Problems for Feminist Criticism (RLE Feminist Theory) by Sally Minogue

Author:Sally Minogue [Minogue, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415754231
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2014-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Agnes Wickfield in David Copperfield has perhaps had the worst press of all Dickens' heroines. R. H. Hutton's verdict on her has already been cited. George Orwell called her 'the real legless angel of Victorian romance’,47 and Michael Slater has recently asserted that ‘it would be a bold critic indeed who would claim this character to be a success’, and has argued that Dickens failed 'to vivify Agnes satisfactorily for his readers’.48 Even Dickens' staunchest champion, John Forster, had reservations about her, speaking of 'the too unfailing wisdom and self-sacrificing goodness of the angel-wife, Agnes’.49

There seems to be much justification for such criticisms, if one concentrates exclusively on the later parts of the novel. In those pages, Agnes' existence for the reader is almost entirely created through David's adulation of her (supported by her father's at the very end). Mr Wickfield talks of the past as offering 'much matter for regret’, but says he would not change it as it would cancel 'such patience and devotion, such fidelity, such a child's love’ (ch. LX).50 Painful experience is here reduced to an opportunity for the display of virtue. David's view of Agnes at the end of the novel, as his 'solace and resource’, ‘pointing upwards' (ch. LXII), is the only perspective which the reader is invited to entertain, and thus seems to be unequivocally endorsed by Dickens. ‘Clasped in my embrace’, remarks David in the same chapter, ‘I held the source of every worthy aspiration I had ever had.’ Here one notes a strange lack of focus (characteristic of these parts of the novel) on the precise details of the imagined moment. The sentence moves awkwardly from the physical actuality to the abstract ideal. Both characters lack vivid presence; the moment exists merely to create a vague (albeit powerful) emotional affirmation of the ‘blessed calm’ and 'tranquillity’ which (Dickens wishes to convince us) characterize the couple's coming together.

In some respects, the final stretches of the book confirm a view of Agnes which has been present ever since her first appearance. In chapter XV, David recalls his first meeting with Agnes when, as a boy, he was taken to Mr Wickfield's house by Betsy Trotwood to make arrangements for his education. In this scene, Agnes is associated in David's mind with an image often adduced by critics to indicate the static and abstract nature of her depiction throughout the novel. David sees her ‘in the grave light of the old staircase’, recalls ‘a stained glass window in a church’, and ‘associate[s] something of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield ever afterwards’. Thus far in the narrative, we have been invited to experience the other characters (most notably Mr Murdstone) with the vividness and immediacy of a child's vision, but we have not been consistently invited to share David's assessment of them. We have come to understand something of his nature by finding grounds, on occasion, for different judgements from his own. This is particularly true in the case of Steerforth, where a

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