The tag of Angel in the House has stuck to the female characters of Dickens: all those tiresomely saintly Agneses, Dorrits, little Nells. These paragons are usually contrasted with Dickens’ frumps and harridans: Mrs Gargery in Great Expectations, or the aptly named Mrs Sowerberry in Oliver Twist. The remaining female characters are dysfunctional characters with blighted lives, prisoners of an unfortunate past, like Miss Havisham or Lady Dedlock in Bleak House.
This view is an oversimplification, however, that overlooks Dickens’ many interesting and positive, if minor, female characters in unconventional (or, by Victorian standards, even disreputable), professions, like the circus, or the theatre. One might think of the bareback rider Josephine Sleary in Hard Times; the versatile young actress Miss Snevellicci (Nicholas Nickleby), who ‘could do anything, from a medley dance to Lady Macbeth’(278); or the eccentric little beautician, Miss Mowcher (David Copperfield). The last-mentioned achieves brief public fame by making a citizen’s arrest of the fraudster Littimer, with a very unladylike rugby tackle. Even when subjected to a savage beating, she hangs onto her quarry: 'He cut her face right open, and pounded her in the most brutal manner ... but she never loosed her hold’(727).
One much more fully developed female character who deserves our admiration is surely David Copperfield’s aunt, Betsey Trotwood. Readers tend to remember her purely as a figure of fun; but she is more complex and more multi-faceted than that.
Aunt Betsey firmly believes women can be ‘natural and rational’ (236) and, in reversal of patriarchal tradition, regrets that her beloved nephew David was not born a girl. She has 'paid off' her violent and drunken husband and recovered her maiden name, to live an independent life.
She has a generous nature. Even the unpleasant husband gets help when in need of money, though Betsey will never again have anything to do with him in marriage. She regards her soft-heartedness in this matter as weakness, rather than virtue. 'I am so far an incurable fool,' she says, that she will help her estranged spouse for the sake of her former love for him (587).
Aunt Betsey's kindness is wedded to strength of character. She has no hesitation in sheltering her mentally ill relative Mr Dick, regardless of what neighbours might think about a lone woman sharing her home with a male relative. She appoints herself a surrogate parent to David to save him from the dreadful Murdstones. Having administered a fearless tongue lashing to Mr Murdstone concerning his cruelty to David, she drives Miss Murdstone away with the battle cry: ‘Let me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, I’ll knock your bonnet off and tread on it!’ (186) She faces her own difficulties with courage. When she loses her fortune, 'We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us,' she tells David, 'We must live misfortune down, Trot!" ' (425-7).
Dickens endows his character with sarcastic wit and colourful language; as when she speaks of David's proposed marriage to the child-like Dora: ‘Poor little couple! And so you think you were formed for one another, and are to go through a party-supper-table kind of life, like two pretty pieces of confectionery ... ?’ She deals sharply with the writhing Uriah Heep: ‘If you’re an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man, control your limbs!’ (440).
Betsey is a shrewd psychologist, who sees at once David's mistake in marrying Dora: 'Blind, blind, blind!' (429). She can grasp the link between Dick's obsession with Charles the First and his distress over his sister's unhappy marriage: 'He connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that's the figure, or the simile, or whatever it's called, that he chooses to use' (178). She understands the basis of Murdstone’s hostility to his stepson David, in his bullying of David's mother, which makes the sight of David 'odious' to him: 'Aye, aye! You needn’t wince ...' (186).
Dickens never again created a positive female character of the strength and complexity of Betsey Trotwood. She stands as a testament to the breadth of his sympathy and comprehension as a novelist when he allowed his gift full rein. She shows us that Dickens was not as constrained by conventional Victorian assumptons about femininity as we sometimes like to imagine.
Oliver Twist. 1839. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994.
Nicholas Nickleby. 1839. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2000.
The Old Curiosity Shop. 1848. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2001.
David Copperfield. 1850. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2000.
Hard Times. 1854. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1995.
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