"The Redoubtable Betsey Trotwood": A Masculine Female in David Copperfield [1]

Contemporary notions of masculinity have been formed by females as well as males. This fact is becoming more widely acknowledged, particularly in gender studies, but still struggles for recognition. Judith Halberstam argues in Female Masculinity that although a great deal of attention has focused on the study of masculinity when it appears as a feature of male bodies, much less attention has focused on masculinity as a feature of female bodies. Masculine females must be actively claimed by those of us who see them. Otherwise, for various reasons and by various means, they disappear—or they are disappeared.

Such disappearances were effected in the past as they continue to be in the present. When masculine females are acknowledged, Halberstam asserts, they are sometimes assumed to be "a relatively recent occurrence," even "a product of feminist ideologies." But "[f]ew popular renditions of female masculinity understand the masculine woman as a historical fixture, a character who has challenged gender systems for at least two centuries" (45). According to Halberstam, a complete inquiry into contemporary masculinity is impossible unless we take into account the history of its manifestations in sites identified as female as well as male. I propose to continue the project begun in Female Masculinity by examining one instance of nineteenth-century female masculinity, found in canonical European fiction: Aunt Betsey Trotwood from Charles Dickens's David Copperfield.

"Perverse Presentism," the chapter of Female Masculinity that examines nineteenth-century gender identities, focuses primarily on close readings of two non-fictional situations: the 1811 court case Woods and Pirie v. Cumming Gordon, and the diaries of Anne Lister. However, the whole of Female Masculinity takes on a range of subjects for study, including fiction, theater, film, individual persons, and live performances. Halberstam names her approach, which combines "textual criticism, ethnography, historical survey, archival research, and the production of taxonomies" a "queer methodology" (10) and argues that such an approach is necessary because of the nature of her project:

Halberstam emphasizes that she is more interested in opening questions than closing them; her findings, particularly in the realm of nineteenth-century female masculinity, serve more as indicators of the research that remains to be done than as exhaustive study. My project, then, could be seen as one tile in the mosaic of queer methodology Halberstam proposes. I want to look closely at the fictional character of Betsey Trotwood and identify the attributes that cause me and other critics to call her "masculine." Further, I want to point out some differences between my and other critics' readings of this character—differences that may be attributable to contemporary fears of recognizing and naming the masculine female when we see her.

In what follows, the terms "masculine" and "feminine" will appear frequently. These terms are heavily context-dependent. Mid-nineteenth-century Victorian England tended both to polarize and essentialize gender roles (see references to Basch, Holbrook and Rowbotham, below). My reading of Aunt Betsey is carried out with these essentializing ideologies in mind. Therefore, when this work refers to some quality such as "authoritative, efficient" speech as "masculine," I am not arguing either that masculinity is necessarily characterized by authority and efficiency, or that masculine persons are more authoritative and efficient, in general. Rather, I am reading character traits in accordance with the ideologies dominant in the time and place at which Dickens wrote and published his novel.

Copperfield takes place in a historical setting that rigidly circumscribed gender roles, particularly for the middle class. David Holbrook refers to the situation as an "astonishing compartmentalization of the Victorian consciousness" (67). Françoise Basch's Relative Creatures, describing in detail the mid-nineteenth-century Victorian ideology of the sexes, explains that this ideology

According to Victorian gender-role stereotypes, then, women and men possessed particular natural traits which gave rise to appropriate types of daily work. Men, characterized by reason and lack of emotion, were responsible for work in the public sphere (and thus for a family's economic status); women, characterized by illogic and emotionality, were responsible for the private, including the moral, sphere.

Unsurprisingly, this ideology was deeply intertwined with the maintenance of then-extant distributions of power. In her study of nineteenth-century didactic fiction, Good Girls Make Good Wives, Judith Rowbotham argues that gender roles were part of a status quo of social standing and economic prosperity. Both men and women, Rowbotham goes on, were expected to work toward the common goals of maintaining this status quo by adhering to "belief in Queen and Country, Empire, trade and industry, the rule of law, all with a sound moral base and all pursued under the aegis of a reliable and fairly rigid class system" (18). The idealized woman, Rowbotham asserts, was "to become as professional in her sphere as a man in his; to cultivate her feminine talents in the emotional realm so as to maximize their usefulness within the domestic orbit. . . . Self-sacrifice, not self-sufficiency[,] was the mark of professionalism for women" (21).

Noticing the responsibility that gender ideologies imposed on people in Victorian England is instructive for two reasons. First, it reminds us that in mid-nineteenth-century England, gender roles acted both practically and symbolically to maintain societal distributions of power. Second, it reminds us that although Victorian England may have carried the essentialization and polarization of gender roles to an extreme, similar ideologies operate in Western societies today. Resistance to recognizing a masculine female, as I will discuss in more detail in my closing section, may be strong (even unconsciously practiced) because masculine females challenge long-held beliefs about what holds society together. Study of the masculine female therefore becomes, from my point of view, all the more urgent.

My reading of Betsey Trotwood begins with recognition of the synthesis Dickens achieves between her masculine and feminine qualities. As the following discussion will demonstrate, Aunt Betsey is an amalgamation of idealized and polarized Victorian gender roles. She has been read as a double for Miss Murdstone (Schroeder and Schroeder) and compared to a number of Dickensian "frumpy anti-male spinsters" (Slater 246). But, in a discussion of her gender role, the most compelling relationship to note is Dickens's doubling of this character with herself. Aunt Betsey is a study in contrasts. She is marked again and again as feminine in the roles of excellent housekeeper, nurturer, and patient self-effacer, but also as masculine in dress, carriage, and attitude; she is a mother to David, but also a father; she has been victimized by her husband and lives in fear of him, but also, because of her economic power, physically free of him; after announcing herself "ruined" she is financially dependent upon David, but in fact remains secretly independent; and she is somewhat mad, but also one of the most intelligent and clear-sighted characters in the book. Aunt Betsey appears to have two primary selves: one feminine, one masculine.

This is not to imply that her two "selves" represent a schism in her character, or that their co-existence seems to cause her much trouble. Rather, Dickens creates in Aunt Betsey a rich interweaving of masculine and feminine traits, and this interweaving continues to develop throughout the novel. Her evolution as a character is dramatic, but does not involve a simplistic progression away from one "side" and toward the other. Retaining both masculine and feminine features throughout the novel—although the particulars of their combination change over time—Aunt Betsey evolves into a fully realized character.

"As Between Man and Man"

Aunt Betsey is described physically at several points in the course of the novel. David's first glimpse of her (which occurs when he is about ten, although he has been told of her presence at his birth) does not give much detail about her features, except to say that they are "rather handsome" (187). [2] The description mentions the hardness of her expression and stance, then focuses on the masculinity of the details of her dress:

As Schroeder and Schroeder have pointed out, the emphasis of Betsey's masculine dress (as opposed to less removable features such as heavy eyebrows, which the also-masculine Miss Murdstone possesses) to some extent mitigates the masculinity of her character's visual effect (271). Also mitigating this effect is the fact that her feminine accoutrements, such as her bonnet, are mentioned fairly frequently. Interestingly, Betsey's bonnet appears in connection with some of her least feminine moments: when she physically attacks Uriah Heep, for example, David notes that the scuffle disarranges her bonnet (696). He also notes Betsey's general habit of "wearing her bonnet in any manner that happened to be comfortable on her head," which upsets Dora's properly feminine aunts (557).

Not only Aunt Betsey's physical appearance, but also her habits and speech, tend toward the masculine. Far from fulfilling the Victorian woman's duty to remain "controlled and contained and justified" in the spheres of traditional marriage and family (Rowbotham 52), when we first meet her she is reluctant to accept men in her life at all. The announcement that Clara Copperfield has given birth to a boy, not a girl, causes Betsey to abandon them both completely. A decade later, when David arrives at her Dover home, she rejects him on the basis of his maleness: "Go along! No boys here!" (183). (Although my reading is not a psychoanalytic one, it's hard to miss the "distant chop in the air with her knife" with which she accompanies this remark.) Shortly thereafter we learn that Janet, Betsey's domestic, is "one of a series of protégées whom my aunt had taken in to her service to educate in a renouncement of mankind" (187). [3]

Even after Betsey has begun parenting David and become a gentler, more flexible person—thus taking up the "mother" part of a good Victorian woman's role (discussed further below)—her "masterly" manner persists (208). It is she, for example, who effects the Micawbers' emigration to Australia (701). She continues her occasional unladylike physical assaults upon people who offend her, and is, David reports, "not at all disconcerted" by these scuffles (696).

A final but critical marker of Aunt Betsey's masculine character is her "indifferen[ce] to public opinion" (208). Most of the middle-class women in Copperfield are, in accordance with the expectations of their time, highly concerned with what people think of them. Mr. Chillip notes that "the ladies are great observers" (766), reminding us that women in Victorian society were extremely mindful of themselves and those around them. This was so because of social necessity: reputations rested upon rigidly calibrated codes of behavior. For example, according to Charles Petrie, "if a woman went in a hansom cab alone with a man who was neither her father nor her husband, nor old enough to be her grandfather, her reputation was irretrievably lost" (qtd. in Holbrook 61). A true lady had to be aware at all times of the figure she was cutting.

The more feminine women of Copperfield generally observe this ideologically dictated concern for public opinion. Dora's aunts are upset by Aunt Betsey's habit of wearing her bonnet askew because it signifies her willingness to behave "without deferring at all to the prejudices of civilisation" (557). Dora herself makes an announcement on her wedding day regarding how she wishes to be viewed: "If I have ever been cross or ungrateful to anybody, don't remember it!" (584). Even—indeed, especially—the fallen women, Emily and Martha, demonstrate concern for their reputations. After moving to Australia, Emily, somewhat redeemed (although not fit for marrying), is "cheerful" in private, but, as Mr. Peggoty reports, "retired when others is by" (798). And Martha, who loses her reputation before Emily does, serves as a visual device forecasting Emily's doom. First glimpsed by David as a shadow following Emily along the beach at Yarmouth, she looks "bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor" (305). In subsequent scenes, Martha continues to appear in conjunction with Emily, thus serving both as character and as reputation incarnate. Well aware of the shame that could spread from her to Emily—like a communicable disease—Martha offers this statement regarding the overwhelming force of public opinion: "The bitterest thought in all my mind was, that the people would remember [Emily] once kept company with me, and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died to have brought back her good name!" (630). Her later suicide attempt emphasizes the fact that, in Victorian society, a lady's reputation could become literally a matter of life and death.

Amidst all this, Aunt Betsey remains indifferent to her reputation as a lady. Her concern lies instead with particular people: Mr. Dick, David, Dora, and Agnes. She becomes a surrogate mother to each of these characters, and her character's evolution is driven by her growing ability to love and nurture. But her increased propensity for mothering, which fulfills part of the Victorian gender-role ideal for women, is not accompanied by an increased concern for public opinion. In other words, her unfeminine lack of interest in her reputation is complicated by her feminine focus upon loving human attachment.

Like her dress and behavior, Aunt Betsey's speech involves a complex interaction of masculine and feminine qualities. Dale Spender identifies stereotypically "masculine" language as "forceful, efficient, blunt, authoritative, serious, effective, sparing and masterful" (qtd. in Federico 324), and Aunt Betsey's is all these. She introduces herself to Clara Copperfield by announcing, "Miss Trotwood. You have heard of her, I dare say? ... Now you see her" (14). On the same visit, she takes charge of Peggoty ("Tea. Don't dawdle") (16) and terrorizes the hapless Mr. Chillip ("Nonsense!" "Ba-a-ah!") with "such a snarl at him, that Mr Chillip absolutely could not bear it" (19). Decades later, near the novel's end, her manner of speech still bears this masculine tendency: when David asks if she would like to travel to Canterbury with him, "'No!' said my aunt, in her short abrupt way. 'I mean to stay where I am.'" However, this conversation also demonstrates Betsey's increased capacity to show gentleness; a moment later, she is "softly patt[ing]" David's hand (768).

As with her other traits, Betsey's manner of speaking constructs a complex overlapping pattern of the stereotypically masculine and feminine. Early in her and David's acquaintance, when David has just come to live with her, she demonstrates that she possesses powers of language not just blunt and authoritative, but in some cases subtle and piercingly ladylike. When Mr. and Miss Murdstone storm the Dover house to reclaim David, Aunt Betsey first attacks them physically (while shouting "Go along with you! Go away!") and then, moments later, tells the Murdstones with a perfectly honed combination of proper form and insult, "I was not aware at first to whom I had the pleasure of objecting" (199).

Years later, when David has married Dora and discovered that she is not an ideal wife, Aunt Betsey curbs her tendency to judgment (as she did not with David's mother Clara, for whom she had little use). She counsels David:

Betsey is as good as her own advice. The weak Clara Copperfield she called "a wax doll" (13) and "a very Baby" (14) before abandoning her; Dora, by contrast, she names "Little Blossom" (an honest but kinder title than the ones Betsey applied to Clara) and cares for loyally. David comments, "I never saw my aunt unbend more systematically to anyone" (598). Here again, we see the mixing of masculinity and femininity in Aunt Betsey. She could speak bluntly to Dora (she seems to have a few fairly blunt opinions of Dora's intellect), but she has learned that in this case, forbearance and gentleness are called for.

Other characters in the novel notice Aunt Betsey's masculinity as well. Dora's aunts, for example, are discomfited by her unfeminine habits, which include "walking out to Putney at extraordinary times, as shortly after breakfast or just before tea." Eventually they become more accustomed to her and agree, David reports, "to regard my aunt as an eccentric and somewhat masculine lady" (557). When Aunt Betsey matches wits with the Murdstones, she ousts them handily with verbal broadside. Finally, after several verbal defeats, Mr. Murdstone bursts out in frustration, "[I]f you were a gentleman—" (204). The implied conclusion of the sentence is, of course, "I'd fight you."

Betsey's encounters with Dora's aunts and Mr. Murdstone are therefore paradoxical. They serve both to underscore her masculinity, since its existence, or potential existence, is referred to explicitly in both episodes; and also to distance her from it, since in both cases the tension arises precisely from the fact that she is not a man.

However, not all the characters in Copperfield experience tension when confronted with Aunt Betsey's female masculinity. Just before traveling to Australia, for example, Mr. Micawber announces that financial arrangements should be conducted between himself and Betsey "as between man and man" (709). This remark seems to discomfit David (as narrator), who hastily intercedes with a remark that appears on the surface intended to diffuse the significance of Micawber's statement but whose effect is—as with any comment a narrator makes—to emphasize it instead:

So much does Micawber relish this statement that he makes it once more in his very next line. Here, again, we are presented with the masculine female's doubled existence: she is like a man, but emphatically not a man.

Mother, Father, Creator

Many critics have commented upon Betsey Trotwood's mothering of David, [4] and this is an unarguable feature of her character: a brilliant housekeeper (193), she also takes David into her home and raises him, which eventually contributes to the tempering of her unaffectionate nature. Her skill as self-sacrificing nurturer is particularly noticeable after Dora's miscarriage. Working with "no sleep," Betsey is "always wakeful, active, and kind" (703).

However, Aunt Betsey could also be read as a father figure. Some of her parenting behavior is distinctly masculine in import. It is she who names David, making him over into "Trotwood Copperfield." This confers upon her character the dual masculine qualities of patriarch (applying her name to another) and, as Harry Stone points out, creator (bringing a "new" David into being).

Joseph Bottum, recounting the same naming scene, notes that "Trotwood" does not have the exact force of a patronymic, since Mr. Dick "interprets [Betsey's] proposal as a given name rather than a patronym [sic]" (437). The masculine effect of Aunt Betsey's act of renaming David is thus diffused. Also diffusing the effect is the fact that she has caused David to be, in Stone's term, "reborn"; for only a mother can give birth. [5] However, bringing another person into being is not the role only of a mother; it can also be the role of God or of an author. Authors in Copperfield are imbued with special masculine status, as is discussed at more length below.

After symbolically re-creating David and endowing him with a new name, Betsey sets about making him a man in a number of father-like ways. First, she controls the economic aspects of his education, even specifying at one point the amount she has paid for his articles: one thousand pounds (714). She insists upon paying David's board as well (212). Second, when she and David part at Mr. Wickfield's, Betsey delivers a Polonius-like speech, advising him, "be a credit to yourself, to me, and Mr. Dick, and Heaven be with you! . . . [Never] be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you" (214).

But the most significant step in Aunt Betsey's creation of David as a man is the day on which she appears in his London flat and announces, "I am ruined!" (461). The novel later reveals that this is a deliberate lie. Although Betsey did lose thousands of pounds because of Uriah Heep's evil machinations (not to mention her husband's extortion), with characteristic prudence she has retained two thousand pounds "by me" (715).  [6] David responds to her announcement of ruination by deciding to "go to work with a resolute and steady heart" (481). And although he commits some missteps, generally he manages to provide quite well for his small family.

After the news of Heep's treachery comes out, Aunt Betsey announces that she kept her spare two thousand pounds secret exactly because she wished to shape David:

Curiously, most critics seem willing to read Betsey Trotwood as a victim of bankrupt circumstances rather than as a deliberate shaper of David's character. Gail Houston, for example, refers to the time "[w]hen Betsey loses her small fortune" (220); Brenda Ayres describes "the aunt [having] lost all of her money" (23); and Chris Vanden Bossche states that David's transformation occurs "[w]ith Aunt Betsey's bankruptcy" (93). It's possible that these references to her losses might fail to include mention of her deliberate deception because they are brief. However, John Jordan's fuller explication of the situation similarly makes no mention of the fact that Betsey is only purportedly "ruined":

This description makes clear the effect of Betsey's supposed bankruptcy, but avoids mentioning that Betsey herself is deliberately bringing about that effect. Note that the subject of the first sentence quoted is the noun phrase containing "failure" and that this failure "removes her" from a position of influence—in Jordan's account—over David's life, when in truth Aunt Betsey is removing herself from that position.

Whatever the reason for these misreadings may be, still it seems clear that Betsey's "mothering" of David, while of course femininely charged, is far from being only feminine in impact. The feminine features of her actions (nurturing; sacrificing; withholding her opinions) are combined with masculine features (naming; establishing economic control; assuming authority over the path of another person's life). Further, these combined elements do not merely co-exist; they are intertwined. When Betsey arrives at David's flat and announces "I am ruined!", for example, she is simultaneously assuming the feminine posture of financial dependency and the masculine posture of creating him as a man.

Betsey Trotwood shows herself capable of creating not just David, but any number of people, in the course of the novel. She is a great one for renaming—and not arbitrarily renaming, but doing so in a way that reveals truth. Hardly has she barged into the Copperfields' Blunderstone home when she announces that "Rookery" seems inapt: "Why Rookery? . . . Cookery would have been more to the purpose, if you had had any practical ideas of life, either of you" (15). In this single move, as Vanden Bossche argues, she reveals the "division between two sets of values" in the novel: upper-class gentility and middle-class practicality (87). Similarly, she sizes up those around her and announces their true names: Murdstone becomes "Murderer" and "the jelly-lipped Chillip 'Jellips'" (Bottum 435), in each case revealing a central element of that character. Her function as true namer is of particular importance because Copperfield is a Dickens novel. Dickens paid meticulous attention to the naming of characters, and "[t]hat there was a right name he had no doubt" (Stone 191).

Aunt Betsey also names herself. Having separated from her husband, she resumes her maiden name. That this choice was made "arbitrarily" (435), as Bottum argues, is doubtful. For one thing, this is a Dickens novel, where names have talismanic power; for another, one of Betsey's functions in the book is to act as insightful re-namer, as discussed above. Therefore it appears that Betsey's decision to re-name herself must also be some kind of truth-statement about her character. Perhaps it is most appropriate for her to be single; perhaps she has been reborn as a new person after successfully managing to separate from her husband. Perhaps both. For Betsey has another creation project to carry out: a re-creation of herself after the tragedy of abuse. The specific nature of the abuse is never confirmed by Betsey herself, but lurking behind many of her motivations is the shadow-figure of the husband who, David tells us, "was very handsome" and whom she loved, but who beat her and once attempted to "throw her out of a two pair of stairs' window" (12). At times, Betsey's diction seems to create two versions of herself, pre- and post-separation:

Thus, not only has Betsey created a new self, who lives without a husband, she has killed the old one.

Numerous critics seem to read Betsey's post-separation relationship with her husband as quite passive in a way that accords with Victorian ideology of the feminine. Ayres, for example, calls her acquiescence to his blackmail "dutiful" (19). Indeed, Betsey is not in a strong position relative to her husband. David observes that her reaction to him is "terrified" (326), and in conversation with the unnamed man himself, she says, "[H]ow can you use me so? But why do I ask? It is because you know how weak I am!" (634). Here Betsey may be referring to one or both of two possible effects her husband has upon her. First, he frightens her because he has physically abused her in the past. Second, he still exercises considerable power over Betsey because she is his legal wife. Holbrook reminds us:

Undeniably, then, Aunt Betsey is under her husband's power, in accordance with both legality and with conventional Victorian gender ideology. However, we must acknowledge that in addition to her justifiably compliant and frightened reactions to him she has a strong and active reaction: she uses her money to keep him, and any damage he could do to her, at bay. In this manner not only does Betsey assume one masculine prerogative—to live alone as an adult—but another as well—to use money as a way of controlling her circumstances. Again, the feminine and masculine in her actions are intertwined. Passive acquiescence to blackmail can also be viewed as active maintenance of a solitary, hence independent, life through economic means.

Other characters are also created by Betsey Trotwood in greater and lesser degrees. Early in the novel she creates the idea of the girl she wishes Clara Copperfield to give birth to, promptly naming the fictional child "Betsey Trotwood" (16), who thereafter serves as a double for both David and, of course, for Aunt Betsey herself. Betsey, Sr., habitually refers to Betsey, Jr., for years afterward. At times her references are passing: "Betsey Trotwood . . . I don't mean your sister, Trot, my dear, but myself" (473). At other times she holds the fictional girl up as a moral ideal, admonishing David, "Be as like your sister as you can" (195) and "You'll be worthy of her, won't you?" (259).

Notably, Betsey's latter admonition is preceded by the statement, "Your sister, Betsey Trotwood, would have been as natural and rational a girl as ever breathed" (259). In this comment alone we find a complex system of gender imbrication. First, Betsey is here attempting to help David on his quest to "find himself" as a man. But in the process of doing so, she compares him to one of his female doubles in the novel, thus feminizing him. In addition, by assigning the quality of "rationality" to her fictional niece/daughter, Betsey Sr. is challenging received Victorian notions of masculinity as correlated with rationality and femininity with irrationality—not only on behalf of the made-up girl, but since that girl is an obvious double for Betsey Sr., on behalf of herself as well.

Mr. Dick doesn't owe his ontological existence to Betsey, but he does owe her his sanity—that is, the extent to which he can function sanely enough in society to get along. When telling David about Mr. Dick, Aunt Betsey explains his presence in a way that not only creates a measure of sanity for Mr. Dick, but also calls into question the sanity of a world that would fail to appreciate him:

(Note here that Betsey, who, as we have seen, is masterly with language, recklessly drops antecedents until the sane and the mad are mixed up grammatically as well as theoretically.)

Aunt Betsey doesn't merely announce Mr. Dick's sanity into being; she maintains it. When the Murdstones arrive at her house in search of David, for example, Betsey calls upon Mr. Dick's wisdom when she asks him, "What shall I do with this child?" (203). First, however, she must remind him sharply that she expects wisdom from him: "'Mr. Dick. An old and intimate friend. On whose judgment,' said my aunt, with emphasis, as an admonition to Mr. Dick, who was biting his forefinger and looking rather foolish, 'I rely'" (200). Mr. Dick responds to her admonition by standing up straight and attentively, and later, when Betsey asks him the pivotal question, he offers the opinion that David should be measured for a suit of clothes. This remark is, like many of Mr. Dick's pronouncements, half mad and half wise: on the one hand it is trivial, almost a non sequitur; on the other, it is an indirect way of saying, "You should keep him here." [8] The latter seems to be Betsey's interpretation of it, for her next statement to the Murdstones is, "You can go when you like; I'll take my chance with the boy" (204).

Aunt Betsey's relationship to Mr. Dick complicates her gender identity just as her relationship to David does. As with David, she nurtures Mr. Dick in motherly and even wife-like ways—providing a home for him, deferring to his judgment. But, again as with David, she acts as his creator—not just a motherly, birth-giving creator, but the creator of Mr. Dick as a whole, sane man. Moreover, she assumes masculine functions toward Mr. Dick by supporting him economically, by making sure through "sharp" admonitions that he maintains—in effect, practices—his sanity, and by offering the ultimate approval of his work in bringing the Strongs back together (612). Houston argues that David's "true masculine author-ity" (221) relies on the feminine foils of Mr. Dick and Dr. Strong, both failed authors. Similarly, Aunt Betsey's masculinity is in part constructed by the feminine foils around her—Dora and Agnes, at times David, and Mr. Dick.

Creators in Copperfield are authors. There is, of course, the Godlike creator behind the entire novel, Dickens himself. There is also David the narrator/author, who as a character pens the novel. Even Mr. Dick and Doctor Strong are authors, after a fashion, although not very good ones. By contrast, the women in the novel, like Traddles's fiancée Sophy, are copiers—or, still more debasing, as in Dora's case, merely a pen-holder. Houston argues in "Gender Construction and the 'Kunstlerroman'" that, although Dickens questions the rigidity of Victorian gender roles, and "why the self has to be designated as male or female" (214), the novel "retains the notion of the special nature of the male creator" (215). Copperfield, according to Houston, simply re-inscribes stereotypes of the time that posited women—particularly women writers—as shadows, copiers, poor imitators of men:

But this reading omits Betsey Trotwood as one of the novel's most triumphant creators. Importantly, she is not an author. Noticing the many hours David puts into his writing, she remarks with unusual naiveté, "I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was to write them" (789). Still, a careful reading of Copperfield cannot miss her central role as creator—not only in the sense of life-giving mother, but also in the fatherlike, Godlike, and/or authorlike sense of bestowing upon the people around her names, character traits, even destinies.

Reading and Seeing the Masculine Female

Even my most optimistic reading of David Copperfield cannot, of course, convince me that Dickens created this subtle and fascinating blend of the Victorian masculine and feminine in Betsey Trotwood for the purpose of exalting women or attempting to argue for an escalation of women's status in Victorian society. It would be a mistake to read Betsey as a "feminist" character in any intentional sense. However, neither would I argue that Dickens is a simple misogynist who is incapable of creating realistic female characters, as Kate Millet seems to in her discussion of Dombey and Son (another middle-period novel):

The character of Betsey Trotwood is inherently more interesting than either of these dichotomized positions would suggest. She is neither an idealized portrait of Victorian femininity, as Dora (in the helpless model) and Agnes (in the capable) are; nor is she an example of feminine ideology carried to a hideous extreme, like Miss Havisham; nor is she a masculine female unable to give love and therefore full of "virulent misanthropy" (Schroeder and Schroeder 270), like Miss Murdstone.

My main concern in this paper is not to attempt to read Dickens's mind or intentions. Instead, I want to look toward contemporary meanings that this (perhaps) dusty, over-assigned, canonical text might have. Betsey Trotwood has not yet been studied carefully as a masculine female. Even when her masculinity is explicitly acknowledged, her role in the novel tends to be framed by critics in ways that treat her feminine qualities as most essential to her character. For instance, Brenda Ayres's Dissenting Women in Dickens' Novels: The Subversion of Domestic Ideology takes as its central project "to identify where and when the Dickens' [sic] novel fails to promote [Victorian gender] ideology" (5). And yet it devotes only a short passage to close study of Aunt Betsey. Part of the passage parallels my own reading of Aunt Betsey's gender role, but at the end of the paragraph Ayres veers in another direction:

This paragraph's final line, which ends Ayres's specific focus on Aunt Betsey, delivers two simultaneous messages about Betsey's masculinity. First, the word "but" places the latter half of the sentence, "she has a feminine heart," into a position of emphasized significance. Second, the pairing of Betsey's masculine independence with a feminine heart implies that Betsey's masculinity is something more outward, while her core or essential self—her "heart"—is more feminine.

Phyllis Rackin cautions, "The questions with which we approach the past are the questions that trouble us here and now, and the answers we find (even when couched in the words of old texts) are the products of our own selection and arrangement" (37). Certainly, we should try to avoid uncritical application of contemporary understandings of gender and sex roles to characters who were created 150 years ago. But we should also avoid applying to them our contemporary fears of the masculine female.

My reading of Betsey Trotwood differs from those of other critics—even recent feminist studies like Ayers'—in its emphasis on and celebration of Betsey's masculinity. I think that our cultural fear of acknowledging masculine females is often a hindrance for critics. If one is so attached to the unity of "female" and "feminine" that to say a woman looks or seems "masculine" can easily sound like an insult. When she appears, the masculine female is often seen as a menacing or ridiculous figure. Much more often, though, she doesn't appear (or isn't recognized) at all. In looking at the figure of Betsey Trotwood, we are examining patterns of behavior in Victorian England, or more specifically, in its fiction. While the behavior of Betsey might not be characterized as masculine in our society, the fear of the masculine woman surfaces today in our culture's anxiety about masculine-appearing women.

Sandra Bem, in The Lenses of Gender and a more recent article commenting on her book, argues that "the allegedly natural links that have long been thought to exist among sex, psyche, and sexuality have been constructed, in part, by more than 100 years of gender-polarizing theorizing" (330). Her article sets forth a new ideal vision to replace these old, outworn ones. Bem proposes a world in which the sex/gender/desire unities are overthrown by a proliferation of combinations and categories. "Not only can I envision a way to do this," she asserts, "I can already see it happening in the world around me. You can see it, too, if you look under the heading of either identity politics or multiculturalism" (334). I agree with Bem heartily. However, I would add the qualifier that we must be willing to acknowledge what we see—even if it's unfamiliar, even if it's frightening at first. Masculine females are not an easy sight for most people, whether embodied [9] or in fiction. This may be one reason, or even the main reason, that Betsey Trotwood's masculinity has been under-read so far by critics, including those who praise her character and discuss it at some length. Seeing masculine females, and acknowledging that we do, can bring us closer to the "utopian fantasy" (330) Bem proposes. It also requires that we give up our dedication to stable arrangements of sex and gender.

For this reason we owe Betsey Trotwood, and ourselves, a "redoubting," or re-examination, of the significance of her gender performance in David Copperfield. Despite the dramatic polarization of gender in Victorian society, in this character stereotypically masculine and feminine traits reside together successfully (if not always peacefully) and produce one of the best "good people" of the novel (Tambling xvii). Dickens's creation of Betsey Trotwood seems to have worked an alchemy that defies gender stereotypes of the 1850s, and indeed defies gender stereotypes today. The intricate combination of masculinities and femininities in Betsey Trotwood give rise to one of the truest characters in the book. As David proposes her during his drunken revel [10]—"Miss Betsey Trotwood, the best of her sex!" (337).

Works Cited

Ayres, Brenda. Dissenting Women in Dickens' Novels: The Subversion of Domestic Ideology. Contributions in Women's Studies 168. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1998.

Basch, Françoise. Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel. New York: Schocken, 1974.

Bem, Sandra Lipsitz. "Dismantling Gender Polarization and Compulsory Heterosexuality: Should We Turn the Volume Down or Up?" The Journal of Sex Research 32 (Fall 1995): 329-334.

Bottum, Joseph. "The Gentleman's True Name: David Copperfield and the Philosophy of Naming." Nineteenth-Century Literature 49 (March 1995): 435-455.

Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. Ed. Jeremy Tambling. London: Penguin, 1996.

Federico, Annette R. "The Other Case: Gender and Narration in Charlotte Bronte's The Professor." Papers on Language and Literature 30 (Fall 1994): 323-45.

Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke UP, 1998.

Holbrook, David. Charles Dickens and the Image of Woman. New York: New York UP, 1993.

Houston, Gail Turley. "Gender Construction and the 'Kunstlerroman': David Copperfield and Aurora Leigh." Philological Quarterly 72 (Spring 1993): 213-36.

Ingham, Patricia. Dickens, Women and Language. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1992.

Jordan, John O. "The Social Sub-text of David Copperfield." Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 14. New York: AMS P, 1985.

Myers, Margaret. "The Lost Self: Gender in David Copperfield." Gender Studies: New Directions in Feminist Criticism. Ed. Judith Spector. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1986. 120-132.

Rackin, Phyllis. "Historical Difference/Sexual Difference." Privileging Gender in Early Modern England. Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies 23. Ed. Jean R. Brink. Kirksville: Northeast Missouri State UP, 1993.

Rowbotham, Judith. Good Girls Make Good Wives: Guidance for Girls in Victorian Fiction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.

Schroeder, Natalie E., and Ronald A. Schroeder. "Betsey Trotwood and Jane Murdstone: Dickensian Doubles." Studies in the Novel 21 (Fall 1989): 268-78.

Slater, Michael. Dickens and Women. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1983.

Stone, Harry. "What's in a Name: Fantasy and Calculation in Dickens." Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 14. New York: AMS P, 1985.

Tambling, Jeremy. Introduction. David Copperfield. By Charles Dickens. London: Penguin, 1996. vii-xxii.

Vanden Bossche, Chris R. "Cookery, not Rookery: Family and Class in David Copperfield." Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction 15. New York: AMS P, 1986.

Margaret Price received an MFA from the University of Michigan and is currently working toward a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her work has appeared in publications including Ms., Hues, Michigan Quarterly Review, Bitch, and Forum. Acknowledgments: Many thanks to Amy Small, Kennan Ferguson, Bob Keefe, and Nicole Roux

Notes

1. 1The phrase "the redoubtable Betsey Trotwood" appears in Slater (243), although with only one of the meanings implied here.

2. The term "handsome" was commonly applied during the nineteenth century in Britain to good-looking men and women. Dickens may have intended the masculine, or androgynous, echo, but the term as applied to Aunt Betsey would not have been especially surprising to a Victorian reader.

3. Most critics read Aunt Betsey's separatism as a reaction to her husband's treatment of her, which is indicated to have been abusive. Basch, for example, argues that her early under-development is a "neurosis created by her disastrous marriage" (147). The extremity of Betsey's aversion to men therefore causes her to remain, paradoxically, dependent upon them. Although she eschews men, they are still the source of her strongest beliefs and actions. It's important to note, however, that as Aunt Betsey's character evolves, she is rewarded not with a new and better husband, but with widowhood. Slater points out (in a discussion of Miss Tox from Dombey and Son) that allowing an independent spinster to remain single and happy may be a gesture of respect, on Dickens's part, toward that character (246).

4. See, for example, Ayers (17); Basch (147); Ingham (125); and Slater (175).

5. Dickens appears to have been highly aware of the gender complexity set up by making the men in Copperfield the authors and creators (thus, symbolically, in a way "mothers"), even referring to the book itself as his "favourite child."

6. Even when carrying out this maneuver, the truthful Aunt Betsey seems to avoid telling a complete lie. Probably the two thousand pounds "by her" are, when she first descends upon David and announces herself ruined, in the suitcases upon which she sits. "I prefer to sit upon my property," she says, and "All I have in the world is in this room" (460-61).

7. That he be "self-denying" is an interesting goal for Betsey to set out for David. It seems to play into the constant tension that exists in his character between masculinity and femininity, which has been amply explored by Dickens critics. Two of these studies are Gail Turley Houston's "Gender Construction and the 'Kunstlerroman'" and Margaret Myers's "The Lost Self: Gender in David Copperfield."

8. Although this possibility is not spelled out in the text, the surrounding scene at Betsey's house makes it plausible. David, having arrived at his aunt's wearing filthy rags, has lost his clothes (Betsey burned them for sanitary reasons) and for several days has been walking around the house swaddled in shawls. The symbolism of this suggests that David is a baby being readied to begin life anew. Adding to this symbolism are Mr. Dick's first two suggestions about what to do with David: that he be washed (186) and put to bed (191). As with the suggestion about having David measured for a new suit of clothes, each of these ideas is prompted by Aunt Betsey and then received by her with applause.

9. Anyone who is, or spends time with, a masculine female will be familiar with the prolonged stare that often greets her appearance. When confronted with female masculinity, especially female masculinity that makes immediate sex/gender classification difficult, people tend to simply stop and look until they have figured it out (or think they have). Although outside the scope of this study, it's interesting to note that reactions to the textual masculine female seem to tend in the opposite direction—that is, readers fail to notice her presence—while in the case of the present/embodied masculine female, the spectator often has trouble looking away.

10. This remark must be read carefully, with an eye to its possibly doubled significance. David's drunkenness affects his toast in two different ways. First, drunkenness in Western literature (especially post-Shakespeare), like dream states, is a non-rational territory, and thus lends a certain unreality to events that occur under its influence. However, again as with dream states, drunkenness in Western literature—as the humorous saying in vino veritas indicates—tends to be associated with otherwise unspeakable truths.