Dickens also shows that Captain Murderer has a detrimental impact on those around him. For example, the bride is uncomfortable with him, “disquieting the minds of bridal company”. This shows that males in Victorian times are in control of females when in the modern era everyone has equal rights. Dickens has embraced a lot of symbolism to describe the death of the brides. For instance, “I see the meat in the glass!” This is also a condition of Captain Murderer’s behaviour in that he is an eccentric person who makes death jokes and enjoys them. Captain Murderer’s performance is once again symbolised in the quotation, “Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering exceedingly,” which implies that he was unhurt or unruffled by the death of the bride. In the novel there are various places where Captain Murderer behaves bizarrely, “Planted with curious flowers”, “laughed at his ferocious practical joke” and “humorously resorted” are three illustrations of this point. Dickens uses these phrases to show that Captain Murderer acts in an abnormal manner. This is unusual for an upper class citizen.
His language and manner are upper class with an educated vocabulary. This is shown by, “They are called garnish for house – lamb,” Captain Murderer is a cunning character who is very sly and well organised. Finally, Captain Murderer dies a gruesome death, which in my opinion, he deserves.
In referring to the historical, Victorian context and how the original readers interpreted the characters we can see from the twenty first century viewpoint, that women were considered to be a child producing machines whose sole role in life was to run the house. They were also expected to be charming as a hostess and engage in feminine pursuits such as playing the piano and sewing. Women also knew their status and they followed the clearly defined social order. The role of women was to be housewives and companions to their fiancées. They were not considered to be capable of mature thought. In Captain Murderer this is reflected in the phrase “So she rolled out the crust, dropping large tears upon it all the time”. The original readers would have seen Captain Murderer purely as entertainment and exceedingly uncharacteristic of the social pecking order due to the fact middle class to upper class men weren’t supposed do such mischief as killing. This gave the upper ranks a bad name.
The other two characters, Sikes and Magwitch, are characters in other stories written by Dickens. They are similar to Captain Murderer because they are also criminals. The male characters in the short stories and novels are presented with a violent role.
Dickens primarily initiates Sikes in a conversation between Mr Bumble and Nancy.
“’I couldn’t come; I was kept by force.’”
“‘By whom?’”
“’Bill – Sikes’”
This shows that Sikes is aggressive, which is the first comparison to Captain Murderer and Magwitch. Magwitch’s aggressive character is showed in the phrase, “’Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’” Another comparison mentioned earlier is that they all are criminals. Captain Murderer and Sikes both kill women. In Captain Murderer’s case more than one woman. ”With a great iron on his leg.” Magwitch seems to have an iron chain, which demonstrates that he was doing time in jail. Sikes is a dangerous character, “drink of laudanum”, “I was to die by his hand” are two quotes, spoken by Nancy. This proves and shows that she knew that what ever happened, Sikes would resolve to kill her. For this reason she had to obtain a sleep – inducing drug for Sikes called “laudanum”. In the other two novels the characters are not known to be directly dangerous to the partner but prove to be so. “See the Captain cutting her head off;”
Dickens presents his males in the novels as having strength. Captain Murderer’s strength lies in him indirectly controlling his wives, by appearing to be nice to his wives initially. Magwitch’s strength appears to be in his escape from prison. Sikes’ strength appears when he slaughters Nancy.
