Mrs. Dunkirk

Mrs. Dunkirk, Bulstrode’s first wife, was a simple, pious widow whose trust helped make possible the marriage and inheritance at the center of Bulstrode’s concealed past. Her wish to find her missing daughter temporarily held that future in question; after she accepted that the search had failed, she married Bulstrode without a reservation of property, unaware that the daughter had already been found and hidden from her.

Identity and Circumstances

Mrs. Dunkirk was left alone after her son died and, not long afterward, her husband, Mr. Dunkirk, also died. The family’s only daughter had earlier run away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage. Her whereabouts were unknown to her mother, who regarded her as lost both to God and to her parents. Though the daughter was known to have married, she had disappeared from view.

Mrs. Dunkirk inherited the wealth associated with her husband’s substantial trading business. She did not know the precise nature of the trade, and the narrator presents her as a simple, pious woman rather than as an informed participant in its operations. That combination of wealth and limited knowledge placed her in a position of dependence on Bulstrode, whom she came to believe in and revere as a religious guide.

Search for Her Daughter and Marriage to Bulstrode

The loss of her son intensified Mrs. Dunkirk’s hope of recovering her daughter. She imagined that her daughter might have a child, and wished to reclaim her in both a familial and religious sense. Finding her could also have created a channel through which property might pass to the daughter and perhaps to several grandchildren. Mrs. Dunkirk therefore insisted that efforts to locate her daughter be made before she would marry again.

Bulstrode agreed to the search. Advertisements and other inquiries were tried, but Mrs. Dunkirk eventually believed that her daughter could not be found. She then consented to marry Bulstrode without reserving any part of the property. Her decision rested on the apparent failure of the search, not on knowledge that the daughter was alive or on an informed choice to exclude her from the inheritance.

Concealment and Consequences

The search had succeeded: the daughter had been found. But only Bulstrode and one other man knew this; the other man was paid to keep silent and leave. Mrs. Dunkirk remained unaware that the person she was seeking had been located. The separation was therefore sustained not by the daughter’s continued absence alone, but by Bulstrode’s concealment of what he knew.

After Mrs. Dunkirk married him, Bulstrode comforted her with the probability that her daughter had died. The reassurance helped him preserve her trust while preventing the truth from reopening the question of the property. The narrative shows how he justified the decision to himself as serving what he took to be God’s purposes, rather than what was owed to the daughter. Mrs. Dunkirk’s faith in him thus became part of the means by which her family wealth remained under his control.

Narrative Significance

Mrs. Dunkirk appears through the account of Bulstrode’s earlier life, which resurfaces after nearly thirty years of provincial respectability. Her story exposes the human cost obscured by his religious self-justification: a grieving mother was allowed to believe that her missing daughter was beyond recovery, although Bulstrode knew otherwise. The gap between Mrs. Dunkirk’s trust and Bulstrode’s knowledge makes her history a key measure of the past he had tried to recast as providential and morally acceptable.