I wrote last week that I found the presentation of Uriah Heep by Charles Dickens in David Copperfield to be difficult. Uriah Heep seems to just be shown as a bad person. There is little to dispute that. But I react as he is not shown any understanding, help or forgiveness, but is held to blame (rightly, but also without any hope of change(?)) and perhaps in some ways in people’s (David’s) reaction to him before he acted (though may have been planning even then, I accept)).
It stands out to me given how I was quoting one of Charles Dickens’ letters about how important the New Testament was for him. How he hoped this showed through in his treatment of his characters. I was saying how much I liked this about Dickens.
Yet not for Uriah Heep?
It does seem possible that that is a comment on David Copperfield and co. and not on Charles Dickens - as this question is begging for the reader. That possibility I like.
But what I really want to say is that thinking about Uriah Heep made me think that what it is about him is that he seems to have believed in his own situation - and to have acted in line with his understanding and its limits and boundaries (and ways that was enforced by others reactions) to try to beat the position but on the very terms he has accepted by fighting them. And that he ignores other possibility, almost to need to keep his prospects to the boundaries he’d seem to try to defeat.
I suppose it leaves me wondering how understandable his path was, and I think David Copperfield’s reactions to his physical presence and movement for example show how very locked in he was himself by how he was seen (as was David to his view of him).
I could get drawn into a close analysis of this from the text, I don’t want to do that I’d get stuck and start being even more boring - but having written what I did last week it occurred to me that just such analysis of situation lies behind, or is part of, lots of things. Lots of problematic things. I’ll leave you to think on what these days. (Does the success of science and technology, living with it, lure us into thinking or feeling we see the truth of situations, have them right?)
I suppose it is something about thinking we know - and in doing that ignoring things we don’t want to consider, or not asking ourselves questions that bother our being sure and wishing to act, things that disturb how we’ve framed the picture (and how we may profit from how we do that).
Recently I saw some lovely notes posted by a reader of Paradise Lost. One post highlighted Satan’s apparently powerful response to being thrown into hell, to make the best of it in a way and his aim to “ . . . make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
Part of my reaction is that this almost seems wisdom, but really I realised I see it as raising a question as to Satan’s cognitive ability, as hell so surely lacks all that makes heaven.
This response seems an active denial of what is needed, to try to win somehow on the terms of what is punishment based on his actions without addressing what would be needed to regain heaven. That it couldn’t become heaven in that way is simply ignored. Later I also wondered if it was a denial of loss after trauma, possibly also anger (as well as pride of course) - if fallen angels work like that. But it also seems to me just this, a belief in situation as understood, perhaps belief in the material too, and a lack of opening up to what is more, or even of looking for it. Maybe he does not even realise or feel what he has lost in his own dimensionality, to instead insist on his own view of himself.
Isn’t it what so many of modernity’s monstrosities do - seek to make us see the world the way they do, insist on it, deny other views, draw us in, have us agree, just in the one way that suits them. Are we more vulnerable to this in our processed lives, speedy, binary, used to getting what we want quickly? With the illusion our power gives us that we understand.
Maybe it is a naive view, or a silly one to take, but I enjoy its perspective, even if it is effectively out of reach, always to be worked towards. It seems a recognition that is important to me in trying to understand and move towards forgiveness. I wonder if to fight this naivety or to dismiss it when faced with truly awful actualities, may lock us in to the very things we are, for example, angry about.
But it is hard always to simply say that, and may appear especially so to those who have and may be in the midst of suffering and challenge that may seem immediately far beyond many others’ experience, including my own. Though we all have experiences that challenge us, and many are invisible. It seems to me that considering this is to try to escape the terms of the situation which is trying to lock us into it in its own terms and escape by reactions that may not bring true escape, but generate more of its ilk. In strong feeling it is hard I am sure. But this possibility reminds me of a more heavenly prospect.
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Back to David Copperfield - I suppose in a way I am suggesting David Copperfield (and others) are part of the creation of Uriah Heep (and his discontent). If I remember rightly, long before Uriah’s criminal plot David already reacted to his snake-like manner and body language. He did not challenge his own reaction to Uriah in that sense and that in itself may have been noticeable to Uriah to increase his own motivation and feeling of his situation. Of course Uriah’s mother’s interpretations add to that too, make his certainties of the world more sure.
But there are other things about David Copperfield I may quibble about - there is his development of his relationship and then marriage to his first wife. Also his narrative, from his point of view, is continually one of presenting his own innocence, mostly. That of course is affected by his complex personal narrative of having experienced criminal abuse as a child.
There is undoubted innocence and goodness about him - including perhaps in the ways he is drawn into orbits that may not be so (such as Steerforth, or even Mr Micawber), which may make his own goodness foggier in some way but which also show it better as a result. His goodness shines through, his intent is not malicious. But I wonder if he’d ever think over that relationship with Uriah - and perhaps also his fight with the local butcher. No one is perfect.
I like it in Charles Dickens that we can have such questions over his narrators - Pip is another I have questions about in Great Expectations or Pickwick as he sets out too - that the narration/protagonists may have flaws that we are left to make what we do with (or not).
I’m not excusing Uriah Heep, but I am interested in thinking about how to find a way out of such a path. No one is perfect, we all need love.
I can wonder if David Copperfield’s reactions to Uriah Heep are in part due to a sense of his own position - an orphan who is with the family in Canterbury through a connection with his aunt. Perhaps he senses competition. Perhaps he also senses Uriah Heep’s danger having had his own experience of crime and his time in London. In that - and that none of this is directly stated I think - I like the picture given very much. I can wonder too if David Copperfield in his own less secure past has to believe in his own situation/status now and if Uriah Heep is a challenge to how he’s grasping for his own position as well as a reminder of other possibilities. David’s need to be sure in that sense is perhaps part of why he’d keep a division from Uriah Heep, who does seem interested in assessing him (possibly also already with criminal motivation) - but, maybe these two have reasons never to meet in acceptance, reasons that go deep and mutually confirm each others’ view/fear of the world.
We all need love and acceptance, an unreified understanding (and to not do what Uriah Heep ends up doing). Please forgive how this may seem to offend those facing such powerful hurt and challenge in this world as to make these thoughts seem naive or to have missed such feelings.
Sometimes I think of mercy as forgiveness given in advance, paid into the future1. William Shakespeare famously wrote “the quality of mercy is not strain’d. / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven”. These days seem to have found challenge to mercy. Times also challenged environmentally as to how it rains. I wonder if working at the former could be part of how we help the environment, even indirectly as it were, through change in ourselves that might impact how we are in the environment.
Toni
I am not wrong to have said this but it occurred to me it is just as true, maybe more true, to also think of mercy as dragging forgiveness from the future and into the present, avoiding much pain, hard work and failure and helping us all. (addendum added edit 30/8)