# Chapter 45 explained — Barnaby Rudge > Chapter companion for Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens. ## What happens Five years after the riots, Barnaby and his mother live in hiding under assumed names in a quiet country town. Barnaby, still mentally childlike, spends his days wandering with dogs and his raven Grip, while his mother works tirelessly. A blind man named Stagg arrives, revealing he knows their secret and has been sent by an unnamed friend to extort money from the widow, threatening to expose them if she refuses. He demands twenty pounds, leaving her to consider his proposal as he waits outside. ## Themes in this chapter ### Innocence and Corruption Barnaby's innocent simplicity contrasts with Stagg's manipulative corruption. ### Manipulation and Exploitation Stagg exploits the widow's fear and love for her son to extort money. ## Character check-ins ### Barnaby Rudge Living in hiding with his mother, still childlike and wandering with dogs and Grip. ### Mrs. Rudge The widow, living in quiet poverty, devoted to her son, now threatened by Stagg's blackmail. ### Grip Barnaby's constant companion on his rambles, carried in a basket. ### The Blind Man Reveals himself as Stagg, a crafty and menacing figure who blackmails the widow. ## Key lines > While the worst passions of the worst men were thus working in the dark, and the mantle of religion, assumed to cover the ugliest deformities, threatened to become the shroud of all that was good and peaceful in society, a circumstance occurred which once more altered the position of two persons from whom this history has long been separated, and to whom it must now return. As evil men hid their wickedness behind religion, a new event changed the lives of two people we haven't seen in a while. _Sets the tone for the chapter's return to Barnaby and his mother._ > To labour in peace, and devote her labour and her life to her poor son, was all the widow sought. If happiness can be said at any time to be the lot of one on whom a secret sorrow preys, she was happy now. The widow only wanted to work quietly and care for her son, and despite her hidden grief, she found contentment. _Highlights Mrs. Rudge's devotion and fragile peace._ > There are various degrees and kinds of blindness, widow. There is the connubial blindness, ma'am, which perhaps you may have observed in the course of your own experience, and which is a kind of wilful and self-bandaging blindness. The blind man jokes about different types of blindness, including the willful ignorance in marriage. _Stagg's speech reveals his cunning and mockery._ > The only way of doing this, is by making up a little purse now and then for my friend; and that's what I advise. He bears you no malice that I know of, ma'am: so little, that although you have treated him harshly more than once, and driven him, I may say, out of doors, he has that regard for you that I believe even if you disappointed him now, he would consent to take charge of your son, and to make a man of him. Stagg suggests that the widow pay his friend regularly to avoid trouble, and even offers to take Barnaby off her hands. _The blackmail threat is made explicit._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/barnaby_rudge_se/chapters/chapter-45 - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/barnaby_rudge_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/barnaby_rudge_se/chapters