Charles Dickens and the Image of Women. David K. Holbrook
Dickens managed to gain a more critical perspective on his own capacity to idealize woman. Certainly at times he tends to allow himself to depict women as “angels” who have no problems of ambiguity, of emotional need and conflict. With Little Nell this unreal purity becomes morbid: in the end she can only die, resembling a stone angel on a tomb. Her submissive devotion to duty—the duty of a totally committed daughter—is idealized. Even when her father steals from her, she suffers dumbly and fails to challenge him. This “Euphrasia” motif in Dickens will be examined further below, in relation to Dickens’s preferences for a certain kind of man-woman relationship, based on the idealization of the father-daughter complex. Lizzie Hexam, Little Dorrit, and the Little Doll’s Dressmaker also have cruel and wicked fathers; and while Dickens seems fascinated by this kind of relationship, he shows himself painfully short of insights into the limitations it imposes on the women themselves: he seems not sufficiently appalled by the exploitation of “duty.” As will appear, I feel little Dorrit fails seriously to deal adequately with her father, but loves him too absolutely and submissively, while Dickens approves. The Little Doll’s Dressmaker perhaps deals most realistically with her “child” (her father), while Lizzie has Eugene to draw her out of her compromise with her father’s cruelty: he offers radical criticism of her submission to her father’s domination. There are two aspects of the father-daughter relationship in Dickens we need to examine carefully. One is the Euphrasia theme: the archetypal fantasy of the daughter feeding her father with her breasts through the bars of his prison. The other is the reduction of the woman to a child-wife, as manifest in the father-daughter relationship (Clennam and Little Dorrit, John Jarn-dyce and Esther, David and Dora). Both may be seen as revealing the limitations of Dickens’s view of woman’s role, in a way characteristic of his time. There is a tendency in Dickens to escape the exigencies and realities of mature relationship by portraying woman as a submissive household servant, carrying her “little” bunches of keys with her “busy little hands” albeit, of course, in the end, allowing the “ship” to bring her a little baby. But the strange fantasies of murder and death seem to reveal that when it came to a full libidinal sexual relationship with woman, Dickens felt himself to be in a state of danger. One means by which he avoided the fear of sex was to present a man-woman relationship from which the libidinal elements are excluded, as with Tom Pinch’s relationship with his sister, or by father-daughter relationships, a tendency in his art that echoes his strange relationship with Georgina.
Dickens seems to have idolized the father-daughter relationship: with Esther Summerson and John Jarndyce this inclination is very strong, and though he transfers Esther’s affections to Alan Woodcourt in the end, the transfer is made, one feels, with some reluctance; it is done, it would seem, to satisfy the readers, while Dickens’s own sensibility is more inclined to celebrate the benign guardian-ward relationship. He likes to fantasize an all-powerful, generous, patronizing father-daughter relationship, in which recognition of the undercurrents of libidinal, normal sexual inclination is repressed. The father figure enjoys all the delights of wifeliness, but without the disturbances of sexuality:
I held his hand for a little while in mine.
“I saw my ward oftener than she saw me,” he added, cheerily making light of it, “and I always knew that she was beloved, useful and happy. She repays me twenty-thousand fold, and twenty more to that, every hour in every day!”
“And oftener still,” said I, “she blesses the Guardian who is a Father to her!”
At the word Father, I saw his former trouble come into his face. He subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but, it had been there, and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if they had given him a shock. . . .
“Take a fatherly good-night, my dear,” said he, kissing me on the forehead, “and so to rest. These are late hours for working and thinking. You do that for all of us, all day long, little housekeeper.” (Bleak House, 237-38)
Dickens likes to use the word “little” for women: “the little creature.” And by this he shows his inclination to portray the ideal woman as a dutiful daughter, busying herself with her “little” baskets of keys and her household tasks: Esther reports that, “A maid ... brought a basket into my room, with two bunches of keys in it, all labelled” (Bleak House, 68).
John Jarndyce is a foster father to Esther; by comparison Dr. Strong is a father/husband figure to Annie Strong. We may note how with the latter the libidinal leaps out, as she is tempted by a lover—whose passionate interest is symbolized by the red ribbon he steals from her. Dickens is actually somewhat ambiguous about this temptation, and we cannot help feeling that the marriage of this young girl to an elderly man, despite all the honor he deserves, was a mistake, since it means she can never fulfill herself as a young creature capable of passion.
There are several bad fathers in Dickens: little Nell’s grandfather gambles and even steals from her; Madelaine Bray’s father is a sick and petulant man who oppresses her and keeps her something of a prisoner; Dombey is a bad father to Florence Dombey, and Mr. Murdstone is a cruel stepfather to David Copperfield. Dorrit behaves monstrously to little Dorrit, exploiting her dutiful nature and criticizing her most generous acts as offensive to him and his social status.
But on the whole Dickens seems to idolize the father status, and we cannot help feeling that there was a pressing need in him to be thought a good father himself, although all the indications are that he was a difficult and sometimes bad one. Attitudes to husbands and fathers, of course, tell us a good deal about a writer’s attitudes to women and marriage.
Where marriage is concerned, perhaps Dickens’s best insights are developed in his comic themes. His caricature of life after marriage is embodied with gruesome realism in his portrayal of the fate of Bumble the Beadle. In chapter 27 of Oliver Twist Bumble is shown examining Mrs. Corney’s silver: “Mr. Bumble had re-counted the teaspoons, re-weighed the sugar-tongs, made a close inspection of the milk-pot ...” (Oliver Twist, 196). Returning with a stately walk to the fireplace, he declares, with a grave and determined air, “I“ll do it!”
He followed up this remarkable declaration, by shaking his head in a waggish manner for ten minutes, as though he were remonstrating with himself for being such a pleasant dog; and then, he took a view of his legs in profile with much seeming pleasure and interest. (197)
By such touches of bodily presence Dickens manages to convey to us the undercurrents of sexuality that often, in marriage, are turned into hate—as happens so terribly with the Quilps, Jonas Chuzzlewit, the Mantalinis, and the Lammles, for instance.
Mrs. Corney plays up to the Beadle in a hilarious scene of sly and awkward courtship: on her breathless return, Bumble asks what has upset Mrs. Corney.
“Nothing,” replied Mrs. Corney. “I am a foolish, excitable weak creatur.”
“Not weak, ma’ am,” retorted Mr. Bumble, drawing his chair a little closer. “Are you a weak creatur, Mrs. Corney?”
“We are all weak creaturs,” said Mrs. Corney, laying down a general principle.
“So we are,” said the Beadle.
Nothing was said, on either side, for a minute or two afterwards. By the expiration of that time, Mr. Bumble had illustrated the position by removing his left arm from the back of Mrs. Corney’s chair, where it had previously rested, to Mrs. Corney’s apron-string, round which it gradually became entwined. (198)
Mrs. Corney has perquisites as mistress of the workhouse:
“Coals, candles and house—rent free,” said Mr. Bumble. “Oh, Mrs. Corney, what a Angel you are!”
The lady was not proof against this burst of feeling. She sunk into Mr. Bumble’s arms; and that gentleman in his agitation, imprinted a passionate kiss upon her chaste nose. (199)
Declaring him “a irresistable duck,” Mrs. Corney agrees to marry Bumble, and they exchange endearments such as “dear,” “dove,” and “love,” and he speaks of her “lovely countenance”:
The dove then turned up his coat-collar, and put on his cocked-hat; and, having exchanged a long and affectionate embrace