great gentleman; until he gets what he wants! He marries rich young widowed women whom he slowly destroys with his odious 'firmness' 'Cold-hearted fraud' this is probably the most serious offense that is committed in David Copperfield because it actually means: trickery or scheme to deceive. In other words it is a crime, there were only a few occasions where this occurred and mostly they were to do with Heep: firstly the way the evil and slimy character deceived Mr. Wickfield accounts on several occasions with the faking of his signature to transfer documents, once he even managed to take all of Aunt Betsey's money that was supposed to have been her life savings and 'all' she had. Also under serious offense we see Littimer's name appearing once again for his robbery to the bank of England, it is even suggested that both Heep and Littimer were in on things together. But luckily, with the help of Mr. Dick and the spiritous Miss. Mowcher they are both caught and put into Mr. Creakle's prison. 'Sexual degradation' is also portrayed and again I'd like to step back and point out how important it is that we understand that these describing terms apply to real life, and therefore if they come up in Dickens biographical novel, he has been successful in describing how 'real' life is like. Mainly the characters who acted with sexual degradation are: Steerforth towards Emily by lying to her and basically tearing her away from her home, and Murdstone towards David's mother. 'Selfish exploitation' is done by quite a lot of characters mainly: Steerforth-thinks he's at the top, Heep-disguised beneath his 'umbleness he's actually very conceited, Jack Maldon-the way he thinks only of himself and takes full advantage of Doctor Strong's caring heart, the Old Soldier (Annie's mother)-again taking selfish advantage of Doctor Strong, and lastly Mr. Murdstone-thinking only for what's best for him; he even abandoned David to his Aunt Betsey whom was a complete ...
