“Stay
another moment,” interposed Rose. . . . “Will you return to this
gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word can save you? What
fascination is it that can take you back, and make you cling to
wickedness and misery?” “When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful
as you are,” replied the girl [Nancy] steadily, “give away your
hearts, love will carry you all lengths—even such as you, who have
home, friends, other admirers, everything, to fill them. When such as
I, who have no certain roof but the coffin-lid, and no friend in
sickness or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts
on any man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through
all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us? Pity us, lady—pity
us for having only one feeling of the woman left and for having
that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride into
a new means of violence and suffering.”
This exchange takes place between Rose
and Nancy in Chapter 40. It is one of the
most emotionally heightened conversations in the novel, and it represents
a sophisticated treatment of the moral and social issues that dominate
the story. Nancy, a prostitute, embodies for Dickens all the degradation
into which poverty can force otherwise good people. Rose, on the
other hand, represents all the purity that comes from good breeding.
Both women embody the feminine compassion that compels them to help
Oliver. That feminine compassion, maternal and sisterly when directed
toward Oliver, is also what binds Nancy to her vice-ridden lover
Sikes. In this passage, Dickens emphasizes the key role that environment
plays in distinguishing vice from virtue: the same loyalty to a
loved one that would be a virtue in Rose is a self-destructive force
for Nancy. Though Nancy is compassionate and intelligent, she deflects
Rose’s attempts to save her from her life of crime, thus proving
that the damage done by a bad upbringing is irrevocable. Yet Nancy’s
decision to return to a life of “vice” is arguably the most noble—if
foolhardy—act in the entire novel. Her love for Sikes and her compassion
for Oliver together compel her to sacrifice her own life. Though
Dickens clearly approves of the second emotion far more than the
first, it is likely that they stem from the same impulse in Nancy’s
character.
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