream or cry--not once--hear me--speak
to me--tell me what I have done!'

'You know, you she devil!' returned the robber, suppressing his
breath.  'You were watched to-night; every word you said was
heard.'

'Then spare my life for the love of Heaven, as I spared yours,'
rejoined the girl, clinging to him.  'Bill, dear Bill, you cannot
have the heart to kill me.  Oh! think of all I have given up,
only this one night, for you.  You SHALL have time to think, and
save yourself this crime; I will not loose my hold, you cannot
throw me off.  Bill, Bill, for dear God's sake, for your own, for
mine, stop before you spill my blood!  I have been true to you,
upon my guilty soul I have!'

The man struggled violently, to release his arms; but those of
the girl were clasped round his, and tear her as he would, he
could not tear them away.

'Bill,' cried the girl, striving to lay her head upon his breast,
'the gentleman and that dear lady, told me to-night of a home in
some foreign country where I could end my days in solitude and
peace.  Let me see them again, and beg them, on my knees, to show
the same mercy and goodness to you; and let us both leave this
dreadful place, and far apart lead better lives, and forget how
we have lived, except in prayers, and never see each other more.
It is never too late to repent.  They told me so--I feel it
now--but we must have time--a little, little time!'

The housebreaker freed one arm, and grasped his pistol. The
certainty of immediate detection if he fired, flashed across his
mind even in the midst of his fury; and he beat it twice with all
the force he could summon, upon the upturned face that almost
touched his own.

She staggered and fell:  nearly blinded with the blood that
rained down from a deep gash in her forehead; but raising
herself, with difficulty, on her knees, drew from her bosom a
white handkerchief--Rose Maylie's own--and holding it up, in her
folded hands, as high towards Heaven as her feeble strength would
allow, breathed one prayer for mercy to her Maker.

It was a ghastly figure to look upon.  The murderer staggering
backward to the wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand,
seized a heavy club and struck her down.
 

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