Dickens’s nonconformist treatment of stained women in David Copperfield

Abstract

David Copperfield shows an advance in Dickens’s treatment of stained women in his earlier works. In this novel he takes the subject inside the closed doors of respectable people to influence their attitudes and to bring a shift in society’s attitude towards them. Dickens’s presentation of stained women is lapped by romantic pathos and supported by a number of devices which aim at securing the sympathy of his readers. In saving them from public retribution, Dickens has turned the bitterest aspect of conventions to a more generous end trying to indicate that it requires sympathy and an ameliorating Christian response, rather than downright condemnation. He supports reformation which leads to rehabilitation and a return to respectability. In his treatment of Emily, Martha Endell, Rosa Dartle and other tarnished women, Dickens could reconcile his charitable inclinations with the imperatives of respectability and could also show the necessity of giving stained women a second chance at home or abroad.