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How does Charles Dickens depict marriage in Oliver Twist?
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Charles Dickens depicts marriage in Oliver Twist as complex, often reflecting the moral character of the individuals involved. In the marriage between Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, power dynamics are reversed, with Mrs. Bumble exerting control through emotional manipulation and physical aggression. This contrasts with traditional Victorian norms. Meanwhile, marriages like Rose Fleming and Harry Maylie's reflect goodness and traditional values, suggesting that the quality of a marriage corresponds to the moral nature of the partners.
One of the marriages that Dickens describes is the marriage between Mr. and Mrs. Bumble. Though Victorian men were typically expected to lead their wives, Mrs. Bumble leads Mr. Bumble. Mrs. Bumble attempts to use emotion as a weapon to gain power over her husband. This is seen when Mr. Bumble brings up Mrs. Bumble's previous husband who passed away. He says to her,
Your late unfortunate husband should have taught it you; and then perhaps, he might have been alive now. I wish he was, poor man!
Through this, he not only brings up a depressing topic (the death of her husband), but he also insults her by implying that he (Mr. Bumble) would rather not be married to her.
She immediately retaliates to his mean words through a display of emotion:
She dropped into a chair, and with a loud scream that Mr. Bumble was a hard-hearted brute,...
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fell into a paroxysm of tears
This effort does not work. He simply encourages her to cry more saying that it is "strongly conducive to health." For the moment, it seems as though Mr. Bumble wields more power over his wife. She cannot gain power over him through her emotions. However, she develops other tactics.
Next, she physically harms her husband in an effort to get him to submit to her authority. His hat is tossed to the other side of the room. Then, Mrs. Bumble begins to hurt her husband:
This preliminary proceeding laying bare his head, the expert lady, clasping him tightly round the throat with one hand, inflicted a shower of blows [...] This done, she created a little variety by scratching his face, and tearing his hair; and, having, by this time, inflicted as much punishment as she deemed necessary for the offense, she pushed him over a chair [...].
Next, she demands that he leave their house:
Get up! [...] And take yourself away from here, unless you want me to do something desperate [...] Are you going?
This time, she seems to overpower him. He responds submissively:
Certainly, my dear, certainly [...] I didn't intend to—I'm going, my dear! You are so very violent, that really I [...].
Dickens explains that Bumble is "fairly taken by surprise, and fairly beaten." He avers that Mrs. Bumble dominates over Mr. Bumble.
Though some of the marriages in Dickens' work, such as the romance between Rose Fleming and Harry Maylie, follow traditional Victorian gender stereotypes, other marriages, such as the Bumbles relationship, break these norms. Sometimes the female characters exert power and authority over their male counterparts.
References
There are two prominent depictions of marriage that Dickens draws in Oliver Twist The first is that marriage is necessary between young people who act so as to bring a baby into the world. This is clearly and forcefully shown in Chapter 1 in which Oliver's mother Agnes Flemming dies a tragic death at the hour of his birth and in which Oliver is swaddled in old worn out parish blankets that will mark and stamp him and dictate his life--for his whole life if a rescuer hadn't come along.
The second prominent way that Dickens depicts marriage is that it is generally (barring mitigating circumstances) commensurate with (i.e., corresponding to) the presence of goodness or badness in the people in the marriage. For instance, Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Coney are commensurately not good and they have a marriage in which each gets their just desserts--trouble. On the other hand Rose and Harry are commensurately good and have a marriage that brings them the joy of goodness. This brings up the point of mitigating circumstances in that Rose had a bit of a stain on her past, which however did not mar her innate character of goodness.