This abridged passage is taken from chapter 17 of
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens’ eighth novel originally published in
serialised form between 1849 and 1950. At the present time, David, a young
orphan, after being ill-used and practically abandoned by his stepfather, has
become his great-aunt’s ward. She sends him to attend school in Canterbury,
where he lives with a lawyer named Mr Wickfield. At Mr Wickfield’s, he meets a
young clerk named Uriah Heep. In this extract, Uriah takes David home for tea with
him and his mother. During the meal, the Heeps, while exerting the utmost
courtesy, try their best – succesfully – to squeeze as much information out of
David as they can.
First, I will concern myself with the portrayal of the Heeps. I will then turn my attention to their joint tactics in dealing with David.
In Uriah’s first appearance in the novel, the narrator insisted on his “cadaverous” face and “clammy”, “skeletal” and “ghostly” hands, creating the impression of a living dead. In the present passage, this association is extended to Uriah’s mother, who still wears her widow’s weeds although her husband has long been dead. Ironically, the narrator first describes her as “the dead image of Uriah”, playing on two meanings of “dead”: absolute and not alive.
Here,
the narrator particularly brings out another characteristic of the Heeps: their
perverse insistance on their humbleness. Like many Dickens characters, they are
easily recognisable by physical or verbal tics, their sometimes nearly
obsessive repetition of words or ideas. Such is the case with the “humble”
Heeps. Everything about them is “humble”, even their house. In the first three
columns of this extract, the words “humble” and “humbleness” are uttered no
fewer than twelve times by Uriah and his mother. As they are often to be found
at the end of their lines, we can see them as the refrain to a song or,
alternately, as a sort of central theme to which they always return, whatever
the topic of the conversation. Thus, their speech seems to move in circles.
Humbleness is used as the justification for just about everything. Mrs Heep
sums it all up when she says “Umble we are, umble we have been, umble we shall
ever be.” At the beginning, Uriah suggests it may be the explanation for
David’s failure to respond to his invitation so far. Later on, he offers it as
a reason for refusing David’s help with Latin.
However, the latter example shows this humility may be
a disguise. Uriah states he is so humble that he wouldn’t dream of studying,
but why does he read law books then? Lack of sincerity reaches ridiculous
heights when Mrs Heep expresses the view that the main reason for regretting
her husband is that he died before David’s visit.
Uriah’s unmitigated “humbleness” can even be quite
challenging, or even offensive. By lowering himself, he invites others to
humiliate him, as he does with David when he tells him he is so humble that
David has a sort of right to treat him scornfully. Later, he expresses the view
that studying would be interpreted by “his betters” as an insult to them. As
for her, Mrs Heep almost accuses David of despising their affection for each
other. In the meantime, Uriah has shown himself as a victim of people “treading
upon [him]”.
In a way, the Heeps are merely strict adherents to the
values of their country and period. After all, sentences like “I won’t provoke
my betters” and “we know our station and our thankful in it” are nothing but
endorsements of the social conservatism of Victorian England. What Dickens
shows here is the moral peversion that this set of values can generate.
This leads us naturally to the second part: the study of the Heeps’ ways to secure information from the innocent David.
To begin with, they position themselves strategically
physically. David finds himself cornered between them.
Uriah and his mother do not ask David questions
directly. What they do instead is set up a topic. Then David is obliged, out of
politeness, to follow up on it: if they mention aunts, David will speak about
his, and so on. They exploit his qualities: his politeness, but also his
candour, and his consideration for their feelings. The latter is of course
vastly excited by their show of humility.
The narrator encapsulates their skilfulness and their
efficiency in two striking metaphors when he compares himself to a cork and the
Heeps to corkscrews and when he likens their verbal juggling to a dizzying ball
game.
Of course, the Heeps have an ulterior motive in
picking David’s brains. As the astute reader can already guess, Uriah is not
satisfied with his subordinate position at Mr Wickfield’s.
To conclude we can see the Heeps as the Murdstones’ counterparts. Both couples are unnatural: a brother and sister on the one hand, a son and mother on the other. Both are hypocritical: the Murdstones are self-righteous people who never fail to pass judgment on others while the Heeps are groveling dissemblers. Both are manipulative: the Murdstones endeavour to crush their victims’ personalities whereas the Heeps flatter it to reach their aims.
Ultimately, for Dickens, the question of evil is never social: he never fails to place both his heroes and villains, sometimes very similar in their motivations and methods, at different rungs on the social ladder. His characters’ moral value is never connected to their social background.