| Chapter 1: | The Early Years |
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The presence of this character in Maria Graham’s narrative is also familiar in Victorian fiction. It is the type of human being who is idealised and felt to be too good for this world and therefore has to die. Its function is to represent a model to the protagonist. Dickens’ Little Nell and Paul Dombey come to mind as good examples of this device, but most of all Helen Burns, in Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Maria’s cousin Mary serves the purpose of balancing the text. Even though there are fewer negative characters than kind ones in the memoir, the former, who will be discussed shortly, weigh so strongly in the narrative that the need to counter their effect appears obvious. It is important to note that the whole of cousin Mary’s characterisation is built in relation to Maria herself, the protagonist of the narrative. It is her own recollection or perhaps the textual portrait of Cousin Mary that the reader can apprehend, and her merit is measured against the heroine’s own inferior qualities. Still, it is the narrator’s qualities that are the norm, be they great or small. Most of the other characters in the story are presented in this manner, but with a strong reliance on physical appearance as a signifier of personal traits, even for the minor characters, a device that again prefigures Dickens. There is for instance the detailed description of the coachman who drives her and her father from London to Abingdon in Oxfordshire, where she is to attend school. Even his name, Blewitt,4 appears to have a certain significance, the same as his coach, which
It is easy to see the resemblance between Maria’s discomfort at her cramped circumstances and the situation David Copperfield experiences at about the same age when he is sent away to school by Mr Murdstone.5