The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To ELIZABETH HUSSEY GOULD,1 13 MARCH 1852

Text from transcription by Alan Dilnot of MS in the possession of Phil Sparnenn.

Tavistock House, London

Thirteenth March 1852

Madam

I respect your confidence I assure you, and am sensible of the trust you repose in me. It is not misplaced. 

If I endeavour – with no very savage hand, I hope – to correct what I perceive to be the errors of the more demonstrative kind of women at this time,2 I do so, quite as much for the sake of the cause they damage (the cause of their own sex) as with any other object.

There is very little difference in the main, I dare say, between you and me. I except your notion that men are all oppressors and women all oppressed, because, although such knowledge as I have been able to acquire of the world teaches me nothing of the sort, I feel, after reading your letter, that it is not a point to be argued between us.

Faithfully yours

CHARLES DICKENS

Miss Hussey Gould

• 1. Elizabeth Hussey Gould (1822-96), governess and family carer. Her father, the Rev. John Gould, Rector of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, was imprisoned for debt for many years, but given leave to conduct services at Beaconsfield at the weekends. In his absence Elizabeth Gould ran the parish, not without difficulty. See Alan Dilnot, 'Dickens and Elizabeth Hussey Gould: Women’s Rights, Debtors’ Prisons and a New Dickens Letter', Dickensian, 112.2 (2016): 130-7.
• 2. The first number of Bleak House appeared on 1 March 1852, containing Chapter 4, 'Telescopic Philanthropy' and CD’s satirical portrait of Mrs Jellyby. CD had also attacked Women’s Rights campaigners in a recent article, 'Sucking Pigs', Household Words 4 (8 November 1851): 145-7.