Temptation, Fall, Decline and Death: The Representation of the Fallen Woman in Adam Bede and David Copperfield

Abstract

In the nineteenth century a specifically Victorian narrative of fallenness was constructed which reflected many of the anxieties of the age; consequently the fallen woman became a Victorian obsession. The narrative was utilised in David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (1849-50), and in George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), with different aims and outcomes. Both authors had personal experience of Victorian society’s attitude to fallenness: Dickens, through his association with Urania Cottage and Eliot through her unconventional domestic life. This thesis investigates how contemporary discourse influenced the construction of fictional narratives of fallenness to variously confirm and challenge existing ideas about the nature of women and men, and their role and place in Victorian society. It explores the methods used to provoke understanding and sympathy for the plight of fallen women in each novel and speculates about the possible influence of the author’s gender on the representation of fallenness. The fallen women in David Copperfield were purposefully created in an attempt to change social opinion and authorise a programme of rescue through emigration and in Adam Bede the fallenness narrative was used by Eliot to facilitate and explore the development and expansion of sympathy. However, in both David Copperfield and Adam Bede the fallen woman narrative was primarily used to emphasise the agency and nobility of the male titular characters who achieved heroic status and social advancement through their association with the fallen women.