Mr Murdstone challenges David with the following ‘appalling sum’: ‘If I go into a cheesemonger’s shop, and buy five thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each, present payment’.
The solution to this problem, believe it or not, provides the key to the whole novel!
The required payment is £93 and 15 shillings.
Ninety-three is the numerological value of AGAPE in Greek letters, and agape is a form of nonsexual love. The most famous Biblical definition of the term is the following from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:
‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is
not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices
with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always
perseveres.’
Count them up and you'll find that there are 15 characteristics listed, seven positive and eight negative. Hence, it’s to this well-known passage that Dickens is subtextually pointing.
‘Love is patient’ so perfectly sums up the relationship between Traddles and Sophie (“you have so much constancy and patience, Traddles”) that clearly these characters are intended to be the very epitome of this virtue. Traddles: “I dare say ours is likely to be a rather long engagement, but our motto is “Wait and hope!” [‘Love . . . always hopes’.] We always say that. “Wait and hope,” we always say. And she would wait, Copperfield, till she was sixty—any age you can mention—for me!”
‘The patience and hope with which [Mr Dick] bore these perpetual disappointments’.
Mr Peggotty, in his heroic efforts to recover Little Emily, is a monumental example of love that ‘always perseveres’. “I’m a going to seek my niece through the wureld . . . I’m a going to seek her. That’s my dooty evermore.” [Love ‘is not self-seeking’.] “My unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!”
Mrs Steerforth loves her son obsessively, at least as much as Mr Peggotty loves Little Emily [“What is your love to mine?”], but while Mr Peggotty instantly forgives his niece and is prepared to seek her at the world’s end, proud Mrs Steerforth says: “Let him not put her away now, and he never shall come near me, living or dying, while I can raise my hand to make a sign against it, unless, being rid of her for ever, he comes humbly to me and begs for my forgiveness . . . This is the acknowledgement I WILL HAVE.” [Love ‘is not proud . . . it keeps no record of wrongs’.] Perfect loves exists between the pair while they’re in harmony, but as soon as there’s contention, the flawed nature of Mrs Steerforth’s love is revealed.
Martha is a prostitute who makes loves for money. She’s lost all self-respect, feels degraded in her own eyes and contemplates suicide—but her love for Emily, who was kind to her, determines her to search as perseveringly as Mr Peggotty, and this new purpose in her life, and above all, the trust that David and Mr Peggotty place in her—‘“Will you trust me?” she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.’—revive her. “I could not do what I have promised, for money,” she replied. “I could not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away the only certain thing that saves me from the river . . . I am to be trusted, for the first time in a long while, with my miserable life.”
Amusingly, it's Uriah Heep (Agnes apart) to whom the terms apply most completely on the surface, before his true nature is revealed! Uriah exaggerates the agape virtues to the point of absurdity. He makes greatest (and most ludicrous) play of not being proud or boastful, but also displays the other characteristics such as excessive patience and fawning ‘politeness’. [‘Oh, really, Master Copperfield,’ he rejoined—‘I beg your pardon, Mister Copperfield, but the other comes so natural, I don’t like that you should put a constraint upon yourself to ask a numble person like me to your ouse.’] He exults at one point ‘Oh, what a reward it is to be so trusted in’. He also projects the negative aspects onto David [“you envy me my rise, do you?”]. When Mr Micawber exposes him, however, his true nature emerges and he is seen to be everything that agape is not e.g. ‘the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed; the leer with which he exulted . . . in the evil he had done’ [‘love does not delight in evil’]. The self-seeking Uriah, in fact, is the embodiment of hatred. “Copperfield, I have always hated you.” (Hate at first sight.) There are a number of reasons why he would seek the hand of Agnes, but hatred is at the heart of his ‘love’. Nothing would hurt David more, he knew, than for him to marry Agnes. And he has a pathological hatred of David. Indeed, Uriah does everything in his power to wound him, whether it be stealing money from his aunt or repeatedly calling him ‘Master Copperfield’ when he knows that David’s greatest insecurity is being perceived as ‘young’.
Agnes is a true and perfect example of agape love, ticking every box: she’s patient and kind, modest and humble, polite and even-tempered. She always seeks to protect David, always trusts in him, always hopes for the best, and always quietly and selflessly perseveres in her love. She also encourages him to adopt the same qualities [“I think I am earnest and persevering?” “I am sure of it,” said Agnes. “And patient, Agnes?” I inquired, with a little hesitation. “Yes,” returned Agnes, laughing. “Pretty well.”], which is why he extols her as he does: “If you cannot confidently trust me, [says Agnes] whom will you trust?” “Ah, Agnes!” I returned. “You are my good Angel!”
It’s Mr Murdstone who poses the ‘appalling sum’ so clearly it has an ironical bearing on his own, and his sister’s, behaviour; indeed, he later changes the cheeses into canes. Mr Murdstone uses love as a tool and a weapon. He worms his way into girls’ affection (“who so smooth and silky as Mr. Murdstone at first!”) in order to later control and tyrannise them. It’s no coincidence that Mr Murdstone and Mr Creakle are mutual friends (“He knows me, and I know him.”) since they both have a sadistic streak and love to terrorise and bully. The number 93, in Greek numerology, equates not only to Agape but also to Thelema, which means Will—and Mr Murdstone’s determination to impose his will on others is his defining characteristic. (Interestingly, the followers of the philosophy of Thelema, originated by Aleister Crowley in 1904, greet each other with “93” and their “93 93/93” stands for “Love is the law, love under will.” See Wikipedia.)
