Summary: Chapter 33
Without warning, Rose falls ill with a serious fever.
Mrs. Maylie sends Oliver to mail a letter requesting Losberne’s
assistance. On his return journey, Oliver stumbles against a tall
man wrapped in a cloak. The man curses Oliver, asks what he is doing
there, and then falls violently to the ground, “writhing and foaming.”
Oliver secures help for the man before he returns home and forgets
the incident entirely. Rose’s condition declines rapidly. Losberne
arrives and examines her. He states there is little hope for her
recovery. However, Rose soon draws back from the brink of death
and begins to improve.
Summary: Chapter 34
Giles and Harry Maylie, Mrs. Maylie’s son, arrive to see
Rose. Harry is angry that his mother has not written him sooner.
Mrs. Maylie replies that Rose needs long-lasting love rather than
the whims of a youthful suitor. Mrs. Maylie tells her son that he
must consider the public opinion in his desire to marry Rose for
love. She mentions a “stain” on Rose’s name: although Rose herself
has never committed any crime, public opinion may well convict her
for the misdeeds of her parents. Mrs. Maylie hints that Rose’s social
status may thwart Harry’s ambitions to run for Parliament and that
those thwarted ambitions might eventually destroy his love for Rose.
In the short run, Mrs. Maylie says, he must choose between his prospects
for material gain and his love for Rose. In the long run, however,
there is no choice at all, in Mrs. Maylie’s opinion: the negative judgment
of society is powerful enough to defeat love. Harry declares that
his love for Rose is solid and lasting. While Rose recovers, Oliver
and Harry collect flowers for her room. One day Oliver falls asleep
while reading by a window. He has a nightmare that Fagin and a man
are pointing at him and whispering. Fagin says, “It is he, sure
enough!” Oliver awakes to see Fagin and the stranger he saw when
he mailed the letter peering through the window. They disappear
rapidly as Oliver calls for help.
Summary: Chapter 35
Harry and Giles rush to Oliver’s aid. Upon hearing about
Fagin and the man, they search the fields around the house but find
no trace of them. They circulate a description of Fagin but find
no clues to his whereabouts. Harry declares his love to Rose. Although
she returns his love, she says she cannot marry him owing to the
circumstances of her birth. His station is much higher than hers,
and she does not want to hinder his ambitions. Harry states that
he plans to propose marriage one more time, but that, if she again
refuses, he will not mention it again.
Summary: Chapter 36
Before Harry and Losberne depart, Harry asks that Oliver
secretly write him a letter every two weeks, telling him everything
Oliver and the ladies do and say. From a window, Rose tearfully
watches the coach carry Harry and Losberne away.
Summary: Chapter 37
The narrator tells us that Mr. Bumble has married Mrs.
Corney and become the master of the workhouse. He regrets giving
up his position as beadle, but regrets giving up his bachelorhood
even more. After a morning of bickering with his wife, he stops
in a pub for a drink. A man in a dark cape is sitting there, and
he recognizes Mr. Bumble as the former beadle. He offers Mr. Bumble
money for information about Old Sally, the woman who attended Oliver’s birth.
Mr. Bumble informs him that Old Sally is dead but mentions that
he knows a woman who spoke to the old woman on her deathbed. The
stranger asks that Mr. Bumble bring this woman to see him the following
evening. He gives his name as Monks.
Analysis: Chapters 33–37
The relationship between Harry and Rose illustrates that
although marriage based on love is difficult, Dickens values it
more highly than marriage based on social station. However, Rose
and Mrs. Maylie both believe that marriage based on love is problematic. Rose
refuses to marry Harry for the same reasons that Mrs. Maylie says
she should not. Rose calls herself “a friendless, portionless girl” with
a “blight” upon her name. As a penniless, nameless girl, she says
to Harry that his friends will suspect that she “sordidly yielded to
your first passion and fastened myself . . . on all your hopes and projects.”
In other words, she fears that outsiders will believe that she slept
with Harry outside of wedlock and secured his hand in marriage in
that way. Thus, she demonstrates her awareness of the tendency of
“respectable” society to assume the worst about individuals of low
social standing, a tendency that has almost ruined Oliver’s life
time and again.
