Heep tries to break up Annie Strong's friendship with Agnes

Uriah Heep’s attempt to break up Annie Strong’s friendship with Agnes Wickfield turns jealousy into a means of control. During Agnes’s visit to Doctor Strong’s household, Heep tells David Copperfield that he wants to keep watch over the woman he loves and then announces that he intends to stop Annie’s friendship with Agnes. His disclosure makes explicit how he regards Agnes’s attachments as obstacles to his designs, while his careful insinuations try to draw David into his suspicions.

The Occasion and Heep’s Jealousy

Agnes visits Doctor Strong with her father, Mr. Wickfield, for a fortnight. She has arranged a nearby lodging for Mrs. Heep, whose rheumatism calls for a change of air; the next day, Uriah arrives with his mother and takes advantage of the visit to walk with David in the garden. The arrangement puts him close to Agnes and her household, but his explanation of that closeness is possessive: he says that someone in love becomes anxious to keep an eye on the beloved person.

When David asks whom he is jealous of, Heep first denies having any particular male rival, then acknowledges that his jealousy concerns a woman. He insists that he has never been interested in women generally, but names Annie Strong as the exception. His distinction is revealing: the immediate target is not a romantic rival but a woman whose friendship with Agnes may, in his view, affect Agnes’s judgment. Heep treats attention to Agnes as a reason to monitor and restrict the people around her.

A Grievance Recalled as Evidence

Heep explains his hostility by returning to the time when he was an umble clerk. Annie, he says, repeatedly welcomed Agnes to her house and was friendly with David, but looked down on Heep himself, whom she considered beneath her notice. He adds that Mr. Maldon also treated him as inferior, ordering him about when he came to the office. These recollections establish Heep’s sense of having been dismissed by people of higher social standing; they do not establish wrongdoing by Annie or a plot against him.

Heep nevertheless turns the old slight into a present justification for intervention. He describes Annie as the sort of woman who would encourage Agnes to pursue a higher kind of match, and presents himself as someone who has long watched and understood what others overlook. His repeated appeal to humble status sits in tension with his claim to see through other people’s motives. The grievance is personal, but he gives it the shape of foresight: because he believes he was once disregarded, he now claims special insight into the influence Annie might exert.

The Attempt to Isolate Agnes

Heep openly says he disapproves of Annie’s friendship with Agnes and will try to put a stop to it. He admits to a grudging disposition and says that he wants to keep intruders away and avoid being plotted against. His words make the objective plain: to narrow the circle around Agnes and prevent a friendship he believes may work against his intentions. He does not describe a specific action already taken to end the relationship; the evidence here records his declared purpose and the reasoning he offers David.

His suspicions are also directed at David. He accuses him, in effect, of being so skilful at drawing people out that Heep has been induced to disclose more than he intended. When David challenges his habit of imagining that others plot as he does, Heep replies that he has a motive and pursues it with determination. The exchange frames his effort not as a passing outburst but as calculated self-protection: he imagines opposition, then uses that imagined danger to defend interference of his own.

Mr. Maldon at the Gate

As Heep presses David to understand his meaning, he points to a horseman ringing at the gate and asks whether it is Mr. Maldon. David confirms that it appears to be him. Heep then doubles over in silent laughter, his hands between his knees; no sound escapes him. The timing joins his old complaint about Mr. Maldon to his insinuations about Annie, but it does not prove that Annie and Mr. Maldon are conspiring, or explain precisely what Heep takes the arrival to mean.

David is repelled by Heep’s behavior and turns away, leaving him bent over in the garden. That response marks the limits of Heep’s attempted persuasion: he has made his distrust legible, but has not won David’s agreement. The episode presents Heep’s bid to break Annie and Agnes’s friendship as part of a broader effort to control access to Agnes, grounded in resentment and suspicion. It establishes the threat he intends to pose to their relationship without confirming whether he succeeds.