Emily escapes from Littimer

Emily Peggotty’s escape from Mr. Littimer’s confinement is a decisive break from the control he describes: she gets out at night through a window he had secured and vanishes. The account establishes both the means of her escape and the uncertainty that follows, while presenting her actions through the hostile testimony of the man who had confined her.

Background and Confinement

Mr. Littimer recounts the episode while explaining what happened after he carried out a commission concerning James Steerforth. He says that Emily reacted violently when he told her James had departed. In his account, he then describes a further message entrusted to him and portrays Emily’s response as proof of her bad character. David Copperfield rejects that judgment, making clear that Littimer’s characterization is contested rather than an impartial description of Emily.

Littimer says Emily was kept under close confinement and that objects she might use to injure herself or another person were taken away. The evidence does not establish the full circumstances or duration of this confinement; it records them as Littimer’s explanation for the precautions taken before her escape.

The Escape

According to Littimer, Emily got out during the night by forcing open a window lattice that he had nailed shut. She descended on a vine trained below the window and was not seen or heard from by him afterward. The account gives a concrete route out of confinement, but no witness to the escape or independent confirmation of what happened once she had left.

Reported Fate and Significance

Littimer speculates that Emily may have drowned herself or received help from boatmen and their families. Neither possibility is confirmed. His mention of her familiarity with people on the beach suggests a possible connection through which she might have found assistance, but it cannot establish that she did. At this point in the report, Emily’s escape is certain only within Littimer’s account; her whereabouts and fate remain unresolved.

The episode also exposes the limits of the language used to describe Emily. Littimer treats her resistance as evidence against her, while David’s response refuses that interpretation. The escape therefore marks not only her disappearance from his control, but a sharp conflict between the captor’s self-justifying account and the narrator’s sympathy for the woman he calls ruined.