Peggotty’s marriage to Barkis is a modest domestic event in David Copperfield’s childhood, but its importance lies in the affection and change it holds together. David understands that Peggotty may make a life of her own, and gives her wholehearted consent; nevertheless, when the newly married couple leave for their home, he feels for the first time that he has lost her. The wedding thus registers both a welcome beginning for Peggotty and a small, painful alteration in the security David has known through her care.

Courtship and consent

Barkis’s proposal reaches David indirectly. After Barkis tells him that matters are all right, Peggotty asks what he would think if she were to consider marrying. David first worries that marriage might lessen her love for him. She responds with an embrace, and he comes to see the practical advantage as well as the emotional change: if Peggotty marries Barkis, the horse and cart will make it easy for her to come and visit him.

Peggotty’s reasons are not limited to convenience. She hopes marriage will make her more independent and allow her to work with a better heart in her own home rather than as a servant in another person’s household. She also expects to remain near the resting place of the people she has loved and lost, and imagines that she may one day be buried nearby. Her hopes place a new household alongside continuing attachments to the past, rather than in opposition to them.

David’s approval matters to her. Peggotty says she would not proceed if he were against the match, however often she had been asked to marry. David assures her that he is genuinely glad and wishes it for her. His response is a child’s loving permission, but it also confirms that their bond can accommodate a change in her circumstances. Peggotty says she has considered the decision from every angle and means to speak with her brother, while asking David to keep the matter between them for the time being.

A quiet wedding and a family holiday

The marriage takes place during a country outing. Barkis stops the chaise at a church and goes inside with Peggotty, leaving David and Emily together. David treats the moment as an opportunity to make the most of his remaining time before he leaves: he urges Emily to be affectionate and happy with him for the day, and makes extravagant childhood declarations about loving her and defending her affections. Emily laughingly regards him as a silly boy. Their exchange gives the outing a second, childlike romance, quite distinct from the settled adult decision taking place inside the church.

The ceremony is conducted quietly, as Peggotty wants. There are no witnesses; the clerk gives her away. When Barkis announces the new name, Clara Peggotty Barkis, Peggotty is briefly confused and then hugs David to affirm that her affection for him remains undiminished. The wedding changes her name and household, but the scene emphasizes continuity in how she treats the boy who has been entrusted to her care.

The party continues to a small inn on a by-road, where they eat comfortably and spend the day together. Peggotty seems entirely at ease, and the marriage does not make her distant or ceremonious with David: she still strolls with him and Emily. Barkis enjoys the day in his own unpretentious fashion, including a substantial tea after an ample dinner. The recollection’s ordinary details make the event a family celebration rather than a public spectacle.

Separation and lasting memory

After dark, the party returns to the old boat-house in Yarmouth. David imagines a child’s impossible future with Emily: that they might remain children, live among fields and trees, and never grow older or wiser. The contrast between this dreamy picture and Peggotty’s actual marriage places his youthful imagination beside the adult realities of attachment, home, and change. His fantasy belongs to the children; the marriage belongs to a practical household and a considered choice.

When Barkis and Peggotty drive away together, David experiences the separation more sharply than he expected. He feels, for the first time, that he has lost Peggotty, and is comforted by the fact that he can sleep under the same roof as Emily. Daniel Peggotty and Ham recognize his sadness and provide supper and company. The scene makes the emotional consequence of the marriage clear without suggesting that Peggotty has ceased to care for him: what David loses is the familiar arrangement of her constant presence, not her love.

The next morning, Peggotty comes to call for David as usual and takes him to her new home. He remembers its furnishings in detail, especially a dark wooden bureau whose folding top becomes a desk and holds a large edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. The book and Peggotty’s house remain inseparable in his memory. He also keeps a room at Peggotty’s for his visits, with his Crocodile Book beside the bed. These domestic recollections give the marriage an afterlife in the narrative: Peggotty’s new home becomes another place in which David is welcomed and remembered.

Meaning in David’s account

The episode is narrated retrospectively by David Copperfield, who records both the child’s immediate fears and the adult’s affection for the memory. He had worried that marriage might displace him, yet he is able to rejoice in Peggotty’s prospects and later to feel the loss of their old closeness. His account does not treat those responses as incompatible. Consent and sadness coexist because a loving relationship can endure while its everyday form changes.

That loyalty is also evident when Betsey Trotwood disparages Peggotty for marrying. David protests, recalling her devotion to him and his mother and insisting that Peggotty’s home had been a possible refuge for him. He defends her not by denying that she has married, but by testifying to the care she has given. The defense confirms the marriage’s place in David’s understanding of Peggotty: she is not merely a servant whose role ends when she forms a household of her own, but a faithful friend whose claims on his affection remain. The wedding’s quietness, David’s freely given blessing, and his later feeling of loss together make it a small but telling account of love surviving change.