Oliver Twist Chapter 27 Summary

Summary

The chapter opens in the workhouse parsonage with Mr. Bumble anxiously awaiting Mrs. Corney’s return and fussing over household details. Finding a small locked box that jingles like coin, he grandly decides "I'll do it!" but is interrupted by Mrs. Corney’s breathless entrance. She is agitated and faint; Bumble comforts her with a peppermint drink, and the two lapse into mutual flirtation. He flatters her, speaks of the infirm master Mr. Slout’s imminent death and the vacancy it will create, and urges a speedy marriage so they might join households and secure improved circumstances. Mrs. Corney yields, embraces him, and they solemnize their engagement with another cup of peppermint, while Mr. Bumble boasts of his firm resolve to protect her against any impropriety from paupers.

After the engagement, Bumble pauses in the male paupers' ward to admonish them and then walks to the undertaker Sowerberry's shop. The undertaker and his wife are out; Noah Claypole is half-drunk and lounging while Charlotte (Sowerberry's assistant) opens oysters for supper. Mr. Bumble bursts in upon a moment of levity between Noah and Charlotte—Noah offers to kiss her—and the beadle explodes in moral indignation. He berates both Noah and Charlotte, orders Charlotte downstairs, commands Noah to behave and to ensure the funeral arrangements for an "old woman’s shell" be sent after breakfast, and storms out, declaiming on the ruinous morals of the lower orders. The chapter ends by turning the reader back to the fate of Oliver, indicating a shift away from Bumble’s domestic scheming toward inquiries about the boy left in the ditch.

Key events

1. Mr. Bumble inspects Mrs. Corney’s drawers and finds a padlocked box
2. Mrs. Corney returns faint and is soothed with peppermint; Bumble courts her
3. They discuss Mr. Slout’s impending death and agree to marry
4. They ratify the engagement with another cup of peppermint
5. Bumble visits Sowerberry’s undertaker shop and catches Noah and Charlotte
6. Bumble angrily rebukes them and commands funeral arrangements

Analysis

This chapter develops Mr. Bumble’s character beyond officiousness into comic self-regard, vanity, and opportunism. His courtship of Mrs. Corney (presented as vulnerable and susceptible) reveals how marriage is portrayed as a means of social and economic advancement within the parish system: Bumble imagines promotion and household consolidation when Mr. Slout dies. The scene satirizes petty ambition and clerical/parochial power—Bumble’s grandiloquent phrasing and inflated dignity contrast with the triviality and smallness of his desires. The private domestic intimacy (the peppermint cups, the kiss on the nose) is played for comic effect but also exposes moral hypocrisy: Bumble condemns pauper impropriety while pursuing self-interested bonds.

The second scene at Sowerberry’s shows Dickens’s technique of abrupt shifts in focus to build a tapestry of local life and social critique. The juxtaposition of Bumble’s self-important virtue with the coarse, convivial scene of Noah and Charlotte emphasizes double standards in policing behavior. The chapter uses dialogue-heavy scenes and physical gestures (arm-entwining, the kiss, Bumble’s theatrical threats) as symbols of performative authority and sexual possessiveness. The narrator’s ironic commentary—promising a dissertation on beadles’ divine right—heightens satire and signals that Bumble’s rise may be hollow, while the final pivot to Oliver returns the larger plot to its central concern.

Important quotes

“The sin and wickedness of the lower orders in this porochial district is frightful! If Parliament don’t take their abominable courses under consideration, this country’s ruined, and the character of the peasantry gone for ever!”

Mr. BumbleBumble storms out of Sowerberry’s, railing at the supposed moral decline of the poor after chastising Noah and Charlotte.

Characters in Chapter 27

• Mr. Bumble
• Mrs. Bumble
• Mr. Slout
• Mr. Sowerberry
• Mrs. Sowerberry
• Noah Claypole
• Charlotte
• Oliver Twist
• Toby Crackit