Important background information:

1. Little Em’ly has eloped with Steerforth (alluded to in the extract)

2. Betsey has lost her fortune and gone to live with David (hence Peggotty’s offer of money)

3. David has become engaged to Dora Spenlow (subject matter of the 2nd half of the extract)

I. The evolution in Betsey’s character

at the beginning of the novel	in this extract
unbending, rigid	she makes concessions (“admission”): “I suppose not”, “But there are good points in Barkis”:
unable to adapt to reality	“still we’ll be serious about it, and hope…”
tough	affectionate
ready to sacrifice relationships to her whims (David’s father, then his mother)	puts more price on the people she cares for than on her opinions: “I don’t want to put…”

How does Dickens transform her much without ruining character consistency?

1. Her personality has been deeply shaken by two events:

a. David’s entrance into her life.

b. Her financial loss.

These events have brought out the good in her (she is not a bad character turned good). We can see she does justice to characters she had slighted: Peggotty in particular.

2. Her core personality features have softened, not disappeared.

She “revisits” her old themes: Peggotty’s “strangeness”, David’s baby-like mother, the disasters caused by man-woman love, but in an altered tone. Although her words are often the same (Peggotty is “ridiculous” and “a simpleton”, David’s mother was a “baby”, “these” girls are “wretched”), their meaning has changed. Whereas they used to express severe censure, condemnation, they now have a compassionate, affectionate undertone. They now appear as the “hard-boiled”, rugged exterior of a person who is too sensitive or too proud to express her sentimentality in a direct way.

Conclusion: Betsey’s character has not changed:

– it has unfolded, revealed its hidden depths.

– the reader’s point of view on it has changed.

II. Tension between David the character and David the narrator

1. David the character is a naïve, exalted young man. When his aunt says “I know all about it. I don’t know where these wretched girls expect to go to (…) I wonder they don’t knock out their brains,” the narrator supposes she is referring to Emily’s disgrace. But doesn’t the narrator understand she is speaking of Dora’s engagement to him? His praise of Dora is just as stellar as Betsey expects it to be. His notion of love is the naive one of a fusion, which is mirrored in the parallel construction of the sentence “If I thought Dora…”

2. David the narrator’s presence is very much negative only, but very eloquent nevertheless. When Bestey asks if Dora is not silly or light-headed, the reader has to be struck by David’s absence of denial. This is of course the choice of the narrator, whose refusal to comment is in itself worth a long commentary.

Conclusion

In the narrator’s retrospective view, Betsey has become an image of wisdom and moderation, whereas she used to appear unwise and excessive. On the contrary, David the character is totally unaware of the reality of life. His passion for Dora is just as irrealistic and excessive as Betsey used to be. However, this David is “created” by another David, the omniscient narrator. In this passage, Betsey is the narrator’s mouthpiece. She says what he cannot write if he does not want to “kill” his story. The advice she gives David the character is actually the lesson David the narrator has learnt from his experience as David the character.

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