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Dickens's Angelic Agnes: The Ideal Victorian Wife
After Mrs. Annie Strong's moving confession of her undivided love and devotion
to her husband, Dr. Strong, in the forty-fifth chapter of David Copperfield1, Dickens
reiterated for his readers three sentences which left a deep mark on the young David:
(1)"There can be no disparity in marriage as unsuitability of mind and purpose;" (2)
"The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart;" and (3) "My love was founded
on rock." I believe that these concepts, deeply engraved in the mind of David
Copperfield, form the backbone of the author's view of marriage. The poignant story
of David Copperfield is nothing but the journey of "an undisciplined heart" in search
of his ideal beloved. It is a nineteenth-century fairy tale where David seeks to satisfy
the longings of his heart. In his wanderings to find the summit of love, he experiences
several tragic reverses that cauterize his heart until it finally rested on a sure
rock—the selfless love and devotion of Agnes Wickfield.
Many critics would have us believe that inasmuch as Dickens wanted to depict
certain deviant behaviors or attitudes from the dominant Victorian mentality of his
time, he nevertheless concluded his masterpiece with yet another typical Victorian
happy ending. I would rather like to think that Dickens's choice of an archetypal
ending, where the protagonists "live happily ever after," is very much in keeping with
what every normal human being would dream of. Dickens himself admitted in his
1869 Preface to David Copperfield that "I am a fond parent to every child of my
fancy . . . But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child.
And his name is David Copperfield." It was but a product of Dickens's fancy, i.e., his
imagination. He wanted to reflect an ideal. Therefore, I wish to show in this short
essay why I feel completely drawn to take Dickens's side in his fairy tale narrative,
and specifically why his choice of Agnes as the final refuge of David's heart a fitting
ending not only in its Victorian context but also to our modern world as well. In brief,
I believe Agnes is the ideal wife that Dickens's fancy created, and that most of us deep
down in our hearts wish the same for all men.
Although Agnes is portrayed by Dickens [or by David Copperfield] almost as a
heavenly creature, it does not mean that she is not human. She is not a purely spiritual
being. I feel that she embodies all the virtues of an ideal wife: patient, loving, merciful,
understanding, delicate, strong-willed, intelligent, discreet, and affectionate.
Nevertheless, her humanity is evident as when tears roll down her cheeks, or when
fear makes her tremble before Uriah's tactical advances. She is a woman with
passions like all mortals, yet she knows how to subdue those emotions in varying
1
All quotes are taken from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, ed. Nina Burgis (Oxford: Claredon
Press, 1981).
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circumstances.
Before proceeding though, I would like first of all to define a human person as a
composite being of body and spirit. It is in fact the person's spiritual faculties (i.e.,
intellect and will) that set him apart from animals. Sometimes we define human being
as a rational animal. It is our reasoning faculty, together with our free will, that makes
us humans. Now, reasoning resides in our intellect and the capacity to choose resides
in our will. Without these two faculties, we are indistinguishable from the brutes.
When we develop these spiritual faculties, we actually make ourselves more
human—i.e., less beastly. In a sense we can say we are more spiritual, but this does
not mean we are less human. It would be more appropriate to say we are less brutish,
since we reason out before we act, and not allow our base animal instincts get the
better of us. Therefore, when our spiritual faculties grow, we become more human.
Applying this to Agnes, we can readily see from David's earliest recollection that
she possessed "the placid and sweet expression of a lady" even though at that time she
was just an adolescent. Therefore, she was rather mature for her age and maintained
this throughout her life in the novel. She acquired this maturity on account of her
responsibilities as the housekeeper of the Wickfield manor in the absence of a mother.
Maturity is acquired not by the accumulated years of one's life, but rather from the
experience and practice of human virtues. Maturity is not physical growth, but
spiritual growth—growing from the inside.
In blaring contrast, Dickens presents to us Dora Spenlow, David's so-called
child-wife. If Dora is a child-wife, the mature Agnes can rightly be called David's
"mother-wife," for she possesses the virtues a mother and wife ought to have. For in
choosing a wife, we ought not to think of her only as a partner in bed; rather, she
ought to be our partner in life. Marriage is a union of two mature persons, capable of
bearing the responsibility of bringing up new life into this world. When two persons
enter into marriage, not only are they joined in flesh, but they ought to be joined in
mind or spirit as well. This is what Annie meant when she said, "there can be no
disparity in marriage as unsuitability of mind and purpose." Matrimony is not merely
physical union, but a union of persons—the integral person consisting of body and
spirit. Two lovers are joined in marriage not physically but morally, when they
mutually consent to live in sickness or health, for richer, for poorer, till death do they
part.
David's "first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart" was precisely a heart
still full of base animal instinct, so to speak. He was merely seeking physical union
with Dora. He fell head over hills for Dora at first sight. He was completely
overwhelmed by an irrational impulse, almost bordering to madness:
She was more human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I
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don't know what she was—anything that no one ever saw, and
everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed in an
abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink, no
looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I
had sense to say a word to her. . . . If she would like me to die for
her, she had but to say the word, and I was ready. Life without
Dora's love was not a thing to have on any terms. I couldn't bear
it, and I wouldn't. I had loved her every minute, day and night,
since I first saw her.
Passion completely swallowed him up; his reason was eclipsed. In a sense, he
abandoned his human nature; it was unbalanced, tilting towards his animal instincts
instead of allowing his intellect and will to rule his overflowing emotions. Of course,
emotions are part of human nature, but they must be filtered by one's reason,
otherwise we suffer its disastrous consequences. Take for example Steerforth and
Emily. They were consumed by lust—that base sexual instinct unfettered by reason.
Steerforth, blinded by lust, abandoned his family, ruined his future and at the same
time destroyed the innocence of a young naïve country girl. Emily abandoned her
reason, followed her [undisciplined] heart, left her loved ones, dishonored her
previous commitments, and tried to seek her fortune abroad, but eventually ended up
forsaken by the lecherous Steerforth.
David needed to mature in virtues. At an early age he had been crushed by
emotional setbacks: the death of his mother and brother, the scourge of his foster
father, the dreadful conditions of child labor. After enjoying a few blissful years under
his Aunt Betsey's custody, he had to work his way up again from being a
clerk-apprentice until he gained enough prestige and wealth as a writer. Agnes was his
support and guide in all those years, yet he was so blinded by his passions (his
undisciplined heart) that he never thought himself worthy of Agnes's affections. I
think that we all need an Agnes who can lift us higher, steadily "pointing upward" as
David was wont to say of Ms. Wickfield. It may be true that she is rather mystical or
spiritual, but she is not at all unattractive or passionless. David did not marry an
angel—a purely spiritual being; he married a human person—body and soul. Theirs
was not a sexless marriage, as some critics would have us believe. Their love united
not only their bodies in conjugal union that bore them three children, they were also
united in "mind and purpose." It was a love "founded on rock"—the rock forged by
maturity of a disciplined heart. I think Dickens wished to portray the ideal marriage in
David Copperfield. We should not think that this ideal is beyond the reach of modern
men and women of our time. Rather, we should take it as a challenge to discipline our
hearts, that we may learn to raise our sights upwards as befitting men and not stoop
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our heads to wallow in the muddy ground like beasts.
Sex is not something degrading. It only becomes degrading when we abandon
reason and let loose the reins of our passions. Physical beauty is attractive, but
spiritual beauty perfects it. When we give too much emphasis to bodily pleasures, our
spirit (including its faculties, namely, the intellect and will) becomes numb and
insensitive. In time the body ages and will lose its agility, sparkle, shape, and health;
but the spirit can continue to grow in wisdom, love, and virtues. The spirit is what
humanizes us. Let us not confuse our humanity with its apparent physical luster;
rather, let us develop our spirit that we may elevate our bodies to a higher perfection. I
believe that it is Dickens's wish [as well as David's] that we too, in the journey of our
life, may find a dear Agnes with her finger constantly "pointing upward" to show us
the way. That way is not purely spiritual nor purely physical, it is both body and soul;
neither angel nor beast—it ought to be completely human. It is the "rock" where
lasting marriages can stand on, which Dickens has left us as a legacy in David
Copperfield.