Australian Escape

            After the trials and tribulations the Micawbers and Peggottys went through, they both ultimately decided on moving to Australia to start over fresh.  It’s important that their redemption must come in Australia, because it shows that their redemption isn’t entirely legitimate, that it’s more of a loophole than anything else.  In Britain, the inability to pay back debts by the Micawbers, and Emily’s lustful behavior with Steerforth, would never have been forgiven.  For the rest of their lives there would be shame, but by going to Australia, they are allowed a fresh start.  In Australia, Mr. Micawber and his family do much better for themselves, and Emily feels better about her mistakes through hard labor.  Personally, these characters were able to escape their mistakes, but socially, nothing has changed. 

            Why are their mistakes not forgiven on a social level?  Because they weren’t able to achieve their forgiveness/redemption in Britain.  To leave the country in order to become who they wanted to be, they basically made the best of social exile.  Australia was original a penal colony formed by Britain; it was where all the undesirables were sent to keep local prisons from filling up.  The sort of thing the Micawbers and the Peggottys did in Australia were the exact same as the original convicts sent down to Australia in the early 1800s:

“The discipline of rural labour was seen to be the best chance of reform. This view was adopted by Commissioner Bigge in a series of reports for the British Government published in 1822-23. The assignment of convicts to private employers was expanded in the 1820s and 1830s, the period when most convicts were sent to the colonies, and this became the major form of employment.”  (“Convicts and the British Colonies in Australia”)

 In a way, this move paints the Micawbers and Peggottys as undesirables in Britain.  It alludes to the idea that they are convicts being sent away.  So in that way, they didn’t escape the social norms of Britain, but simply found a way to make themselves feel as if they had.  This lends to the idea that the British social class structure is rigid, because people will move halfway across the world to try to escape it, and make something of their lives.  What matters most is that the Peggottys and Micawbers find a place that they can be successful.  While characters can not escape the class that they were born in while living in Britain, these families find a society that allows you to find your place in the class structure based on hard work and merit, instead of birthright. 

            In the upper class, we saw characters that felt a complete moral superiority to everyone else.  They did what they wanted, to whomever they wanted, and felt no remorse.  In the middle class, we see that while there is still a sense of entitlement or superiority, characters can still be morally good, the difference is now in a personal choice that upper class characters do not seem privy too.  And finally, in the lower class, we saw morally good people who made mistakes, and did what they had to in order to attain redemption.  Another important aspect of David Copperfield, in relation to class, is how David himself views the characters in different classes.

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