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Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist - Group Read 5
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Oliver Twist: Chapters 35 - 43
I'm glad Michael joggled me, though, because I then went back and reread the chapter and concluded, as you have, Jean, that it was not Nancy. In fact, it appears to be another case of mesmerization, in that Dickens goes to lengths to discount the possibility of anyone being near. I do love to speculate as I go, though I frequently get it wrong. Thank you both for helping me engage further with the details of the story.
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Lee G wrote: "The Abusive Relationship. We know Nancy has stayed with Sikes, many years her senior, nursing him through a long illness. Dickens is clearly describing the main characteristics of a violent and abusive domestic relationship. He was so ahead of his time in his understanding of this condition. ..."
I really liked Lee and Sara's thoughts about the abusive relationship between Nancy and Bill. These comments have me thinking about not only how sad their relationship is, but also how timeless it is. Haven't there always been men and women in relationships like this?
Which makes me wonder if Bill and Nancy are part of the reason Oliver Twist became a classic, and remains such a well-known book. Especially Nancy, who struggles with wanting to do the right thing. It makes modern readers relate to her in a personal way, because we all struggle with wanting to do the right thing. I wonder though, would Victorian readers have found a prostitute sympathetic?
Dickens at one time helped to found a home for prostitutes who wanted to leave the profession. I'm not sure at what point of his career that was, but it seems from his novels that he was always sympathetic to them. In this novel he creates a character who is a prostitute, but a very likeable person. Also, several times Nancy brings up the fact that she did not choose her profession, it was chosen for her. I have to believe that by creating Nancy as a sympathetic character he was trying to make his readers look beyond their prejudices.
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You are thinking here of Urania Cottage Katy, the home for "fallen women" that Charles Dickens was to establish with his friend Angela Burdett-Coutts 10 years later. The idea was his own, and began in 1846, when he sent her a fourteen-page letter about his plan for setting up a safe house for women and girls working the London streets as prostitutes.
We've talked a lot about this in the group, but most posts have spoilers ... so here's one of my information posts where any spoilers are hidden LINK HERE.
"he was trying to make his readers look beyond their prejudices".
Absolutely! Charles Dickens cared a great deal about the plight of such women, and changed the lives of many who were selected as being suitable, starting them off with new skills and a new life emigrating abroad.
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"Mesmerising" 😁 indeed! Yes, I agree it's crucial to a full understanding of the novel. As we read on we will see how now that Charles Dickens has worked out his plan for the entire novel at last, (with his month's break) he is itching to race on and tie it all together. Some parts are inspired, and some you may feel you have to give him the benefit of the doubt. They feel inexplicable by any modern scientific appraoch, but then so does most gothic or superatural fiction. There will be more on this after tomorrow's chapter 40.
Oh, and just to mention that Fagin is Nancy's pimp; Charles Dickens just never uses that word. So Bill Sikes must have an attraction all his own, and as you say, provide a strange sort of stability for her.
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Since it was assumed by the gang that Oliver was cast off for dead at the burglary, is Charles Dickens again telling us that £5 (at the most) is the price of his life; i.e. how much a boy like Oliver is seen to be worth in the eyes of society?
By the way, if I haven't answered your points immediately after the first part of this chapter, everyone, or just now, please know that they will come up very soon!
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Chapter 39: (end)
from “They parted without more conversation, merely interchanging a “good-night.”
After receiving the promised money from Fagin, Nancy sits down on a doorstep and seems “wholly bewildered” for a few moments, before beginning a violent run in the opposite direction to where Bill Sikes will be waiting. She then bursts into tears, and reverses her direction, heading back to be with Sikes. Bill Sikes does not notice anything amiss, and is distracted the next day by eating and drinking. But by the time evening falls, he notices that Nancy looks strange, and stares at her, saying:
“You look like a corpse come to life again.
… there’s something more than usual in the wind, and something dangerous too. You’re not a-going to—. No, damme! you wouldn’t do that!”
“Do what?” asked the girl.
“There ain’t,” said Sikes, fixing his eyes upon her, and muttering the words to himself; “there ain’t a stauncher-hearted gal going, or I’d have cut her throat three months ago. She’s got the fever coming on; that’s it.”
Sikes asks Nancy for his medicine, and she helps him to drink. After a while he lays like one in a “profound trance”. Nancy is relieved that the laudanum she had given him has taken effect at last, and kisses him tenderly.
"Then, stooping softly over the bed, she kissed the robber's lips" — James Mahoney 1871
She then hurriedly leaves their hovel and rushes through the streets of London until she gets to the West End.
"Has it long gone the half-hour?" Frederic W. Pailthorpe 1886
She sets such a fast pace that the people around think she is mad.
Nancy stops at a family hotel near Hyde Park, telling the staff that she has a message for Rose Maylie. There is much hesitation from the woman servants at the hotel, who look down on Nancy and judge her, looking down on her with “virtuous disdain” because of her appearance. However Nancy will not give up, saying:
“Do what you like with me … but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this message for God Almighty’s sake.”
The message is finally delivered and Nancy is invited to meet with Miss Maylie, although the four female members of staff do not hide their scorn and disapproval. All four of them grumble and make disparaging comments so that Nancy can hear, such as: “It’s no good being proper in this world” and all four agree that it was “Shameful!”
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Rose Maylie’s hotel is near Hyde Park. As the original readers would know, Hyde Park is a wealthy district and the park was a fashionable meeting place at the time. People strolled through the manicured gardens and rode horses and carriages along the broad drives. The surrounding residential area is upper-middle and upper class. Nancy would have looked and felt very out of place, and this explains her chilly reception by the hotel staff. They can also very probably guess her profession as a prostitute; despite her bonnet and shawl she seemed to leave Sikes’s place without changing her attire, unlike when she went to kidnap Oliver on his way to the bookseller’s, pretending to be his respectable sister.
As a consequence the female members of the hotel staff are less willing to hear Nancy out. Dickens refers to these young women as “the Dianas”—a reference to the virgin Roman goddess Diana, a popular Victorian image of beauty. Ironically, Diana was the goddess not only of the hunt but also of fertility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_(...
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Nancy doses Bill Sikes with laudanum so that he will sleep while she goes out. Laudanum was commonly taken by rich and poor alike in the Victorian era, mostly for medicinal reasons to treat anything from insomnia to intestinal pain to tuberculosis. It consisted of 10 per cent powdered opium, 90 per cent alcohol, and spices for flavouring.
Opiates, of which laudanum was the least expensive, were in wide use. Although people knew they were habit-forming, no stigma was attached to their use. They were even used to calm restless infants and children. The sale of opiates went unregulated until the second half of the 19th century.
Alcohol Another interesting statistic which might be worth mentioning here is how common gin was. Statistics for 1833 in London's 14 leading gin shops are as follows:
Men: 142,453
Women: 108,593
Children: 11, 494
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Lee wrote an excellent post about the abusive relationship Nancy is in, saying that Charles Dickens was “so ahead of his time in his understanding of this condition”. Bridget and Sara echoed these thoughts, but wondered whether the readers of the time might have found it difficult to have much sympathy for Nancy.
The answer is yes, Charles Dickens’s public severely disapproved of this when it was first published and the majority would not believe such a character as Nancy existed! We will read the preface to the Third Edition of 1841 afterwards, but I can quote parts of it which relate to this here (I have removed any spoilers). The whole of the preface is really a defence of various criticisms made against the veracity of this novel, such as the part I mentioned earlier, where people were sceptical about Jacob’s Island.
“There are people, however, of so refined and delicate a nature, that they cannot bear the contemplation of such horrors. Not that they turn instinctively from crime; but that criminal characters, to suit them, must be, like their meat, in delicate disguise … Nancy, being a creature in a cotton gown and cheap shawl, is not to be thought of. It is wonderful how Virtue turns from dirty stockings; and how Vice, married to ribbons and a little gay attire, changes her name, as wedded ladies do, and becomes Romance …
It has been observed of Nancy that her devotion to the brutal housebreaker does not seem natural … It is useless to discuss whether the conduct and character of the girl seems natural or unnatural, probable or improbable, right or wrong. IT IS TRUE. Every man who has watched these melancholy shades of life, must know it to be so … there is not a word exaggerated or over-wrought … I am glad to have had it doubted, for in that circumstance I should find a sufficient assurance (if I wanted any) that it needed to be told.“
It is, as Lee observed, “[Dickens’s] understanding of human nature, even distorted human nature, is astounding!” to have identified and fell impelled to write about a battered woman, and the victim mentality, in 1837, and which he was spurred to act on, as Katy remembered, founding Urania Cottage a decade later. Just about every novel he wrote contains at least one prostitute. For me Nancy is a fully rounded and nuanced character; certainly one of the most intriguing characters in Oliver Twist, and among the strongest females he ever wrote. We are to learn even more about her in tomorrow’s chapter.
Nancy loves Bill Sikes dearly, and seemingly puts up with any amount of violence from him. This feels so modern and so sad. Times have not really changed for some, except that we are now aware that there are men in this position of being abused too, but it is still a huge, unresolved and hidden problem.
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Nancy has been humiliated by the hotel staff, and must feel apprehensive about how a well-to-do young woman might receive her. Will she go through with her plan, or think better of it? And the most intriguing of all … what can she want to talk to Rose Maylie about?
So many questions spring to mind from just part of a chapter today, and you will have more thoughts too! Over to you.
Thank you Jean. Indeed Dickens has developed Nancy's character and more generally a prostitute's character through Nancy more deeply and with many more nuances than it was deemed appropriate back then. He has dealt with the issue of abuse - as Lee very well developed herself - in many more ways than the most superficial. We have already seen several facets of her personality. She is far from being monolithic or cliché. We see how Nancy in spite of past, present, and most probably future ill-treatment is rushing to Sikes and even lovingly taking care of him - she clearly has a purpose when getting out of Fagin's lair but still does not run straight away from Sikes's either. We would like to shout "Run, Nancy, run!"
When Elizabeth Gaskell published Ruth in 1853 (of course later than Dickens's Nancy in Oliver Twist), she was much criticised for having featured "a fallen woman" as the main character of a novel (it would have been perhaps more admitted if Ruth were a secondary character), against the prevailing views of her time. Ruth is not a prostitute but a seduced woman. She is nevertheless viewed as a prostitute and advised to go to a Penitenciary (some comments suggest that the Fordham Penitenciary in Manchester, near the workhouse, was meant).
Therefore, I find very laudable that Dickens founded Urania Cottage.
Bionic Jean wrote: "We will read the preface to the Third Edition of 1841 afterwards, but I can quote parts of it which relate to this here (I have removed any spoilers). The whole of the preface is really a defence of various criticisms made against the veracity of this novel" ...I'm so grateful to you for sharing these excerpts from that Preface, Jean. I'm so impressed with Dickens here! How true, and brilliant, is this? " ...criminal characters, to suit them, must be, like their meat, in delicate disguise ..."
And Dickens' motivation is illuminated here:
"I am glad to have had it doubted, for in that circumstance I should find a sufficient assurance (if I wanted any) that it needed to be told.“
Dickens had to have the desire and guts to present this truth, and also the understanding to pull it off. Again, I am so impressed!
After seeing fat faced and aged Nancy, refreshing to see more realistic portrayals with the illustrations posted for this chapter. Mahoney, regardless of the class of woman, tends to emphasize the softer feminine features. Although one might criticize Mahoney for going too far the other way.
What could Nancy be wanting to share with Rose Maylie, that is the big question for sure! Nancy doesn’t know that Oliver is still alive, and why would she connect Oliver with Rose? She wouldn’t. So tomorrow’s chapter will be interesting certainly! Dickens is so good at connecting characters in ways we never see coming, so I have a few ideas, but can’t say for sure what they could be. I am glad to know that with about 25% of the book remaining that Dickens has figured out how it will come to its completion. I was very intrigued to know about the publishing issues even at this stage from Jean’s previous posts. I have heard the comment about Dickens getting paid by the word and hopefully will be able to refute the claim in the future if it ever comes up again. Thanks Jean!
Nancy overheard a conversation between Monks and Fagin. I'm guessing that Monks knew something about Rose and Oliver, but the reader never found out what was discussed in that conversation. Nancy is risking the wrath of Bill, Monks, and Fagin. She must have important information that she's willing to take such a big risk.
One of the things Dickens does so well is develop characters that have full dimension. Nancy is one of those. It might be easy to slot Fagin into a typical Victorian idea of a Jew; Sikes into a typical evil criminal, but Nancy doesn't fit into the typical idea of a prostitute--which forces the reader to consider that every prostitute, like every human being, might be different. When I think about this novel, Nancy is the character who stays with me with the most detail. Even after 30+ years away from her, she seems so familiar. That is superb writing!Imagine the courage it would take for a 17 year old girl to defy a man of Sikes reputation and temper. It is a strong conscience and heart that would even think of going against him in the slightest way, and not even for her own benefit. Dickens leaves us with no doubt about what the price would be: (Jean already quoted this, but I will slip it in here as well),
“There ain’t,” said Sikes, fixing his eyes upon her, and muttering the words to himself; “there ain’t a stauncher-hearted gal going, or I’d have cut her throat three months ago.
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Yes, there are parts which are definitely worth knowing as we read!
Michael - I too dislike the "fat faced and aged Nancy" many illustrators portray. I know she is about to say she looks older than she is (in today's chapter 40) but these are ridciulous for a 17 year old!
James Mahoney's illustrations are always workmanlike and realstic. They do not have any humour whatsoever - but sometimes that seriousness is what you want!
Lori - I'm pleased you will be able to put people right on the "paid by the word" myth! Plenty of 19th century writers were - but not Charles Dickens!
Oh there are so many great insights from everyone here, but it's time to move on to a chapter which may be far less straightforward than it initially seems.
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As she waits for Rose Maylie to come to the door, Nancy feels “burdened with the sense of her own deep shame”. She knows that she has lived her life on the streets and in dens and stews. She knows herself to be: “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”.
Nancy is apprehensive about the upcoming interview, yet she is as proud as anyone else. So when she first meets with Rose Maylie, Nancy tosses her head carelessly. But Rose’s kind, gentle manner and sweet voice, without any kind of haughtiness disarms her completely, and she burst into tears, sobbing:
“Oh, lady, lady!…“if there was more like you, there would be fewer like me!”
Rose wants to help her, but Nancy warns her that she does not know all:
“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.”
Horrified, Rose draws back initially, but her pity and sympathy are soon to the fore when she learns about Nancy’s life and terrible circumstances.
Nancy urges her to listen, making sure Rose knows how important her news is:
“I have stolen away from those who would surely murder me, if they knew I had been here, to tell you what I have overheard.”
and asks whether Rose knows Monks. Rose does not, but Nancy tells her that Monks knows her, and where she is staying. She then goes on to report two conversations she has heard between Fagin and Monks. She learned from these that Monks had paid Fagin to make Oliver a thief, for some purpose of his own. In the second conversation she says she heard Monks say:
“So the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin.”
She says that Monks and Fagin had both laughed at this idea, and referred to Oliver as Rose’s “two-legged spaniel”. Hearing this, Rose turns pale. Nancy says Monks went on to say that he will come into a lot of money because of his actions, but that he would have preferred to bring “the boast of the father’s will” to a conclusion by making Oliver into a criminal. Monks expresses more resentment, wishing he could “gratify his hatred by taking [Oliver’s] life without bringing his own neck into danger” but hoped to harm him yet.
Then Rose (and the readers) learn with a shock that Monks now has an inheritance that should have gone to Oliver, whom Monks refers to as his “young brother”.
Rose is startled by this news, but Nancy: “glanc[es] uneasily round, as she had scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak, for a vision of Sikes haunted her perpetually.”
Rose is keen to help Nancy to safety, and Nancy is clearly moved by her words:
“if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned me from a life of sin and sorrow; but it is too late, it is too late!”
"Rose and Nancy" - Harry Furniss 1910
and Nancy refuses to leave Bill Sikes:
“I am drawn back to him through every suffering and ill usage; and I should be, I believe, if I knew that I was to die by his hand at last.”
Rose is now at a loss to know what her next steps should be but Nancy says:
“You must have some kind gentleman about you who will hear it as a secret, and advise you what to do.”
Nancy agrees that she will tell her story again, to such a “kind gentleman”, if they both promise to keep it a secret. She says she will be on London Bridge each Sunday night for an hour, so that they can talk again. Rose offers her money, so that she can live honestly until the, but Nancy refuses.
The chapter ends:
“Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy creature turned away; while Rose Maylie, overpowered by this extraordinary interview, which had more the semblance of a rapid dream than an actual occurrence, sank into a chair, and endeavoured to collect her wandering thoughts.”
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“hulks” were decomissioned ships used as prisons
Charles Dickens calls this a “strange interview”. Both of these young women are 17, and both had disadvantaged and sorry beginnings to their lives, but now they live at different end of the social spectrum. Rose has been given love, and a good home, but Nancy is on the streets and her companions are thieves, murderers, fences and pimps. Charles Dickens is contrasting these two women’s circumstances, but also showing us their similar essential natures.
“Woman’s original nature”
Charles Dickens says of Nancy “there was something of the woman’s original nature left in her still”. He believed in the doctrine of the moral sentiments: that human beings are born with moral inclinations, and that women especially have a natural inborn propensity towards goodness.
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To fully understand Charles Dickens’s writing at certain places in Oliver Twist, we need to leave our assumptions (and all the dramatisations) aside, use our imaginations—and also remember that Charles Dickens was obsessed with mesmerism when he wrote it!
Charles Dickens believed the current scientific theory at the time: that in mesmeric trance the order of human experience is distinctly different from that of ordinary consciousness. But there were supposed to be varied possibilities of reaction from instance to instance, and from subject to subject.
Charles Dickens thought that this served his needs as a novelist perfectly; the possibilities seemed endless! He need not feel his credibility questionable if he changed the details from instance to instance, as the particular fictional situation demanded. This is what he is describing in his paragraphs I quoted earlier, about the kind of sleep which “frees the mind and enables it to ramble at its pleasure” and the “mighty powers bounding from the earth, and a consciousness of all that is going on about us”. Charles Dickens believed that in this mesmeric state, one is in a receptive state of consciousness in which communication can be effected through means other than physical organs. Sometimes, (as with Oliver’s sleepwaking state, aware of Fagin and his treasures), it is an instance of double consciousness, but sometimes the physical location is immaterial, such as when Monks says he would know Oliver in any circumstances, “even if you buried him fifty feet deep”. This is not logically possible of course, so on a cursory reading we might assume it is mere hyperbole. But what Charles Dickens might well be indicating here is another aspect of mesmerism.
Because of many ongoing investigations on two sisters called Elizabeth and Jane O’key, long-term patients at the University College Hospital in London (and often reported in “the Lancet”) John Elliotson believed that the mesmeric fluid flowed very strongly between blood relatives. Now that we know that Monks and Oliver are brothers, Charles Dickens would have believed that the magnetic attraction between these two brothers is particularly strong, as if they are split aspects of a single self: a single consciousness.
We do not need to believe this ourselves …. merely to take on board that Charles Dickens did! So let’s now relate this to today’s chapter, which will be much more challenging.
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Now we are on to the second overheard conversation, which took place in chapter 39 itself, when we were told by the narrator that Nancy crept up the stairs to listen to Monks and Fagin’s private talk. Charles Dickens described how Nancy crept up the staircase in her bare feet, so she could secretly eavesdrop, returning downstairs and putting on her shawl just as the men returned. Therefore we do know for a fact that she was physically there on that occasion. The narrator also tells us that she left with Fagin, to take the money back to Sikes (and had the extraordinary reaction at the end of the chapter, when she rushed to and fro, and didn’t know which direction to go in.)
Now Nancy says to Rose that she was there for the earlier episode too, and was eavesdropping both times … but Charles Dickens made it clear in chapter 9 that she was not! (NOTE—Please read my annotated post about this LINK HERE which I needed to post earlier than I had planned, because the question was raised a little earlier than Charles Dickens might have expected his readers to be wondering.)
The clue to how to interpret these two eavesdropping episodes lies in the comprehensive catalogue of details, and for this we need to look at a third episode. We were repeatedly assured that nobody could have been there in chapter 9, and Charles Dickens was to use exactly the same formula in his detailed description in chapter 34 of how Monks and Fagin could not have been outside the window at the Maylies’ country house, although that time he prefaced it with the long speech about “reality and imagination becom[ing] so strangely blended that it is afterwards almost matter of impossibility to separate the two.” These two episodes had in common that at least one person disappeared immediately without trace, nobody had seen them, and it was far too far away for them to have been there. (There are many more details in each case.)
The shadow on the wainscot episode was written a long time before Charles Dickens had planned today’s chapter, but I think he has incorporated it brilliantly. If you read the details again, as Sara did, you will probably also come to the same conclusion that she did: that it was a mesmeric appearance. And we can also see today’s chapter as a case of mesmerism inserted by Charles Dickens. It is not a direct parallel to the other two, because Charles Dickens details the chronology, giving a careful account of how Nancy got to the Hyde Park area. So this is not told as if it is a straighforward (in memeric terms!) case of Nancy’s double consciousness.
However all might not be as it seems. Look at the title—a “strange interview”. Why “strange”? Why not “unexpected”, or “momentous”? ”Strange” seems a code word for something inexplicable or (given Charles Dickens's obsession at the time) mesmeric.
Another clue in chapter 39 is that Nancy left Bill Sikes laying like one in a “profound trance”. Why not call it a drugged sleep, or a stupor?
But the main indicator of this for me (which I can share at the moment) comes in the last paragraph, where Rose was “overpowered by this extraordinary interview, which had more the semblance of a rapid dream than an actual occurrence”.
There is another aspect to chapter 40 … but we need to learn a little more of the story before we can see this as an indicator of a mesmeric interlude.
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Leaving this aside though, what a incredibly poignant and heartbreaking chapter this is! It is pure melodrama, but as Werner said earlier Charles Dickens does this so well. Nancy is pitiful, but so courageous and brave. We are emotionally engaged and can empathise with her.
Charles Dickens himself believed that an effective melodrama needs to have alternate dark, serious and lighter, comic scenes. As he said at the beginning of chapter 17, when he had negotiated a new contract with Charles Bentley and decided to withdraw his resignation and carry on with “A Parish Boy’s Progress”:
“It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song.”
This began his apologia, when he resumed the book by going back to the workhouse where the story had started. We can see that—this time in chapter 40—Charles Dickens’s “streaky bacon” effect is constructed by having a comic scene with Nancy, Bill Sikes, and the gang in the middle of the previous chapter, followed by the tense build-up with Nancy’s desperate rush to the West End hotel, again contrasting with a highly emotional scene today.
The only illustrator “brave” enough to capture this scene was to be Harry Furniss in 1910. We see how shocked Rose seems at Nancy’s breaking down as she grapples with a powerful ethical conflict; how to remain true to her brutish Bill Sikes while defending Oliver, and ensuring the downfall of Monks by informing Rose Maylie of the plot to drag the boy into the criminal underworld.
Harry Furniss shows us a convincing, entreating, contrite, and even desperate posture as an ashamed Nancy hides her tearful face from a respectably dressed woman of about her own age. Surely they are both aware of their similarities but also of the completely different worlds they inhabit, as mentioned before. Rose looks down in pity and sympathy, but can we also notice an inward, pained look on her face? If we reflect, we will remember that Rose has her own problems too. She also has an own inner turmoil, as the mystery surrounding her birth has led her to reject her adopted brother, Harry, as a suitor because she believes such an unsuitable wife would be bound to damage his political career.
Interestingly, we might notice that just as Charles Dickens consistently makes Oliver speak in perfect received pronunciation ("RP") so as not to alienate his readers as discussed before, we find that because of Nancy’s noble intentions, on this occasion she speaks the emotionally heightened, grammatically correct language of melodrama, rather than the dialect of the streets.
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We also learn something in this chapter that stuns us; that Monks and Oliver are brothers! It seems unbelievable, and makes us wonder how and why … There is talk of a will; evidently there is a lot more we still do not yet know!
Over to you.
Great chapter!Nancy is telling Rose and us that Monks saw Oliver on the day they "first lost him". Can it be that the "great lubberly fellow" who stopped the "thief" in chapter 10 was Monks?
According to my research lubberly means something near big and clumsy, and is quite as archaic as a French similarly sounding word "huluberlu", weirdo or eccentric. This would describe well a first appearance of Monks on the stage.
I notice that Mr Brownlow eyed him "with an expression of dislike".
Chapter 10:
“Poor fellow!” said the gentleman, (Mr Brownlow) “he has hurt himself.”
“I did that, sir,” said a great lubberly fellow, stepping forward; “and preciously I cut my knuckle agin’ his mouth. I stopped him, sir.”
The fellow touched his hat with a grin, expecting something for his pains; but, the old gentleman, eyeing him with an expression of dislike, looked anxiously round, as if he contemplated running away himself: which it is very possible he might have attempted to do, and thus have afforded another chase, had not a police officer (who is generally the last person to arrive in such cases) at that moment made his way through the crowd, and seized Oliver by the collar."
I am finally caught up and hope to stay current now. I've read the summaries and comments and they are making this experience much more enriching than when I read it on my own. I had no clue about the mesmerism but having it in mind now, I also saw it at the end of this chapter. In addition to the powerful last paragraph that Jean mentions, a few paragraphs prior when Rose is pleading with Nancy to stay and she says "What fascination is it that can take you back, and make you cling to wickedness and misery?" and "Is there nothing left to which I can appeal against this terrible infatuation!"
Though I don't believe in mesmerism per se, "fascination" and "infatuation" are mesmerism like terms we use today. It's hard to deny that there are certain connections between people that draw them to each other for unexplainable reasons. We often refer to "chemistry" now. This does seem to be at least a distant cousin of mesmerism.
It was comforting to hear about how Dickens had to reread this story after publishing delays since I read this a few short years ago and find I've forgotten many details. Of course I've also noticed many new things due to Jean's wonderful summaries and others great comments.
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I think the words you picked up a "fascination" and "infatuation!" are definitely key: they are coded terms again for the mesmerism connection. Thank you for honing in on these!
But Claudia ... we know that Monks is well to do by his clothes, and he has a ready amount of gold. Nor does he speak in a common way as the "lubberly fellow" did. Monks's presence has invariably been menacing, or secretive, rather than comic, whenever we have seen him.
Unless he was acting for some reason (and why should he have been?) the words “and preciously I cut my knuckle agin’ his mouth. I stopped him, sir” would have been completely out of character and class. It's something a loutish labouring man would boast of, and this is the cockney way he would speak, complete with the respectful "sir" at the end. Monks is not respectful, and only minimally polite. Nor would Monks want to draw attention to himself.
Yes, Mr. Brownlow looks at him with dislike. I think I would too, if I saw a fullgrown lout of a man punching a child in the face, and making himself bleed - whatever I thought the little boy had done.
No, sorry, but it's more likely that Monks, who seems to move silently between many secret haunts, was just a watchful observer.
I wish to echo Sue--when reading this before, without the knowledge or consideration of mesmerism, I no doubt misread the intentions and may have even looked at this as though Dickens had made errors in his writing. (too long ago to remember what I thought, and God forbid Dickens ever made an error). It is an infinitely richer experience with the gift of this information!That Monks and Oliver are brothers took me by way of shock. I did not see that coming! Explains quite a bit of Monks actions and statements up to now. The mystery deepens, because generally an older brother would have little or nothing to fear from a younger one, where wills are concerned.
Both Rose and Nancy take on much deeper character in this chapter. I love the contrasts between the two, knowing that they both had such rocky beginnings. The book is laced with mysteries, because I am still anxious to know exactly what Rose's circumstances were that make her feel she would be a disgrace for Harry.
I am wondering who Rose will call upon as the "kind gentleman" to advise her. Perhaps Mr. Brownlow will re-enter, back from his travels, or perhaps she will turn to Harry.
The Harry Furniss illustration for this one is perfect!
Where is Oliver during this time?
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This powerful encounter between Nancy and Rose strikes me as a major turning point in the story. There has finally been a connection made between the 'upper' world of the Maylies — a world of kindness and love and hope — and the underworld of degradation, crime and darkness that Nancy is trapped within. From the beginning, Oliver has been torn between these two worlds, attempting to escape the one and settle into the other. The courage of Nancy and the compassion of Rose, seen together, make this the most compelling chapter we have read.
My mind is going back to the portrait in Mr. Brownlow's, the one I think they said bore a resemblance to Oliver? Wondering what the connection is.
Bionic Jean wrote: "There is another aspect to chapter 40 … but we need to learn a little more of the story before we can see this as an indicator of a mesmeric interlude."This is really interesting and mind blowing because as Ms. Bionic highlights the sequence of events the brought Nancy to the interview with Miss Maylie is well documented and appears grounded in reality including the reaction of the staff on seeing Nancy. Dickens is challenging the reader to discern between the real and supernatural. What is really interesting is this is occurring in a novel that is taking place in a grimy reality and backdrop very far from say the Gothic.
Another challenge is how subtle Dickens is incorporating this supernatural element. Without Mr. Bionic's expertise, I would have not noticed it. Compare say to "Jane Eyre" where the supernatural link between Jane and Mr. Rochester is very explicit when Jane hears Rochester calling for her. Or Dr. Tarrant from Henry James' "The Bostonians" being an overt practitioner of mesmerism.
Sara wrote: "\The book is laced with mysteries, because I am still anxious to know exactly what Rose's circumstances were that make her feel she would be a disgrace for Harry."Sara - I'm so curious about Rose's circumstances too! This is one of the many things that I don't remember.
Bionic Jean wrote: "Chapter 40:“Oh, lady, lady!…“if there was more like you, there would be fewer like me!”."
This is another time Dickens, using his characters, directly appeals to the conscience of his middle class and higher readers to engage and support philanthropic activity. In Chapter 19, Dickens, using Sikes, brings up the effectiveness of the "Juvenile Delinquent Society" in taking boys off the streets and away from a life of crime.
t Nancy tells her that Monks knows her, and where she is staying.
Dickens doing a great job of increasing the atmosphere of danger and surveillance. Begs the question of how does Monks know she is in London?
Definitely a great chapter and without Jean’s expert knowledge and background here, I might have focused more on the big revelation that Monks is Oliver’s brother. There is a wide age difference between them so I am already thinking that the familial connection could be paternal instead of maternal. And I’m with Kathleen, wondering about the picture we learned about so long ago.
It was so heartbreaking to read Nancy’s words in this chapter. She really does love Sikes and chooses the rough life to the easy one.
She is selfless when she says, writhing in agony of her mind; “I cannot leave him now! I could not be his death.”
I’m hoping Rose contacts Harry to help with this.
Michael: Yes the pressure on Rose, Mrs Maylies and of course on Oliver (and on us) has been dramatically increasing through Nancy's revelations.
I suppose that Monks and Fagin were really there when Oliver saw them watching him, even if Harry and the others didn't find evidence. Monks may have inquired through the servants and learned their whereabouts in London.
I do love the humanity that Dickens begins to give women who have fallen into such hard lives as living on the streets, prostitution, etc. I also think in the hindsight of our era that it's interesting how that broad category of mesmerism is how he thinks women such as Nancy refuses to leave Sikes no matter how bad he is. There are women in dangerous and destructive relationships today as well, but with the advent and development of psychology we have very different explanations for this today.And Monks being Oliver's brother! But how? Through the unnamed father? I doubt it would be Oliver's young mother, but even this hasn't jogged my memory of the connection if we ever find that out. I'm on the edge of my seat with this news.
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Thanks everyone! It is indeed "mindblowing" as Michael said! And I love how everyone is solidly engaged with this novel, which to an outward appearance is straightforward but when we look more deeply is anything but, and really quite extraordinary!
So, moving on now to the final chapter in this installment ...
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Rose thinks about what she has learned. She is eager to understand the mystery of Oliver’s birth, and also has a strong desire to save the young woman who had trusted her with this secret. But she has less than 3 days in which to do it, and cannot think of anyone she can fully trust with the secret. She considers Dr. Losberne, her aunt and Harry Maylie in turn, but rejects them all, for different reasons.
Then Oliver arrives in her room, very agitated, and says he has seen Mr. Brownlow going into a house. He has noted the address, which is Craven Street, The Strand. Within minutes Rose and Oliver are in a hackney-coach, on their way to see Mr. Brownlow. Rose goes in first, and tells Mr. Brownlow everything that had happened to Oliver since he had seen him last. Both he and Mr. Grimwig are astonished, and Oliver is received with great joy by Mr. Brownlow, Mrs. Bedwin, (and even Mr. Grimwig).
Then Mr. Brownlow has a private word with Rose and learns all the rest of the story, how Rose had an “interview” with Nancy. This surprises and perplexes him, and when Rose explains, he quite understands why she hesitated before confiding in Dr. Losberne. He takes that task upon himself, and arranges to call at the hotel at 8 o’clock that evening, and in the meantime Rose will have a quiet word with Mrs. Maylie about it all.
That evening Mr. Brownlow visits the hotel and sure enough, Dr. Losberne reacts the way Rose had expected, wanting all the gang to be hanged or transported. But Mr. Brownlow reasons with him and asks how, leaving the girl aside, that would help solve the mystery about Oliver. No, what they need to do, he says is to “bring the man Monks to his knees”. As far as they know, he has no connection with the gang in any robberies, so they have no evidence against him. The best way they can do this is to meet with the girl again, and ask her to point him out. He think she will do this if they promise that Monks will be dealt with by them, and not by the law. The next time they can see her will be Sunday night. They agree not tell Oliver anything about it just yet.
Reluctantly Dr. Losberne agrees, and Mrs. Maylie and Rose both side with Mr. Brownlow, who asks if a friend of his can be present: Mr. Grimwig. Dr. Losberne goes along with this, and say that for his part he will approach Harry Maylie for his help.
They then all go into the adjoining room for supper, so that “the council was, for the present, effectually broken up.”
Lysette Anthony as Rose Maylie and Frank Middlemass as Mr. Brownlow, BBC miniseries 1985
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This is a long, but such a lovely chapter, with all the “good” characters meeting up at last to form a plan. I really enjoyed the gentle humour - and the affectionate reuniting of Oliver and Mrs. Bedwin 😊 But I have commented a lot on this installment, so will leave more reactions and thoughts to others.
There was no illustration for this chapter by anyone, so I have included a still from yet another dramatisation, this time from a BBC miniseries from 1985. It is not an actual scene from this chapter, (and is probabably not a scene at all, just a publicity shot). However it includes some of the characters, and I feel it conveys the protectiveness, patronage and fellowship very well.
We will begin installment 19 with chapter 42 on Monday. Hopefully everyone will be able to catch up by then, and we'll have lots more comments!
Mr. Grimwig is wonderful in this chapter with all his physical humor. Despite being proven wrong about Oliver, he is delights in the news and how happy his friend is. He is one of those secondary characters that adds so much to a Dickens novel.This is an exciting chapter because, at least for me, Dickens appears to be setting up a big set piece of Team Oliver vs. Team Monks with perhaps Nancy playing the decisive role. As a secondary story, we will have Rose and Harry brought back together.
I love the publicity shot Ms. Bionic shared. What a bonnet Miss Maylie is wearing.
I did purchase a long cravat from a vendor on Etsy. I might try out that style the man on the left, my guess is Mr. Maylie, is wearing.
Lysette Anthoiny played Florence Dombey in a 1983 BBC production of "Dombey and Son" that can be found on YouTube.
One of the things I enjoyed about this lovely chapter was the little interaction between Mr. Brownlow and Mr. Grimwig. Mr. Grimwig reacts to something Rose says about age, and Brownlow says he doesn't mean what he says and Grimwig says he does ... then "Having gone thus far, the two old gentlemen severally took snuff, and afterwards shook hands, according to their invariable custom."I love it when Dickens gives us these "throw-away" character details that help bring the characters to life. It's not just Dickens' variety of characters, but they way he adds these details, that make them memorable to so many of us.
Dickens does, indeed, breath life into every character he writes, and he always seems to know exactly when a lighter tone is needed to keep everything from becoming dark and heavy. I was delighted to see Mr. Brownlow resurface. I had somehow thought he might when Nancy suggested a 'kind gentleman'--that just seemed to describe him so well.
Grimwig is wonderful, pacing up and down the floor and then kissing Rose. Imagine!
I am not underestimating Monks' ability to still cause a great deal of trouble and grief, and I am wondering if any of these characters will recognize him when he is finally seen. But you cannot help feeling much easier for Oliver, with a whole team of good people looking out for his interests now. Think how pleased his poor mother would be!
I am looking forward to Mr Brownlow completing the story of his trip to the Caribbean. His vague hints led me to think he was looking for more information about Oliver’s history and parentage. So much happening in the background.
I love this chapter, because now that Mr. Brownlow and everyone else knows the truth about Munks and the others who have been conspiring against Oliver, they won't be so easily fooled again. I agree with Sara that Monks will likely still cause much trouble, but Oliver has people who believe in him now and they will always give him the benefit of the doubt.
I think Grimwig was the star of this chapter. I love the visual of his grumbling as if he were a ventriloquist! And down deep he does have a heart which is what some people in our discussion believed from the beginning about him. Mr. Brownlow is smart and takes charge in order to plan a strategy to take Monks to his knees! I love that possibility as well, that Monks will have to beg on his knees in order to be forgiven for the trouble he’s caused Oliver. But then that begs another possibility- is Monks worthy of forgiveness? Dickens would definitely consider it.
Dickensians!
Books mentioned in this topic
Oliver Twist (other topics)The Lost Boys of Mr Dickens: How the British Empire turned artful dodgers into child killers (other topics)
Dombey and Son (other topics)
Oliver Twist (other topics)
Sketches by Boz (other topics)
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Charles Dickens (other topics)Charles Dickens (other topics)
Charles Dickens (other topics)
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Steve Harris (other topics)
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Exactly Michael! You did very well to remember that earlier episode. It's one of the reasons Charles Dickens had to borrow copies of his earlier installments, to refresh his memory and make sure everything was consistent. He did not write this like a modern novel, (or even his own later ones) with foreshadowing and clues carefully placed, but had to think "on the hoof" and justify them later!
We need to bear these questions in mind 😊 As I say, Oliver Twist is a surprisingly complex novel when we look closely at the text. We can theorise, but not assume.