It may help to place the chapter in its proper context before offering criticism. It follows a dramatic passage as another villain, Bill Sykes, is chased by an inflamed, bloodthirsty crowd of Londoners, and this scene ends with his destruction. Therefore, Chapter 49 seems to act as a welcome tonal shift, filled with conversation and revelation, rather than action and intense description.

In the scene, Brownlow acts as a proxy detective, as the texts sows seeds for the mystery genre that began to grow more steadily following Collins’ The Woman in White, and which boomed in popularity at the end of the 18th Century. While the audience has already been made privy to Monks and Oliver’s brotherly connection, here Brownlow forces Monks to confess a background narrative of Oliver Twist that has previously only been hinted at with small references and allusions. Dickens has instead dedicated most of his prose to letting us enjoy the brilliant characterisation of his fabulously named figures. The fatherly character of Brownlow adds in many of the plot details himself, revealing how he was an intensely close friend of Oliver and Monks’ father.

But all of this is gives a sour taste, as another figure has also been playing detective during the course of the book — the reader. As the reader fits the pieces of Oliver’s puzzle together, inspecting the mysterious circumstances of Rose Maylie’s heritage, Monks’ identity and Oliver’s birth, we construct in our mind the possible narrative outcomes in our heads without even trying. But offstage, Brownlow has “within the last fornight … learnt it all”. With little prior set-up, Brownlow storms into the picture and sets everything out in a pandering fashion, and so the game is over too quickly for the reader.

“You’re tale is of the longest” — Monks, p. 325

It’s important that much of the mystery — everything with Monks, and the quarrel over the father’s money — works well and makes sense, but the problem lies in how all is revealed. Brownlow, the kindly gentleman who takes Oliver in, is the first member of society that Oliver encounters upon arriving in London besides the member’s of Fagin’s gang, as he becomes a random target of the Artful’s thieving. Some critics posit that Brownlow gets his name from the director of the Foundling Hospital which took in disadvantaged children, and had been visited by Dickens himself¹. However, the character’s kindness, and his strong admiration for books as he urges Oliver to become a writer, hints that he is an authorial mirror (perhaps using the word “stand-in” is too much) for Dickens himself. So, to reveal that this character who took in Oliver is so closely, and coincidentally, related to him, feels like what tvtropes.org lovingly refers to as an “Ass Pull”, a “less than graceful narrative development”. It’s important to note that this precedes the reveal that Rose Maylie, who also takes Oliver in on a separate occasion, is his aunt. Brownlow, a previously minor character who has been absent for much of the novel, and has many similarities to Dickens himself, swoops in at the last minute to resolve everything with little struggle, and that’s just not too fun.

There’s a reason that so many adaptations cut out the Monk’s subplot, and not because the mystery is bad, but because the resolution is too messy. A common criticism of the book since its creation has focused on the absence of its title character for the second half of the text, as he becomes “an idle spectator” in Mrs Maylie’s care, after making two crucial choices of running away from the Sowerberry’s and his attempt to prevent Sikes’ robbery². Some adaptations, such as the 2005 film version, place Oliver in a more heroic role, as he becomes a more crucial player in solving his own mystery. However, Oliver’s more passive role has been argued to have positive consequences³, as he stands in as an emblem of the burden of the poor. Perhaps another character would be more suitable in the detective role, such as Rose or Mr Losberne. However, in its initial, unedited and unadapted form, Oliver Twist’s ending is more of a tangle.

References:

[1] Rachel Bowlby, A Child of One’s Own: Parental Stories, Oxford University Press, 2013, p.99.

[2] Katharyn Crabbe, “Lean’s ‘Oliver Twist’: Novel to Film.” Film Criticism, vol. 2, no. 1, Allegheny College, 1977, p.47.

[3] Alexander Chavers, Why Oliver Twist works as a passive protagonist, Literally Literary, 2018.