“a very sharp show of teeth”
and
“and saw him having his teeth filed.”
The deaths of the innocent young women are concealed by the fairy tale element which is followed through into Captain Murderer’s cannibalism. Back in the 19th Century cannibalism was very uncommon and therefore seemed fairy tale like. Nowadays we are all very aware of the macabre actions of some people which is known as cannibalism. Even though the 19th Century was not home to cannibalism it did have it’s fair share of indecent crimes and criminals such as Jack the Ripper.
Yet again the folk tale theme is strongly reinstated, this time in the story’s repetition:
“married in a coach and twelve”
and
“’They are called garnish for house-lamb.”
Here Charles dickens has illustrated the repetition and shown the vicious circle of Captain Murderer’s ritual that he makes before every time he welcomes a new bride into his abode.
The way that Charles Dickens introduces the story and Captain Murderer leads the audience to believe that this was a common and normal activity for Captain Murderer. This emphasises the idea of the Victorian hypocrisy, that Captain Murderer goes unjustly unpunished just because of his higher status and wealth. Sadly the women are perceived as victims because as a consequence of noone seeking punishment for their deaths. The audience are not suffused with sympathy as a result of these women not emerging to be real. The audience are distracted by the bizarre killings committed by Captain Murderer and, subsequently, we forget innocent, young women that are being murdered.
Our first actual interest in the victim is awakened upon the arrival of the dark twin. Therefore, the audience would have an inkling that something productive was going to happen; is the dark twin going to break the vicious cycle?
Even though we know that Captain Murderer has to die, we are also aware of the fact that during this hypocritical century that the story was written the dark twin would have been punished if she survived.
As a result of the dark twin blowing up Captain Murderer:
“…he blow up with a loud explosion”
she has over come her victim status, sacrificed her own life and become a hero. The dark twin has also shown the tendencies of a villain which are made evidently clear:
“she laughed a terrible laugh.”
Throughout the whole of “Captain Murderer” the folk tale element is present, however, “Sikes and Nancy” is different. “Sikes and Nancy” is totally realistic in that it is set in urban London and all the crimes are real, on the contrary, there are some traces of the super natural in the narrative.
In this story the role of the women is discordant to the role of the women in “Captain Murderer”. Nancy is recognised by the audience as a villain. She is also perceived by her friends as a villain because they think she has been untrustworthy and two-faced:
“A gentlemen and a lady that she had gone to of her own accord before, who asked her to give up her palls,……..which she did.”
Right from the start of the story the similarities between “Sikes and Nancy” and “Captain Murderer” are apparent-the villains’ traits are transparently clear, consequently, they are easily identified:
“Fagan, receiver of stolen goods”
and
“…Sikes the housebreaker.”
The predominant difference between “Sikes and Nancy” and “Captain Murderer” is that Nancy, however, is a member of a criminal gang unlike the dark twin in “Captain Murderer”. Even though Nancy is a villain she is a victim in the eyes of the gang and she is a victim in the eyes of the Victorians’ due to their beliefs that women are inferior. As a result of Nancy being associated with criminals, her morality is concealed and subsequently, Fagin is left wondering why she was talking to respectable people.
Because of this stereotyped view of women the reader would have thought that she had no choice but to be part of the criminal gang.
Nancy is left with no money because she does not have a proper job and therefore, relies on Fagin. Nancy shows an implication to the audience that Fagin looked after her when she says to Mr Brownlow:
“Fagin! I will not do it! I will never do it! Devil that he is, and worse than devil as he has been to me, as my teacher in all Delivery, I will never do it.”
and
“…and I’ll not turn upon them, who
might-any of them-have turned upon me, but I ill never do it.”
The women in “Captain Murderer” and “Sikes and Nancy” are on two parallel paths in which they have all been imprudent and foolish in their choices of lovers. Bill Sikes has the characteristics of a horrible man who is violent and somewhat self-centred, consequently he does not make a good partner for Nancy.
Our sympathies lie with Nancy when she reveals:
“I have been a liar, and among liars from a little child, but I will take your words.”
Here she is a victim but also a villain, however, we assume it is not her fault.
The tendencies of the female hero in “Sikes and Nancy” replicate those of the female hero in “Captain Murderer”; by doing something wrong they become a hero. Nancy had become a hero by not revealing the truth about her villain companions:
“But nothing would
have induced her to compromise one of her own companions.”
In both stories the women are victims of mistrust and are too loyal to the ones they think they love. Fagin has his suspicions about Nancy because she has been seen talking to a member of the upper class. The audience is fully aware that Nancy is trying to do the right thing however Dickens never actually solidifies that. Unfortunately, not to Nancy’s discretion a spy sent on the orders of Fagin brought back some information which was unjust and had no solid evidence, however this did not seem to matter. Ultimately, Nancy had fallen victim of falsehood.
The definitive highlight of the story is when Nancy is brutally murdered. Even though both women in both stories become victims and die there is a significant difference in their surroundings. The brides in “Captain Murderer” were ghoulishly killed off in contrasting luxurious surroundings:
“silver pie dish”
and
“golden rolling pin”
however Nancy was murdered in filth:
“let us both leave this dreadful place…..
seized a heavy club, struck her down.”
Nancy had died a highly undesirable and atrocious death. She was suddenly awoken from her sleep at her most exposed and powerless and was beaten to death:
“he beat it twice upon the upturned face”
“seized a heavy club, struck her down”
“And there was the body”
After the death of Nancy another similarity between “Sikes and Nancy” and “Captain Murderer” is that victim dies but as a result becomes a hero by in some getting the villain killed. In “Sikes and Nancy’s” case Bill Sikes is subsequently chased and punished with an unpleasant death because of his actions. The variation between the two deaths is that in “Captain Murderer” the fantasy element is present:
“…he began to swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over spots, and to
scream. ……
….. he blew up with a large explosion.”
On the contrary Sikes’ death was one of a more practical theme:
“The noose was at his
neck; it ran up with with his weight; tight as a bowstring, and swift as the arrow it speeds. He fell five-and-thirty, and hung with his open knife clenched in his stiffening hand!!!”
The audience finds it easier to sympathise with Sikes’ because he is portrayed as a fragile human being acting impulsively on instinct. The audience find it hard to have empathy for and sympathize with Captain murderer because he has an unrealistic character.
A fascinating characteristic of “Sikes and Nancy” is the way in which Dickens describes London as a person and one of Nancy’s friends in which she knows it well and therefore has helped her. In “Sikes and Nancy” London is like an overseeing person who on looks everything but never gets caught up in things:
“Midnight had come upon the
crowded city. Upon the place, the night-cellar, the jail, the madhouse: the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness, upon the rigid face of the corpse and the clam sleep of the child.”
Here London is personified. Nancy does not fear the night as she knows it like the back of her hand and can use to her advantage unlike the upper class citizens however on this night London can not save her.
Dicken’s dramatizes Nancy’s death by using a clever role reversal because he has the sunrise peering in on her showing that the night has gone and not been able to save her:
“The bright sun burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly- colored glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed it’s equal ray. It lighted up the room where the murdered women lay. It did. He tried to shut it out , but it would stream in. If the sight had been a ghastly one in the dull morning, what was it, now, in all that brilliant light!!”
Just like how Nancy uses her knowledge of her surroundings to help her so does Bessie in “The Black Cottage”. “The Black Cottage” begins with a more pleasant and nice description of a location in comparison with “Sikes and Nancy” however there are noticeable qualities in the surrounding that display danger for e.g. the isolation of the cottage:
“..I lived alone with my
father, in the midst of a moor in the West of England.
And
The nearest habitation to ours was situated about a mile and a half off,..”
The focal point of this consistent story line in “The Black Cottage” is the solutions and actions of Bessie when presented with danger. Bessie is faced with danger on a number of occasions, subsequently making her a victim, however, there are many times she overcomes this status with an answer to her problem and therefore becomes a hero.
Right from the very beginning of the story the audience have and indication that there will be danger or Bessie because she is in possession of some bank notes. We can feel that she is not comfortable with the money when she says:
“I did not feel quite easy at having a pocket – book full of bank notes- left by her in my charge.”
The audience are over flooded with anxiety when we first see that Bessie might be in trouble:
“…saw two men walk into the kitchen….
He bore a very bad character for everything but wrestling…. His companion was a stranger…..wicked looking.”
Our suspicion grows of these two men when they are described as typical villains. It is made transparently clear to the audience that these two men are intending to do something bad for they are described as villains:
“…They wanted my father…..I told the two that my father
was gone out, and that I did not expect hi back till the next day.”
The audience are now fully aware that Bessie has made it clear to them that there is noone at home to protect her which means these two conniving men have assumed it would be easy to brake in. Bessie is overwhelmed with regret and knows full well what she has done:
“The words were hardly out of my mouth before I repented
of having spoken them.”
Bessie is awoken by a sound and immediately the audience have concluded that it is the two men:
“The sound that woke me was a loud bang at the front door…in a
minute or less there came a second bang, buder than the first.”
Bessie has taken the role of a victim here because it is her house that is being broken into and she is the vulnerable one in this situation. There are similarities in this story compared to “Sikes and Nancy” and “Captain Murderer” in that all the villains intentions are apparent from the start. The name of the central villain in “The Black Cottage” is Shifty Dick and this attracts negative attention just like the name of the villain Captain Murderer in “Captain Murderer”.
Bessie tries to conquer her status as victim by showing the villains she is not afraid of them:
“..you cowardly villains! I screamed at them through the door. You think you can frighten me…. You ragamuffin thieves.”
Despite Bessie showing she is not going to be overruled the danger increases for her. Shifty Dick goes to an extreme measure when he takes out a knife and starts to hack trough the thatch roof. Bessie finally surrenders her status as hero after all her brave and bold acts and flees the house into the darkness of the countryside:
“…I saw the heavy, hairy hand of Shift Dick, armed with the knife, come through after the fallen fragments….. I lost courage at last…..I must trust to the night and the thick darkness, and save my life.”
