Charles Dickens and the Image of Women. David K. Holbrook
The next time we meet the pair, however, things are changed.
A paper fly-cage dangled from the ceiling, to which he occasionally raised his eyes in gloomy thought ... it might be that the insects brought to mind, some painful passage in his own life. (267)
Mr. Bumble is no longer a beadle, but is now master of the workhouse, and reflects woefully that he has been married only two months. He admits later,
“I sold myself ... for six teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a milk pot” (268).
Mrs. Bumble fails to respond to Mr. Bumble’s stern look, and asks him whether he is going to sit snoring all day. To decide how he shall behave, declares Mr. Bumble, is his “prerogative.” Mrs. Bumble sneers at the word with “ineffable contempt.” The prerogative of woman, it seems, is to obey.
Mrs. Bumble, seeing that the decisive moment had now arrived and “that a blow struck for the mastership on one side or other, must necessarily be final and conclusive,” drops into a chair with a loud scream and falls into a paroxysm of tears.
The drama develops and the comedy has beneath it the irony drawn into it from the previous exchange. We are all weak creatures—and the impulse that draws the couple together is dependence. But now, after sexual union, the mutual dependence is resented, and the struggle for “mastery” begins. Although Bumble is, like Dogberry, a caricature, the presentation has much psychological truth.
Mrs. Corney that was has tried the tears as less troublesome than manual assault. But now she is prepared to try the other method:
The first proof he experienced of the fact, was conveyed by a hollow sound, immediately succeeded by the sudden flying off of his hat to the opposite side of the room. This preliminary proceeding laying bare his head, the expert lady, clasping him tightly round the throat with one hand, inflicted a shower of blows (dealt with singular vigour and dexterity) upon it with the other. This done, she created a little variety by scratching his face, and tearing his hair; and, having by this time, inflicted as much punishment as she deemed necessary for the offence, she pushed him over a chair, which was luckily well situated for the purpose; and defied him to talk about prerogative again, if he dared. (269-70)
As in our own relational difficulties, we find the conflict only binds us together, in its humiliating way, since it is itself a manifestation of need and attachment. So, Mr. and Mrs. Bumble go together to conspire with Monks in the suppression of the relics of Agnes’s existence and his fraud on Oliver—until, exposed in the end, they are prohibited from ever again holding office and join the paupers whom they have previously exploited. Such severe realism about human weakness is perhaps what Dickens is most revered for: yet, as we shall see, in his dealings with woman he is sometimes unable to confront reality, while in some of his vacillations around the theme of what woman can or cannot provide, he penetrates to even deeper areas of truth.
Dickens is far too complex a character to be understood in terms of a single theme throughout his work. But it is perhaps worth dwelling further on the phenomenological significance in his work of the orphan theme—the “orfting,” as it is called in David Copperfield. It seems to represent a hunger for further “reflection.” The orphan often also yearns to find the mother’s face: there are significant moments, for instance, when Esther first sees Lady Dedlock, and later when she reveals herself as her mother, as we shall see. We may even, I believe, go further and see how a writer preoccupied with the orphan sense of needing to find better access to an inheritance may tend to find woman as an angel, as Oliver finds Rose Maylie.
The younger lady was in the lovely bloom and springtime of womanhood; at that age, when, if ever angels be for God’s good purposes enthroned in mortal forms, they may be, without impiety, supposed to abide in such as hers.
She was not past seventeen. Cast in so slight and exquisite a mould; so mild and gentle; so pure and beautiful; that earth seemed not her element, nor its rough creatures her fit companions. The very intelligence that shone in her deep blue eye, and was stamped upon her noble head, seemed scarcely of her age or of the world; and yet the changing expression of sweetness and good humour, the thousand lights that played about the face, and left no shadow there; above all the smile, the cheerful, happy smile were made for Home, and fireside peace and happiness. (212)
Oliver, of course, is an orphan. He is born in the workhouse, delivered by the parish surgeon, and his mother dies on the third page: he is a parish child. In the end he inherits a property, of which Monks has tried to cheat him, amounting to “little more than three thousand pounds,” and is adopted by Mr. Brownlow as his own son. Rose Maylie, also an orphan, is an aunt, the sister of Oliver’s own mother, Agnes, who was “weak and erring.” In chapter 49 there is a long and elaborate unfolding of the plot between Mr. Brownlow and Monks. Throughout it is made clear that Mr. Brownlow’s interest in the case arose because he saw resemblances in Oliver’s face. The coincidences in the book, of course, are incredible, and it is not necessary for our purposes to unravel the fantastically complex plot. We simply note that the essence of Oliver Twist has to do with his being an orphan, while later he is redeemed by a beautiful angelic woman who is his mother’s sister (or, we might say, her substitute or reincarnation). The theme of the rediscovered face is one we shall look at later: in Oliver Twist and Bleak House the recognition of a face through a portrait is significant, for example.
Pip, too, is an orphan; everyone who has read Dickens recalls the sad and slightly comical account he gives of the grave of his mother and the series of defunct siblings.
I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone As I never saw my father or my mother, ... my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgina Wife of the above,” I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine—who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle—I am indebted for a belief that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trouser pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence. (Great Expectations, 1)
Both Great Expectations and Oliver Twist consist of a child growing up with a series of substitute parents—as does David Copperfield, of course, who is also an orphan—his mother having remarried to a wicked stepfather, Murdstone, who treats him so cruelly that he runs away to find a substitute mother in the forbidding but sympathetic Betsy Trotwood. Esther is a kind of orphan, and she has a guardian for father; later she finds her real mother in circumstances in which the acknowledgement cannot be openly made. The orphan theme in Bleak House yields the beautiful story of little Charley, which we shall examine.
Little Dorrit is not an orphan, but she is disinherited by the wicked manifestations of Mrs. Clennam, and she is orphaned by Dorrit’s collapse and death later in the book. Nicolas Nickleby and Kate have lost their father and their ordeals are those of trying to survive. Florence Dombey loses her mother and is rejected by her father, and when she flees she becomes an orphan and is taken in as a daughter by Captain Cuttle. Estella is virtually an orphan, as her father has been transported, and her mother is kept as a household servant by Jaggers. George Rouncewell is virtually an orphan, as he has kept himself away from his mother and brother. Lizzie Hexam is orphaned early in Our Mutual Friend, while Caddy Jellaby is virtually an orphan because of the neglect of her household by her campaigning mother; Peepy feels very much like an orphan child. Jo, the crossing sweeper, knows “nothink” of his origins, of course, while the Marchioness in The Old Curiosity Shop is an orphan. Dora is orphaned, while Tattycoram is taken in from a foundling hospital.
Thus throughout Dickens’s works there is a preoccupation with the urgent needs of the deprived infant and child and of the adult who feels, like Esther, that he or she has never experienced a full portion of rich reflecting love. Consequently, when we come to Dickens’s image of woman, the question that hangs over her is whether