Little Old Ladies 2: “Janet, Donkeys!”—Dickens’ Betsey Trotwood and Sundry Other Imposing Females

Did you miss me, dear Internet?

After a long absence I return to my blog refreshed and ready to return to my derailed character analysis series, “Little Old Ladies.” What started out as a comparison of all the Imposing Aunts in fiction slowly expanded to include the other non-matriarchal elder females in fiction.  And what I found when I widened this lens was fascinating. Remember, most literature written pre-1960’s—which also happens to be the majority of my reading material—looks at women from a prefemenist point of view, a perspective that women were in some way weaker than men. And the reality was not much different from that perspective: according to law and social convention, women’s property was their husband’s, their rights were constricted according to what their male relatives allowed them to practice, and their lives were not their own to control.

So although characters like Catherine de Bourgh, the various “mean” aunts with names like Dahlia, Agatha, Augusta, etc., and Miss Havisham are all “negative” characters, in one way they are positive: they show strong women standing up for themselves, exercising powers that women of their day weren’t supposed to have.

“I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.  I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had shrunk to skin and bone.” 

~ Great Expectations, Chapter 8

Unlike most of the “little old lady” characters I’ve been comparing, Miss Havisham isn’t our usual “imposing matriarchal figure.” But in a way, her influence does overshadow the entire plot of Great Expectations. She takes Pip away from his low-born roots, having him educated and allowing him and his family to believe that she will be his benefactress. When Pip suddenly comes into an inheritance of mysterious origin and is enabled to become the gentleman his benefactress has groomed him to be, everyone connects the dots back to Miss Havisham. 

Yet Miss Havisham has a much crazier and crueler plan in action: a sort of revenge against mankind (and by mankind I mean mankind) for being jilted at the altar. Her entire being is consumed with using Pip as a guinea pig for her protégé Estella to practice on, to become the greatest femme fatale and bring about the downfall of men. Her psychological influence not only wrecks Pip’s outlook on his future, but also Estella’s. Miss Havisham realized the suffering she’s caused by her twisted and misdirected desire for revenge, but it’s too late for her. Too late, perhaps, for all the characters concerned, since Dickens for once leaves the ultimate fate of Pip and Estella open-ended.

“She and his father had been at variance from his earliest remembrance. To sit speechless himself in the midst of rigid silence, glancing in dread from one averted face to the other, had been the peacefullest occupation of his childhood.” 

~ Little Dorrit, Chapter 3: Home

Mrs. Clennam of Little Dorrit is pretty much a one-dimensional caricature of brittle, unforgiving puritanism, of malice disguised as morality. Chair-bound in her decrepit house and business building, she greets her son Arthur with coldness and suspicion when he unexpectedly returns from his business dealings abroad. She downright disowns him when he starts asking questions about his father’s deathbed confessions.

Whatever wrong the departed Mr. Clennam did, it has to do with the new companion she’s picked out of the gutters of Marshalsea prison, one Amy Dorrit. Mrs. Clennam has rigid, but unrealistic, ideas about her duty and justice, about repaying the debts of sin that Mr. Clennam left behind. She doesn’t believe in human forgiveness, and so doesn’t seek it from anyone, believing God will be her judge. Yet in the end, faced with full disclosure of her own sins to the world, and realizing that she is helpless, unloved, and alone, she is much like Miss Havisham, realizing too late that had she let go of old prejudices and hurts, she might have been freed to love and be loved by Arthur, Amy, and many other people. 

So far—and I’m sure there are many other elderly ladies in Dickens’ vast repertoire we could talk about—we’ve looked at two women who have to various extents gone off the deep end after being wronged in the distant past. Mrs. Clennam was consumed with bitterness and self-righteousness after a wrongdoing of her husband, and Miss Havisham set out to seek revenge on all males after one ruined her matrimonial hopes. But Dickens does not leave us just with embittered old women. There is also Betsey Trotwood, hardcore aunt of the titular hero of David Copperfield:

“The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady, over the garden fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell rigidity of figure and composure of countenance that could have belonged to nobody else.” 

~ David Copperfield, Chapter 1: I am Born

Betsey Trotwood may be the most memorable character for me from David Copperfield. My mom read it to me for school, and even above David’s own life, starting with his stepfather’s cruelty, to the bleak description of his boarding school, to his orphanhood, to his adulthood where “only his hair is drunk,” to the obligatory love triangle of the dazzling Dora and the pure and saintly Agnes, to the sniveling villainy of Uriah Heep, to Traddles and his skeletons…even the protagonist David himself is overshadowed by the giant personality of Betsey Trotwood. 

If I ever become an old curmudgeonly aunt, I hope I become Betsey Trotwood. She comes into the story right away, just as David’s mother is about to go into labor. Mrs. Copperfield is a rather saintly, timid creature, who trembles at the sight of her imposing sister-in-law. Miss Betsey herself comes to visit her poor widowed sister-in-law in her time of need—and, as a side mission, to proclaim herself godmother to her newborn niece who will be named Betsey Trotwood Copperfield. 

Except it’s not a Betsey, but a David who is born. This disappointment disgusts Miss Betsey, who then disappears from the narrative until Chapter Thirteen, by which time David’s fortunes have gone quite downhill. His mother has died, he’s had a bad time at school, he’s lost pretty much everything, and has run away to his aunt’s home in the last ditch attempt at survival. There he finds a house filled with eccentrics, not the least of which is Miss Betsey herself, who carries on her gruff interrogation of her nephew, interspersed liberally with interruptions of “Janet! Donkeys!” and battles with the aforementioned beasts of burdens who keep trespassing on her property.

In many ways, Miss Betsey is the no-nonsense, hard-as-nails version of a fairy godmother to David.  Though she often attributes any of his failings to the coverall reason that “Betsey Copperfield wouldn’t have done such a thing,” she comes to David’s rescue, giving him a home, family, and protection in his direst hour of need. She fends off the villainous stepfather and his sister in a valiant manner that makes one want to cheer aloud as they read the passage. 

And what makes this all the more tremendous is that Miss Betsey herself is not some untouchable character who has not suffered personally. Before the events of this novel, we find out that as an old maid she finally married a younger man named Trotwood, who was the sort of good looking cad that only marries old maids for their money. It is implied that not only did this fiendish Mr. Trotwood beat Betsey, and of course fight with her, but also once tried to throw her out a second-story window.  Betsey eventually paid him off, and he went off to India and died there. 

Miss Betsey retakes her maiden name, lives as a prosperous single woman in her own eccentric ways, and yet unlike Mrs. Clennam and Miss Havisham, she doesn’t become bitter about the past. She doesn’t isolate herself, but rather surrounds herself with other generous-hearted eccentrics. And unlike Miss Havisham who withers away with hatred of mankind, she takes David Copperfield into her family and protects him from the world.In many ways, Miss Betsey Trotwood allows the bad events in her life to make her stronger. Her suffering doesn’t embitter her; on the contrary, it causes her to be more compassionate toward others’ suffering.