Clara Peggotty and Barkis

Clara Peggotty and Barkis’s marriage is presented less through courtship than through its established habits: Clara Peggotty’s watchful care, Barkis’s elaborate secrecy about his money, and their shared presence at his deathbed. The marriage also connects a modest household to a wider circle of affection and obligation. Barkis’s final recognition of Clara Peggotty and David Copperfield, followed by the revelation of his will, gives that domestic bond a lasting material consequence.

Marriage and the household bond

By the time the narrative returns to Clara Peggotty as Barkis’s wife, their marriage is an established part of David Copperfield’s world. David had been Clara Peggotty’s young charge, and when Betsey Trotwood disparages her for marrying, he protests with unusual force. He remembers Clara Peggotty as devoted to him and his mother, present at his mother’s death, and someone whose home he had regarded as his own. His defense makes clear that the marriage is not merely a change in Clara Peggotty’s status: she remains a central source of shelter and loyalty in his life.

That bond between Clara Peggotty and David Copperfield also shapes how their marriage is seen. David’s attachment to her is so strong that he had considered seeking refuge with her, though he feared that his dependence might burden her because of her humble station. His account places her marriage within a network of care that reaches beyond the couple themselves. Later, at Barkis’s bedside, Clara Peggotty presents David to him as the boy who had carried messages that brought them together, bringing their shared history into the final scene.

Care and the hidden box

Barkis’s attachment to money is one of the marriage’s most distinctive domestic details. As illness makes movement painful, he tells Clara Peggotty and David that he has a little money somewhere and asks to be left alone for a nap before looking for it. Clara Peggotty knows the routine: he uses the same pretext before producing even a single coin from his store. She explains that getting out of bed to reach his box causes him severe pain, yet she does not interrupt what she regards as a generous impulse. Barkis manages the painful effort, returns to bed, and presents a guinea as if he has just found it after waking.

The private joke of the box persists as his condition worsens. Once Barkis can no longer creep out of bed to open it, or reassure himself of its safety with the divining rod David had seen him use, the box is placed on a chair beside him. He embraces it day and night, and when Clara Peggotty and David see him near death, his arm is still lying on it. His last words before he opens his eyes are an explanation: Old clothes. The box is therefore both a practical hiding place and a recurring emblem of the guarded habits Clara Peggotty has learned to recognize and accommodate.

The deathbed and final recognition

At the bedside, Clara Peggotty tries to reach Barkis through their shared history. She calls him her dear husband and reminds him that David is present, the boy who carried the messages he sent. Barkis is at first mute and senseless. Mr. Peggotty describes the dying man as going out with the tide, and the image frames the death as a gradual departure rather than a sudden interruption.

When Barkis briefly opens his eyes, Clara Peggotty again directs his attention to David. Barkis stretches out an arm, smiles, and says, "Barkis is willin'!" He dies as the tide is ebbing. The phrase recalls the earlier language associated with the couple’s coming together, giving their marriage a circular close: the man who once signaled his willingness now speaks the familiar words at the edge of death. Clara Peggotty’s presence, her efforts to make him recognize David, and Barkis’s final response give the scene its emotional center.

Bequest and the marriage’s legacy

After Barkis’s death, the box’s contents reveal the scale of the saving hidden behind his seemingly small displays of money. For years he had carried the box on his journeys and disguised its ownership with a written story that it belonged to Mr. Blackboy and was to be left with Barkis until called for. His money amounted to nearly three thousand pounds. He left the interest on one thousand pounds to Daniel Peggotty for life; after Daniel Peggotty’s death, the principal was to be divided equally among Clara Peggotty, Emily Peggotty, and David Copperfield, or whichever of them survived. The rest of Barkis’s property went to Clara Peggotty, who was named residuary legatee and sole executrix.

The will turns Barkis’s concealed accumulation into support for a family circle that includes his wife, her kin, and the boy whose messages had helped bring the couple together. David reads the document aloud and helps Clara Peggotty account for the property and arrange her affairs. In this aftermath, the marriage’s legacy is not confined to the couple’s private habits or Barkis’s last words: it also takes the form of an inheritance administered by Clara Peggotty and shared, in part, with the people bound to their household by affection and history.