Barkis is willing

“Barkis is willing” is Mr. Barkis’s roundabout proposal to Clara Peggotty and one of the novel’s most distinctive recurring expressions. First passed through David Copperfield as a message, the phrase lets Mr. Barkis communicate his wish while avoiding a direct declaration to Peggotty herself. Its repetition carries the courtship from uncertain hint to marriage; years later, spoken again at Mr. Barkis’s deathbed, it becomes a final, familiar utterance whose comic origin is shadowed by bereavement.

The Message and Its First Delivery

On David Copperfield’s childhood journey, Mr. Barkis asks about Peggotty’s cooking and learns that she does the work herself. He then turns the conversation toward David’s promised letter to her. Rather than asking David to announce a proposal outright, Mr. Barkis tells him to add that “Barkis is willing.” David repeats the words as though they were merely a message, asking if that is all. Mr. Barkis confirms them solemnly, making the contrast between the phrase’s plain wording and the seriousness with which he entrusts it to David part of the joke.

The note David writes to Peggotty expands this curious instruction into a small performance. It reports his safe arrival, sends his love to his mother, and then states, “Barkis is willing.” A postscript stresses that Mr. Barkis particularly wants Peggotty to know the message, repeating it in capitals: “BARKIS IS WILLING.” The escalation records the insistence of a man who has barely spoken to the woman he hopes to marry, while preserving the indirectness that makes the phrase memorable. Mr. Barkis, meanwhile, falls silent after David agrees to deliver the message; his few words have been entrusted to another person, but his reserve remains intact.

A Proposal Explained Through Repetition

The expression becomes clearer when Mr. Barkis later complains that Peggotty has not answered. David is surprised to discover that an answer was expected. Mr. Barkis explains the code: “When a man says he's willin',” that man is waiting for an answer. He has, he says, been waiting ever since. The statement converts the earlier message from an eccentric remark into a proposal, while showing how long Mr. Barkis has allowed his hope to rest on a phrase Peggotty may not have understood as he intended.

Even then, Mr. Barkis will not tell her himself. He insists that he has no call to do so and has never said six words to her, but asks David to explain that he is waiting for an answer. The boy is recruited again as an intermediary. Mr. Barkis supplies a miniature imagined exchange: David will tell Peggotty that he is waiting; she may ask what for; David will then repeat the original declaration. He accompanies this “extremely artful suggestion” with an elbow nudge, letting physical mischief briefly puncture his serious manner. Afterward, he writes “Clara Peggotty” in chalk inside the cart, apparently as a private memorandum. The name, recorded where he can see it while driving, gives the courtship a material trace as well as a verbal one.

From Private Joke to Marriage

When David and Peggotty travel to Yarmouth, Mr. Barkis draws David aside and assures him that “it was all right.” He clarifies that it was Barkis, and Barkis alone, who had been willing, and credits David with having first made matters right. The exchange is not a new proposal so much as a comic report of its successful conclusion: the phrase that had once awaited an answer now belongs to a settled relationship. Mr. Barkis’s cryptic explanations still require David to follow his meaning, preserving the indirect style through the moment of confirmation.

The marriage itself is conducted quietly. Peggotty wants it done without ceremony or witnesses, and the clerk gives her away. On the drive afterward, Mr. Barkis asks what name he had written in the cart and what he would write now. David guesses incorrectly; Mr. Barkis supplies the new version, “Clara Peggotty BARKIS!”, and laughs so heartily that the chaise shakes. The joke turns his earlier chalked memorandum into a before-and-after record: the name that once noted his hope now marks the marriage accomplished. Peggotty is briefly confused by his announcement but hugs David to show that her affection for him has not diminished. She is soon at ease, and the day passes comfortably, with Peggotty remaining herself rather than becoming a different person through marriage. The phrase thus marks Mr. Barkis’s courtship without implying that Peggotty’s care for David has been displaced.

The Phrase at the Deathbed

The expression returns in a radically changed setting when Mr. Barkis is dying. Peggotty addresses him, and he faintly calls her “C. P. Barkis,” naming her through the initials and married surname that the earlier joke had celebrated. When she points out David, Mr. Barkis opens his eyes, tries to stretch out his arm, and speaks with a pleasant smile: “Barkis is willin'!” The familiar wording no longer solicits an answer or carries a proposal through a go-between. It is his last recognizable declaration, spoken directly in the presence of the people bound up with the story of his courtship and marriage.

The narrator immediately connects the death to the tide: it is low water, and Mr. Barkis goes out with it. The phrase’s recurrence beside this departure gives it a double force. Its return recalls the peculiar restraint and humor of his courtship, but the deathbed scene makes that remembered language intimate and elegiac. Mr. Barkis’s final words are not explained or replaced by a new statement; the old expression is sufficient because its meaning has accumulated through the note, the unanswered proposal, the marriage, and the name Peggotty bears. A comic formula survives its original occasion and becomes a compact remembrance of a marriage.

Narrative Function and Resonance

“Barkis is willing” works through delayed interpretation. David first transmits the words without understanding that they require an answer; the later conversation reveals the proposal hidden inside them. Repetition makes the reader revisit the earlier message with fuller knowledge, while Mr. Barkis’s refusal to speak directly supplies both the comedy and the narrative delay. Chalk on the cart, the capitalized postscript, and the changed surname give the words successive physical and social forms: private note, marital joke, and remembered bond.

The expression also depends on a contrast between Mr. Barkis’s reserve and his persistence. He claims not to have said six words to Peggotty, yet he continues to wait for a reply and carefully coaches David in how to secure one. The wording is simple, but its meaning is established by repetition, circumstance, and the other characters’ actions around it. At first it means that Mr. Barkis is prepared to marry; at the end, spoken as he is dying, it carries the weight of a shared history. The novel lets the same phrase retain its comic plainness while acquiring tenderness and finality.