Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty

Content Warning: This section features discussions of ableism, religious intolerance and bigotry, and emotional abuse.

A theme Dickens returns to frequently in Barnaby Rudge is the impossibility of escaping the past—this is especially important as Barnaby Rudge is a historical novel. The novel is full of repeating stories—fathers wanting sons to follow in their footsteps; families and groups of people hating one another because of past disagreements—framed by one central story.

Chapter 33 jumps forward in the narrative exactly five years to the day from the beginning of the novel, which was also 22 years after Rueben Haredale’s murder. There are many parallels between Chapters 1 and 33, as if little has changed at the Maypole in the five years since March 19th, 1775, and it is stuck in the past. Though the framing story of the murder of Rueben Haredale has very little to do with the actual plot of the novel, it encapsulates the smaller narratives and ties them all together. The first part of Barnaby Rudge begins exactly 22 years after the murder, and the second part exactly five years after that.

Solomon Daisy’s tradition of repeating the story is interrupted both times by the stranger, whom Daisy believes to be a ghost in the 1780 chapters.