Take a good look at the woman on the right. That is Violet Kemble Cooper, in her signature role as bitch spinster Jane Murdstone in Selznick's masterful 1935 adaptation of Dickens' "David Copperfield." Her sister, Lillian, got to play Bonnie's Nurse in "Gone With The Wind."
Jane Murdstone is a perfect Bitch Of The Week. There is not a feminine, maternal bone in her body, and I have always believed, though it is never hinted at, she and her brother, the equally monstrous Edward Murdstone, are having some kind of incestuous relationship. Or, maybe, she is just psychologically attached to him, because, face it, girls, with her looks and personality, what man or woman would tolerate her?
The Murstones' appearance forms some of the grimmer pages and scenes of this story. But they finally get theirs, when exposed by Aunt Betsey. Dickens piles it on thick, yet he cannot help in being funny, also, because Miss Murdstone retorts back to Aunt Betsey the famous line, "I never heard anything so elegant!"
What the hell does that actually mean? It reveals Miss Murdstone for the dumb bitch she is. Written out, the words plainly indicate a complimentary remark. Yet, she spits them out with such vitriol they turn into a hateful epithet.
Not much different from the idiots one sees on "Judge Judy." Jane Murdstone prides herself on her intelligence, when really she has none to speak of. And Aunt Betsey knows exactly what kind of woman she is.
If anyone was wired for Spinsterhood, it was Jane. She was probably hateful, as a child.
Dickens never tells how she ends up, but I can tell you. She later becomes Dora's governess, and David rescues her from Jane. In the end, she is probably left out in the sun to dry, like a wrinkled prune!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She hasn't got far to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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