Uriah Heep and Agnes Wickfield

Uriah Heep and Agnes Wickfield are bound by a relationship in which Heep’s apparent deference conceals coercion. He seeks power over Agnes and aspires to her, yet the narrator presents his desire as inseparable from his inability to value her virtues. When Heep’s control begins to slip, his false humility gives way to hostility, exposing the gulf between the gentle conduct he performed and the domineering relation he had imposed on her.

A relationship shaped by concealed power

For much of their association, Heep’s control is not expressed as open force. His familiar performance of servility obscures the fact that Agnes is living within reach of a man who has acquired power over her. David Copperfield later recognizes that Heep’s deference was false and his pretences hollow, but says that their meeting at the crisis of Heep’s authority reveals the extent of his hypocrisy more sharply than he had understood it before. The contrast matters to Agnes’s story: the threat has been present beneath a manner designed to make Heep seem harmless and humble.

Heep’s ambition toward Agnes is part of that coercive structure, not evidence of mutual intimacy. As he watches his power over her recede, his rage exposes the ugly passions behind his aspiration. David judges that Heep could neither appreciate Agnes’s virtues nor care for them. His pursuit therefore reveals a claim to her, rather than understanding of her; the collapse of his authority brings that distinction into view.

Threats against Agnes and her father

When Agnes enters the gathering at Heep’s home, she appears less self-possessed than usual and visibly worn by anxiety and fatigue. Her earnest cordiality remains, but David observes Heep watching her. The scene places her composure beside his scrutiny: she arrives with the strain of the crisis upon her, while he still looks for ways to maintain command.

Once Heep recognizes that those around him are acting together, he calls the meeting a conspiracy and attempts to intimidate its participants. His threats make Agnes’s position especially clear. He tells her that, if she loves her father, she must not join the opposing group, and warns that he will ruin Mr. Wickfield if she does. He thus turns her filial devotion into leverage: the person she most wants to protect becomes the means by which Heep tries to silence her. His threats also extend to Betsey Trotwood, whose husband he says he could damage professionally, and to Mr. Micawber, his own clerk. Agnes is not an incidental witness to his fall; Heep addresses her as someone whose choices he believes he can still govern.

The mask falls

Heep’s response to resistance exposes the character of the relationship more completely than his former performance of humility did. He accuses the gathering of buying over his clerk and conspiring against him, then couples those accusations with personal insults and renewed threats. David describes the sudden dropping of Heep’s mask: malice, insolence, hatred, and satisfaction in the harm he has done become visible together. His desperation does not soften the threat. Even at the point when his position is failing, he tries to frighten Agnes by invoking her father’s exposure to ruin.

David is particularly shocked by Heep’s anger at losing his hold over Agnes. He had long known that Heep hated him, recalling the marks left by his own hand on Heep’s cheek; but seeing Heep’s gaze turn to Agnes makes the danger of her former proximity newly vivid to him. The episode reveals not only Heep’s hostility but the unequal terms on which he had approached her: his desire for her had coexisted with an inability to respect the qualities that define her.

Agnes after Heep’s control

The aftermath measures the change in Agnes’s circumstances through her father. Thomas Traddles reports that, in Agnes’s absence, Mr. Wickfield has considerably improved. Freed from the oppressive influence that had fastened upon him and from the apprehensions under which he had lived, he is hardly the same person. His ability to concentrate his memory and attention on business has also recovered to a degree, allowing him to help clarify matters that would otherwise have been difficult to resolve. Heep’s removal thus has consequences beyond the end of his immediate threats: it helps restore the father whose vulnerability he had used against Agnes.

The financial reckoning leaves Mr. Wickfield able to wind up his business and agency-trust without a deficiency, but with only a small likely surplus for support, even if the house is sold. Traddles raises the possibility that Mr. Wickfield might retain the estate agency, with help from friends. Agnes rejects that course. She wants her father free from trust and responsibility, and describes devoting her life to him as the hope she has held for years; taking their future upon herself becomes her next happiness. Her choice is not simply a response to Heep’s defeat. It shows Agnes defining the future on terms opposite to his control: she accepts responsibility for her father’s care, while refusing to preserve the burdensome arrangement from which his release has become possible.