David Copperfield Charles Dickens

This novel's main theme arises from the fact that it is a bildungsroman, a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, which is common in Dickens's novels,[63] and in which character change is extremely important.[64][65] The changes involve David leaving past selves behind on the way to maturity. Other important themes relate especially to Dickens's social concerns, and his desire for reform. This includes the plight of so-called "fallen women", and prostitutes, as well as the attitude of middle-class society to these women; the status of women in marriage; the rigid class structure; the prison system; educational standards, and emigration to the colonies of what was becoming the British Empire. The latter was a way for individuals to escape some of the rigidity of British society and start anew. Some of these subjects are directly satirized, while others are worked into the novel in more complex ways by Dickens.

Bildungsroman

Different names

Copperfield's path to maturity is marked by the different names assigned to him: his mother calls him "Davy"; Murdstone calls him as "Brooks of Sheffield"; for Peggotty's family, he is "Mas'r Davy"; en route to boarding school from Yarmouth, he appears as "Master Murdstone"; at Murdstone and Grinby, he is known as "Master Copperfield"; Mr Micawber is content with "Copperfield"; for Steerforth he is "Daisy"; he becomes "Mister Copperfield" with Uriah Heep; and "Trotwood", soon shortened to "Trot" for Aunt Betsey; Mrs Crupp deforms his name into "Mr Copperfull"; and for Dora he is "Doady".[66] While striving to earn his real name once and for all, this plethora of names reflects the fluidity of Copperfield's personal and social relationships, and obscure his real identity. It is by writing his own story, and giving him his name in the title, that Copperfield can finally assert who he is.[66]

A series of lives

David's life can be seen as a series of lives, each one in radical disjunction from what follows, writes Paul Davis.[67] The young boy in the warehouse differs from Blunderstone Rookery's child, or Salem House student, and overall David strives to keep these parts of himself disconnected from each other. For example, in Chapter 17, while attending Canterbury School, he met Mr Micawber at Uriah Heep's, and a sudden terror gripped him that Heep could connect him, such as he is today, and the abandoned child who lodged with the Micawber family in London.[67]

So many mutations indicate the name changes, which are sometimes received with relief: "Trotwood Copperfield", when he finds refuge in Dover at his Aunt Betsey's house, so the narrator writes, "Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new about me." Then, he realised "that a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life" and "that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby's".[68]

There is a process of forgetfulness, a survival strategy developed by memory, which poses a major challenge to the narrator; his art, in fact, depends on the ultimate reconciliation of differences in order to free and preserve the unified identity of his being a man.

"Will I be the hero of my own life?"

David opens his story with a question: Will I be the hero of my own life? This means that he does not know where his approach will lead him, that writing itself will be the test. As Paul Davis puts it, "In this Victorian quest narrative, the pen might be lighter than the sword, and the reader will be left to judge those qualities of the man and the writer that constitute heroism.[17]

However, question implies an affirmation: it is Copperfield, and no one else, who will determine his life, the future is delusory, since the games are already played, the life has been lived, with the novel being only the story. Copperfield is not always the hero of his life, and not always the hero of his story, as some characters have a stronger role than him,[69] Besides Steerforth, Heep, Micawber, for example, he often appears passive and lightweight. Hence, concludes Paul Davis, the need to read his life differently; it is more by refraction through other characters that the reader has a true idea of the "hero" of the story. What do these three men reveal to him, and also to Dora, whom he marries?[67] Another possible yardstick is a comparison with the other two "writers" of the novel, Dr Strong and Mr Dick. The dictionary of Strong will never be completed and, as a story of a life, will end with the death of its author. As for Mr Dick, his autobiographical project constantly raises the question of whether he can transcend the incoherence and indecision of his subject-narrator. Will he be able to take the reins, provide a beginning, a middle, an end? Will he succeed in unifying the whole, in overcoming the trauma of the past, his obsession with the decapitated royal head, so as to make sense of the present and find a direction for the future? According to Paul Davis, only Copperfield succeeds in constructing a whole of his life, including suffering and failure, as well as successes, and that is "one measure of his heroism as a writer".[67]

The weight of the past

The past "speaks" especially to David, "a child of close observation" (chapter 2); the title of this chapter is: "I observe",[70] and as an adult he is endowed with a remarkable memory.[71] So much so that the story of his childhood is realised so concretely that the narrator, like the reader, sometimes forgets that it is a lived past and not a present that is given to see. The past tense verb is often the preterite for the narrative, and the sentences are often short independent propositions, each one stating a fact. Admittedly, the adult narrator intervenes to qualify or provide an explanation, without, however, taking precedence over the child's vision. And sometimes, the story is prolonged by a reflection on the functioning of the memory. So, again in chapter 2, the second and third paragraphs comment on the first memory of the two beings surrounding David, his mother, and Peggotty:

I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart, dwarfed to my sight by stooping or kneeling on the floor, and I going unsteadily from the one to the other. I have an impression on my mind, which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of the touch of Peggotty's forefinger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its being roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutmeg-grater. This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go further back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.[70]

David thus succeeds, as George Orwell puts it, in standing "both inside and outside a child's mind",[17] a particularly important double vision effect in the first chapters. The perspective of the child is combined with that of the adult narrator who knows that innocence will be violated and the feeling of security broken. Thus, even before the intrusion of Mr Murdstone as step-father or Clara's death, the boy feels "intimations of mortality".[17] In the second chapter for example, when David spends a day with Mr Murdstone, during the first episode of "Brooks of Sheffield"[N 7][72][73] in which, first blow to his confidence, he realizes little by little that Mr Murdstone and his comrade Quinion are mocking him badly:

'That's Davy,' returned Mr Murdstone. 'Davy who?' said the gentleman. 'Jones?' 'Copperfield' said Mr Murdstone. 'What! Bewitching Mrs Copperfield's incumbrance?' cried the gentleman. 'The pretty little widow?' 'Quinion,' said Mr Murdstone, 'take care, if you please. Somebody's sharp.' 'Who is?' asked the gentleman laughing. I looked up quickly, being curious to know. 'Only Brooks of Sheffield', said Mr Murdstone. I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield, for, at first, I really thought it was I.

There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he was mentioned, and Mr Murdstone was a good deal amused also.[74]

The final blow, brutal and irremediable this time, is the vision, in chapter 9, of his own reflection in his little dead brother lying on the breast of his mother: "The mother who lay in the grave was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms was myself, as I had once been, hushed forever on her bosom".[75]

A series of male models for David

David Copperfield is a posthumous child, that is, he was born after his father died.[76] From birth, his aunt is the authority who stands in for the deceased father, and she decides Copperfield's identity by abandoning him because he is not female. His first years are spent with women, two Claras,[N 8] his mother and Peggotty, which, according to Paul Davis, "undermines his sense of masculinity".[17] Hence a sensitivity that the same critic calls "feminine", made-up of a lack of confidence, naive innocence and anxiety, like that of his mother, who was herself an orphan. Steerforth is not mistaken, when from the outset he calls Copperfield "Daisy"–a flower of spring, symbol of innocent youth. To forge an identity as a man and learn how to survive in a world governed by masculine values, instinctively, he looks for a father figure who can replace that of the father he did not have.

Several male models will successively offer themselves to him: the adults Mr Murdstone, Mr Micawber and Uriah Heep, his comrades Steerforth and Traddles.

Mr Murdstone

Mr Murdstone darkens Copperfield's life instead of enlightening him, because the principle of firmness which he champions, absolute novelty for the initial family unit, if he instills order and discipline, kills spontaneity and love. The resistance that Copperfield offers him is symbolic: opposing a usurper without effective legitimacy, he fails to protect his mother but escapes the straitjacket and achieves his independence. Mr Murdstone thus represents the anti-father, double negative of the one of which David was deprived, model a contrario of what it is not necessary to be.

Mr Micawber

The second surrogate father is just as ineffective, although of a diametrically opposed personality: it is Mr Micawber who, for his part, lacks firmness to the point of sinking into irresponsibility. Overflowing with imagination and love, in every way faithful and devoted, inveterate optimist, he eventually becomes, in a way, the child of David who helps him to alleviate his financial difficulties. The roles are reversed and, by the absurdity, David is forced to act as a man and to exercise adult responsibilities towards him. However, the Micawbers are not lacking in charm, the round Wilkins, of course, but also his dry wife, whose music helps her to live. Mrs Micawber has, since childhood, two songs in her repertoire, the Scottish "The dashing white sergeant"[77] and the American lament "The little Tafflin with the Silken Sash",[78] whose attraction has decided her husband to "win that woman or perish in the attempt"[79] In addition to the melodies that soothe and embellish, the words of the second, with her dream "Should e'er the fortune be my lot to be made a wealthy bride!" and her aphorism "Like attracts like" have become emblematic of the couple, one is the opposite of reality and the other the very definition of its harmony.[80]

Uriah Heep

New avatar of this quest, Uriah Heep is "a kind of negative mirror to David".[67] Heep is clever at enlarging the pathos of his humble origins, for example, which ability he exploits shamelessly to attract sympathy and mask an unscrupulous ambition; while David, on the other hand, tends to suppress his modest past and camouflage his social ambitions under a veneer of worldly mistrust, prompting Paul Davis to conclude that, just as Mr Murdstone is adept at firmness, Heep, in addition to being a rascal, lacks the so-called feminine qualities of sensitivity which David does not lose.[67]

Steerforth

For David, Steerforth represents all that Heep is not: born a gentleman, with no stated ambition or defined life plan, he has a natural presence and charisma that immediately give him scope and power. However, his failure as a model is announced well before the episode at Yarmouth where he seizes, like a thief, Little Emily before causing her loss in Italy. He already shows himself as he is, brutal, condescending, selfish and sufficient, towards Rosa Dartle, bruised by him for life, and Mr Mell who undergoes the assaults of his cruelty. The paradox is that even as he gauges his infamy, David remains from start to finish dazzled by Steerforth's aristocratic ascendancy, even as he contemplates him drowning on Yarmouth Beach, "lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him at school".[81]

Traddles

Now consider Traddles, the anti-Steerforth, the same age as the hero, not very brilliant at school, but wise enough to avoid the manipulations to which David succumbs. His attraction for moderation and reserve assures him the strength of character that David struggles to forge. Neither rich nor poor, he must also make a place for himself in the world, at which he succeeds by putting love and patience at the center of his priorities, the love that tempers the ambition and the patience that moderates the passion. His ideal is to achieve justice in his actions, which he ends up implementing in his profession practically. In the end, Traddles, in his supreme modesty, represents the best male model available to David.[17]

There are others, Daniel Peggotty for example, all love and dedication, who goes in search of his lost niece and persists in mountains and valleys, beyond the seas and continents, to find her trace. Mr Peggotty is the anti-Murdstone par excellence, but his influence is rather marginal on David, as his absolute excellence, like the maternal perfection embodied by his sister Peggotty, makes him a character type more than an individual to refer to. There is also the carter Barkis, original, laconic and not without defects, but a man of heart. He too plays a role in the personal history of the hero, but in a fashion too episodic to be significant, especially since he dies well before the end of the story.

The hard path to the right balance

It is true that David's personal story makes it more difficult for him to access the kind of equilibrium that Traddles presents, because it seems destined, according to Paul Davis, to reproduce the errors committed by his parents.[67] So, without knowing it, he looks a lot like his late father, also named David, who, according to Aunt Betsey, had eyes only for the flower-women, and, as such, he finds himself as irresistibly attracted to Dora whose delicate and charming femininity, the sweet frivolity too, recall those of his diaphanous mother. The chapters describing their loves are among the best in the novel[67] because Dickens manages to capture the painful ambivalence of David, both passionately infatuated with the irresistible young woman, to whom we can only pass and forgive everything, and frustrated by his weak character and his absolute ignorance of any discipline. For love, the supreme illusion of youth, he tries to change it, to "form her mind", which leads him to recognize that "firmness" can to be a virtue which, ultimately, he needs. However, finding himself in a community of thought, even distantly, with his hateful and cruel stepfather whom he holds responsible for the death of his mother and a good deal of his own misfortunes, it was a troubling discovery.[17]

It is his aunt Betsey who, by her character, represents the struggle to find the right balance between firmness and gentleness, rationality and empathy. Life forced Betsey Trotwood to assume the role she did not want, that of a father, and as such she became, but in her own way, adept at steadfastness and discipline. From an initially culpable intransigence, which led her to abandon the newborn by denouncing the incompetence of the parents not even capable of producing a girl, she finds herself gradually tempered by circumstances and powerfully helped by the "madness" of her protege, Mr Dick. He, between two flights of kites that carry away the fragments of his personal history, and without his knowing it, plays a moderating role, inflecting the rationality of his protector by his own irrationality, and his cookie-cutter judgments by considerations of seeming absurdity, but which, taken literally, prove to be innate wisdom. In truth, Aunt Betsey, despite her stiffness and bravado, does not dominate her destiny; she may say she can do it, yet she cannot get David to be a girl, or escape the machinations of Uriah Heep any more than the money demands of her mysterious husband. She also fails, in spite of her lucidity, her clear understanding, of the love blindness of her nephew, to prevent him from marrying Dora and in a parallel way, to reconcile the Strongs. In fact, in supreme irony, it is once again Mr Dick who compensates for his inadequacies, succeeding with intuition and instinctive understanding of things, to direct Mr Micawber to save Betsey from the clutches of Heep and also to dispel the misunderstandings of Dr Strong and his wife Annie.[67]

As often in Dickens where a satellite of the main character reproduces the course in parallel, the story of the Strong couple develops in counterpoint that of David and Dora. While Dora is in agony, David, himself obsessed with his role as a husband, observes the Strongs who are busy unraveling their marital distress. Two statements made by Annie Strong impressed him: in the first, she told him why she rejected Jack Maldon and thanked her husband for saving her "from the first impulse of an undisciplined heart".[82] The second was like a flash of revelation: "There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose".[82] At the end of chapter 45, almost entirely devoted to the epilogue of this affair, David meditates on these words which he repeats several times and whose relevance, applied to his own case, is imposed on him. He concludes that in all things, discipline tempered by kindness and kindness is necessary for the equilibrium of a successful life. Mr Murdstone preached firmness; in that, he was not wrong. Where he cruelly failed was that he matched it with selfish brutality instead of making it effective by the love of others.[7]

The happiness of maturity with Agnes

It is because David has taken stock of his values and accepted the painful memories of Dora's death, that he is finally ready to go beyond his emotional blindness and recognize his love for Agnes Wickfield, the one he already has called the "true heroine" of the novel to which he gives his name. Paul Davis writes that Agnes is surrounded by an aura of sanctity worthy of a stained glass window, that she is more a consciousness or an ideal than a person, that, certainly, she brings the loving discipline and responsibility of which the hero needs, but lacks the charm and human qualities that made Dora so attractive.[7] Adrienne E Gavin, nuancing the point, writes that she is neither more nor less caricature than other young women in the hero's life: if Emily is a stereotype of the "lost woman" and Dora of "woman-child", Agnes is that of "ideal Victorian woman", which necessarily limits, for her as for the others, the possibilities of evolution, the only change available from a loving and devoted daughter to a loving and devoted wife.[83]

That said, the writer David, now David Copperfield, realised the vow expressed to Agnes (when he was newly in love with Dora, in Chapter 35. Depression): "If I had a conjurer's cap, there is no one I should have wished but for you".[84] At the end of his story, he realizes that the conjurer's cap is on his head, that he can draw his attention to the people he loves and trusts. Thus, David Copperfield is the story of a journey through life and through oneself, but also, by the grace of the writer, the recreation of the tenuous thread uniting the child and the adult, the past and the present, in what Georges Gusdorf calls "fidelity to the person".[85] or, as Robert Ferrieux said,[86]

Social questions

Admittedly, it is not the primary interest of David Copperfield that remains above all the story of a life told by the very one who lived it, but the novel is imbued with a dominant ideology, that of the middle class, advocating moral constancy, hard work, separate spheres for men and women, and, in general, the art of knowing one's place, indeed staying in that place. Further, some social problems and repeated abuses being topical, Dickens took the opportunity to expose them in his own way in his fiction, and Trevor Blount, in his introduction to the 1966 edition Penguin Classics, reissued in 1985, devotes several pages to this topic.[87]

However, Gareth Cordery shows that behind the display of Victorian values, often hides a watermarked discourse that tends to question, test, and even subvert them.[57] There are therefore two possible readings, the one that remains on the surface and another that questions below this surface, the implicit questions.

Among the social issues that David Copperfield is concerned with, are prostitution, the prison system, education, as well as society's treatment of the insane.

Dickens's views on education are reflected in the contrast he makes between the harsh treatment that David receives at the hands of Creakle at Salem House and Dr Strong's school where the methods used inculcate honour and self–reliance in its pupils.

Through the character of "the amiable, innocent, and wise fool" Mr Dick, Dickens's "advocacy in the humane treatment of the insane" can be seen.[88] Mr Dick's brother

didn't like to have him visible about his house, and sent him away to some private asylum-place: though he had been left to his particular care by their deceased father, who thought him almost a natural. And a wise man he must have been to think so! Mad himself, no doubt.

So Betsy Trotwood, continuing Mr Dick's story in Chapter 14, stepped in to suggest that Mr Dick should be given "his little income, and come and live with" her: "I am ready to take care of him, and shall not ill-treat him as some people (besides the asylum-folks) have done."

Victorian child exploitation

The employment of young children in factories and mines under harsh conditions in the early Victorian era disturbed many. There was a series of Parliamentary enquiries into the working conditions of children, and these "reports shocked writers Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Charles Dickens."[11] Dickens describes children working in factories or other workplaces in several novels, notably in Oliver Twist, and in David Copperfield. Young David works in a factory for a while after his mother dies and his stepfather showed no interest in him. Such depictions contributed to the call for legislative reform.[11]

Prison discipline

Dickens satirises contemporary ideas about how prisoners should be treated in Chapter 61, 'I am Shown Two Interesting Penitents'. In this chapter, published in November 1850, David along with Traddles is shown around a large well-built new prison, modelled on Pentonville prison (built in 1842), where a new, supposedly more humane, system of incarceration is in operation, under the management of David's former headmaster Creakle.[89] A believer in firmness, Dickens denounced comically the system of isolating prisoners in separate cells, the "separate system", and giving them healthy and pleasant food.[N 9] His satire appeals directly to the public, already warned by the long controversy over the prison discipline in the press.[90] Mr Creakle is very proud of this new system, but his enthusiasm is immediately undermined by the reminder of his former ferocity as a school principal. In the prison David and Traddles encounter 'model prisoners' 27 and 28, who they discover are Uriah Heep and Mr Littimer. Heep is seen reading a hymn book and Littimer also "walked forth, reading a good book": both have managed to convince the naïve Creakle, and his fellow magistrates, that they have seen the error of their ways. Both are questioned about the quality of the food and Creakle promises improvements.[91]

Dickens's ideas in this chapter were in line with Carlyle, whose pamphlet, "Model Prisons", also denounced Pentonville Prison, was published in the spring of 1850.[89] Indeed, Dickens had published anonymously, a month after Carlyle's pamphlet on the same subject, "Pet Prisonners".[92]

Emigration to Australia

Dickens's exploration of the subject of emigration in the novel has been criticised, initially by John Forster and later by G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton accused Dickens of presenting emigration in an excessively optimistic light, arguing that Dickens believed that by sending a boatload of people overseas their 'souls' can be changed, while ignoring the fact that poor people like Peggotty have seen their home stained or, like Emily, their honour tarnished. Micawber has been broken by the English social system, his journey to the antipodes is paid for by a paragon of the Victorian bourgeoisie, Betsey Trotwood[93] and he is supposed to regain control of his destiny once he has arrived in Australia.[94] Trevor Blount points out that the word 'soul' has a different meaning for Dickens than Chesterton. Dickens cares about material and psychological happiness, and is convinced that physical well-being is a comfort for life's wounds.

Dickens sent his characters to America in Nicholas Nickleby and Martin Chuzzlewit, but he has the Peggotty and Micawber families emigrate to Australia. This approach was part of the official policy of the 1840s, focusing on Australia as a land of welcome. It was at this time necessary to stimulate interest in the new colony and propagandists arrived in England in particular John Dunmore Lang and Caroline Chisholm from Australia. Dickens was only following this movement and, in any case, had faith in family colonisation. Moreover, the idea that redemption could be achieved by such a new start in a person's life was a preoccupation of the author, and he saw here subject matter to charm his readers.[95]

From the point of view of the novel's inner logic, in order for Copperfield to complete his psychological maturation and exist independently, Dickens must expel his surrogate fathers, including Peggotty and Micawber, and emigration is an easy way to remove them.[7]

Visions for society

The episode in the prison, according to novelist Angus Wilson, is more than a piece of journalism;[96] it represents Dickens's vision of the society in which he lives. The same can be said of the episodes concerning prostitution and emigration, which illuminate the limits of Copperfield's moral universe and Dickens's own uncertainties.[97] That everything is put in order in Australia, that Martha marries a man from the bush, that Emily, in the strong arms of Dan Peggotty, becomes a lady of good works, that Micawber, who had been congenitally insolvent, suddenly acquires the management skills and becomes prosperous in dispensing justice. All these conversions are somewhat 'ironic',[98] and tend to undermine the hypothesis of 'a Dickens believing in the miracle of the antipodes', which Jane Rogers considers in her analysis of the 'fallen woman' as a plot device to gain the sympathy of Dickens's readers for Emily.[99]

The middle-class ideology

John Forster, Dickens's early biographer, praises the bourgeois or middle-class values and ideology found in David Copperfield.[100] Like him the Victorian reading public shared Copperfield's complacent views, expressed with the assurance of success that is his, at the end, as a recognized writer who is happy in marriage and safe from need.

Gateth Cordery takes a close look at class consciousness. According to him, Copperfield's relationship with aristocrat Steerforth and the humble Uriah Heep is "crucial".[57] From the beginning, Copperfield ranks as and is considered by his friends among the good people. The Peggotty family, in Chapter 3, treat him with respect, "as a visitor of distinction"; even at Murdstone and Grinby, his behaviour and clothes earned him the title of "the little gentleman". When he reached adulthood, he naturally enjoyed Steerforth's disdain for Ham as a simple "joke about the poor". So he is predisposed to succumb, by what he calls in chapter 7 an "inborn power of attraction", to the charm instinctively lent to beautiful people, about which David said "a kind of enchantment ... to which it was a natural weakness to yield." From start to finish, David remains fascinated by Steerforth, so he aspires inwardly to his social status.[101]

In parallel there is a contempt of the upstart, Heep, hatred of the same nature as Copperfield's senseless adoration for Steerforth, but inverted. That "'umble" Heep goes from a lowly clerk to an associate at Wickfield's, to claiming to win the hand of Agnes, daughter of his boss, is intolerable to David, though it is very similar to his own efforts to go from shorthand clerk to literary fame, with Dora Spenlow, the daughter of his employer.[102] Heep's innuendo that Copperfield is no better than him feeds on the disdain in which he holds Heep as of right: "Copperfield, you've always been an upstart",[103] an honesty of speech, comments Cordery, of which Copperfield himself is incapable.[102]

Marriage

Another concern of Dickens is the institution of marriage and in particular, the unenviable place occupied by women. Whether at the home of Wickfield, Strong, or under the Peggotty boat, women are vulnerable to predators or intruders like Uriah Heep, Jack Maldon, James Steerforth; Murdstone's firmness prevails up to the death of two wives; with David and Dora complete incompetence reigns; and at the Micawber household, love and chaos go hand in hand; while Aunt Betsey is subjected to blackmail by her mysterious husband. Dickens, according to Gareth Cordery, clearly attacks the official status of marriage, which perpetuated an inequality between the sexes, an injustice that does not end with the separation of couples.[97]

The mid-Victorian era saw a change in gender roles for men and women, in part forced by the factories and separation of work and home, which made stereotypes of the woman at home and the man working away from home.[104] Values, like the imperative need for women to marry and to be that ideal described as The Angel in the House (manages the home without aid and is always calm) are "interrogated, tested and even subverted",[105] for example by having one mother-figure be the character Betsey Trotwood, who is not a mother.[106] When seeming to describe a stereotypical image in particularly the female characters, the story "does so in a way that reflects the fault-lines of the image."[107]

Anne Brontë in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) explores this iniquity in the status of the character Helen Graham, separated from her alcoholic husband. Dickens's understanding of the burden on women in marriage in this novel contrasts with his treatment of his own wife Catherine, whom he expected to be an Angel in the House.[107]

The fallen woman

Martha Endell and Emily Peggotty, the two friends in Yarmouth who work at the undertaker's house, reflect Dickens's commitment to "save" so-called fallen women. Dickens was co-founder with Angela Burdett-Coutts of Urania Cottage, a home for young women who had "turned to a life of immorality", including theft and prostitution.[108] On the eve of her wedding to her cousin and fiancé, Ham, Emily abandons him for Steerforth. After Steerforth deserts her, she doesn't go back home, because she has disgraced herself and her family. Her uncle, Mr Peggotty, finds her in London on the brink of being forced into prostitution. So that she may have a fresh start away from her now degraded reputation, she and her uncle emigrate to Australia. Martha has been a prostitute and contemplated suicide but towards the end of the novel, she redeems herself by helping Daniel Peggotty find his niece after she returns to London. She goes with Emily to start a new life in Australia. There, she marries and lives happily.

Their emigration to Australia, in the wake of that of Micawber, Daniel Peggotty, and Mr Mell, emphasizes Dickens's belief that social and moral redemption can be achieved in a distant place, where someone may create a new and healthy life.[109] However, despite their families' forgiveness, they remain "tainted" and their expulsion from England is symbolic of their status: it is only at the other end of the world that these "social outcasts" can be reinstated. Morally, Dickens here conforms to the dominant middle-class opinion.

The exception of Rosa Dartle

John O. Jordan devotes two pages to this woman, also "lost", though never having sinned.[110] The sanctification of the Victorian home, he says, depends on the opposition between two stereotypes, the "angel" and the "whore". Dickens denounced this restrictive dichotomy by portraying women "in between". Such is Rosa Dartle, passionate being, with the inextinguishable resentment of having been betrayed by Steerforth, a wound that is symbolised by the vibrant scar on her lip. Never does she allow herself to be assimilated by the dominant morality, refusing tooth and nail to put on the habit of the ideal woman. Avenger to the end, she wants the death of Little Emily, both the new conquest and victim of the same predator, and has only contempt for the efforts of David to minimize the scope of his words. As virtuous as anyone else, she claims, especially that Emily, she does not recognize any ideal family, each being molded in the manner of its social class, nor any affiliation as a woman: she is Rosa Dartle, in herself.[111]

David's vision, on the other hand, is marked by class consciousness: for him, Rosa, emaciated and ardent at the same time, as if there were incompatibility (chapter 20), is a being apart, half human, half animal, like the lynx, with its inquisitive forehead, always on the look out (chapter 29), which consumes an inner fire reflected in the gaunt eyes of the dead of which only this flame remains (chapter 20). In reality, says Jordan, it is impossible for David to understand or even imagine any sexual tension, especially that which governs the relationship between Rosa and Steerforth, which, in a way, reassures his own innocence and protects what he calls his "candor" – frankness or angelism? – his story. Also, Rosa Dartle's irreducible and angry marginality represents a mysterious threat to his comfortable and reassuring domestic ideology.[112]