Melmoth the Wanderer · Chapter
Chapter XXVIII explained
The Walberg family's extreme poverty leads to desperate tensions and moral crises.
What happens
The Walberg family's extreme poverty leads to desperate tensions and moral crises. Ines forces her daughters to continue their musical studies despite their grandmother's death. Walberg shows jealous greed toward his father's food, and the old man retaliates by stealing from his grandchildren. Everhard brings food but appears increasingly pale. Julia is harassed while buying food, tempted by a cavalier's gold. Walberg reveals a temptation by a mysterious being offering wealth for a condition, which Ines recognizes as a demonic temptation. She fortifies him with religious arguments. Meanwhile, Aliaga is led by a stranger to view a corpse—the man who sought a dangerous secret—and is warned they will meet again.
Themes in this chapter
Suffering and Oppression
The Walberg family endures extreme poverty, hunger, and moral degradation, with Walberg's jealousy and the old man's theft highlighting the dehumanizing effects of oppression.
Temptation and Faith
Walberg is tempted by a mysterious being offering wealth for a condition; Ines counters with religious arguments, emphasizing faith over despair.
Supernatural and the Gothic
The stranger's appearance, the corpse of the man who sought a secret, and the whispered warnings evoke Gothic supernatural elements.
Characters to notice
- Ines
Forces daughters to practice music despite grief and poverty; confronts Walberg's temptation with religious fortitude.
- Walberg
Shows wolfish jealousy over food, snatches from his father, and later reveals a demonic temptation to Ines.
- Everhard
Brings food to the family but appears increasingly pale and diminished.
- Julia
Sent to buy food, her beauty is glimpsed by a cavalier who tempts her with gold; she struggles with the temptation.
- Don Fernan di Aliaga
Led by a stranger to view a corpse; warned of the danger of seeking forbidden secrets; told 'We meet tonight.'
Key passages
“This attention to the ornaments of life, when its actual necessaries are wanted—this sound of music in a house where the murmurs of domestic anxiety are heard every moment—this subservience of talent to necessity, all its generous enthusiasm lost, and only its possible utility remembered or valued—is perhaps the bitterest strife that ever was fought between the opposing claims of our artificial and our natural existence.”
Focusing on artistic refinement while basic needs go unmet—playing music amid constant worry—represents the painful conflict between civilized pretenses and raw survival.
The narrator reflects on the irony of maintaining cultural pursuits in the face of starvation.
“We read of imprisonments, of tortures, and of flames!—We closed the book, and partook of a comfortable meal, and retired to a peaceful bed, triumphing in the thought, while saturated with all the world's good, that if their trials had been ours, we could have sustained those trials as they did. Now, our hour has come—it is an hour sharp and terrible!”
We once read about martyrs' sufferings while enjoying comfort, believing we could endure like them. Now we face our own harsh trial.
Ines contrasts past complacency with present reality, urging Walberg to live up to the faith he taught.