The Middle Class
Most middle
class characters are successful business owners, and members of the specialized
working classes: teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc…
Surprisingly, the middle class characters in
David Copperfield are much the same
in context of social viewpoints; however, some difference exists in the
opportunity that becomes available to middle class characters, redemption.
Specifically, I will focus on the similarities and differences between
David Copperfield and Uriah Heep.
This issue really speaks to the chaos which ensues if characters do not have
safety and stability in their lives, as mentioned by Bert G. Hornback in his
article “Frustration and Resolution in
David Copperfield,” Hornback says that “The world of David Copperfield is
fully a world of chaos, and the threats of chaos, and what the good people must
do, for their own safety and sanity, is find and re-establish order” (Hornback
653). Here, we will see the good
choices vs. the bad choices one can make when life puts you in a difficult
place.
If we saw both
characters childhoods through the bildungsroman that we were offered for David,
we would see a surprisingly similar story.
Both David and Uriah were raised in middle class families, and both also
grew up without fathers. Because of
this, both characters not only suffered financially, but became especially close
to their mothers, one could say to a semi-obsessive degree.
It’s difficult to make full comparisons for these characters, since we
only see a limited view of Uriah, but part of what makes him so important, as a
character, is that he is the Yang to David’s Yin.
We are expected to take the things that are obvious, like the way both
David and Uriah are fighting to hold on to the pride of being middle class, and
make the assumption that even more similarities would be found if we saw all of
Uriah’s life.
What becomes
paramount to the story however, is the vast array of differences we discover in
David’s and Uriah’s moral compass.
David, growing up sheltered and spoiled by his mother and Peggotty, has a mild
sense of entitlement. As he goes
through the story we see examples of his naivety when he supports Steerforth
over his teacher, when he refuses to associate with the other kids at Murdstone
and Grinby, and when he romanticizes the life of the Peggotty’s, but what’s most
important is how he grows as a character through the progression of the novel.
With his first wife, Dora, we see David acting much the same as his
step-father, Mr. Murdstone, did with his own mother.
He looks down upon her, thinks she can’t do anything right, and always
tries to change her. But after her
death, and his hiatus away from Britain, David comes back as a more experienced
man, marries the woman of his dreams, and becomes a writer.
We do not see
the same changes in Uriah Heep.
From the beginning, Uriah is described as a shady character, when David first
sees him in chapter XV, he describes him as “cadaverous”.
David goes on to say, “We got out; and leaving him [Uriah] to hold the
pony, went into a long low parlor looking towards the street, from the window of
which I caught a glimpse, as I went in, of Uriah Heep breathing into the pony’s
nostrils, and immediately covering them with his hand, as if he were putting a
spell upon him” (229). Uriah
embodies all the wrong choices from the very beginning.
When we see him, we don’t get the naivety image we were given with David;
instead, he is shown as a cold, calculated character.
His initial negative actions include encouraging Mr. Wickfield to drink,
and falsifying documents to blackmail him into making Uriah a partner in his
company. Like David’s Agnes, Uriah
is given the chance for redemption via prison, but unlike David, he refuses to
change his way, continuing to play the part of deceitful and “umble,” even in
prison.
Beyond this, we can draw conflict between these two men because of
another middle class character, Agnes Wickfield.
Agnes is the third corner of a love triangle with David and Uriah.
Agnes plays two roles here.
First, she can be seen as a sort of middle class clarification; by that I mean,
whichever character manages to get her has achieved middle class success.
The work that they have put in would finally have come to fruition.
Second, she can be seen, religiously, as the lamb, Bathsheba.
This point was emphasized by Eitan Bar-Yosef in his article “It’s the old
story’: David and Uriah in II Samuel and “David Copperfield,” Yosef says:
“The lam is Bathsheba; but it is also Agnes, Agnus Dei, Lamb of God.
Unlike Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittie in II Samuel, Agnes and Uriah Heep
are not married. Yet, growing up in
the Wickfield household long before David enters it, Uriah naturally regards
himself as a rightful husband for his employer’s daughter-whom he continually
calls his own” (Yosef)