BULL’S-EYE IS THE dog belonging to Bill Sikes, the vicious thug in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. The dog is often assumed to be a bull terrier (the 2007 Random House Vintage edition of Oliver Twist has a white bull terrier on the cover, and the current Wikipedia entry for Bill Sikes claims that “he owns a bull terrier named Bull’s Eye”). The source of the error is probably the 1968 musical film Oliver!, in which the role of Bull’s-eye was played by a barrel-bodied bull terrier named Butch. In the Dickens novel, however, no breed is mentioned; Bull’s-eye is described as “a white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places.” Early illustrators like George Cruikshank drew Sikes’s companion as a scrappy, underfed mongrel. Incidentally, the modern, long-faced bull terrier is a hybrid that didn’t exist in 1838, when Dickens was writing Oliver Twist.
In the novel, man and dog are bound together, both victims of a cruel upbringing, both unpredictably violent. The two brutes share more than similar-sounding names; Bull’s-eye has “faults of temper in common with his owner,” yet the pair are inseparable, and Bull’s-eye, who sleeps at Sikes’s feet or by his side, is always ready to obey his master’s whims. The Artful Dodger describes Bull’s-eye as the “downiest of the lot” in Fagin’s establishment, adding: “He wouldn’t so much as bark in a witness-box for fear of committing himself; no, not if you tied him up in one and left him there without wittles for a fortnight.” In return, Sikes constantly denigrates his dog, calling him a “stupid brute,” a “born devil.” He repays Bull’s-eye’s loyalty with ill-treatment, shaking him cruelly, even assaulting him with a hot poker and a clasp knife. In spite of all this, at a word or even a look from his master, Bull’s-eye is ready to serve him.
Most of the time, Bill Sikes treats his girlfriend, Nancy, the way he treats his dog. In the end, he murders her in a fit of rage, with Bull’s-eye as a mute witness to the crime (Bill fears the dog’s bloody paw prints will “carry out new evidences of the crime into the streets”). The creature becomes a dark reminder of his master’s guilt, and unable to shake the dog off his trail, Sikes attempts to drown him. Fortunately, the mutt has the sense to slink reproachfully away, eventually—and accidentally—leading the police to his master’s lair. While on the run from an angry mob Sikes hangs himself; it’s not clear whether his death is accidental or intentional. At the sight of his master hanging from a chimney top, in another ambiguous act of anger or possibly remorse, Bull’s-eye hurls himself at the dead man’s shoulders, and he, too, comes to a sorry end. Missing his aim, he lands in a ditch and, “striking his head against a stone, dashe[s] out his brains.” This is how loyalty is repaid.
Bull’s-eye may be the most long-suffering dog in Dickens, but he’s not the only one with a brutal master. In Little Dorrit, the indolent Henry Gowan goes nowhere without Lion, his enormous Newfoundland. Lion is gentle and affectionate. When he encountered Gowan’s fiancée, Pet Meagles, after a short absence, he “put his great paws on her arm and laid his head against her dear bosom.” After Pet and Gowan are married, however, Pet learns her new husband is not only lazy but also horribly cruel. When Lion caused undue alarm, his master “seized the dog with both hands by the collar,” then “felled him with a blow on the head, and standing over him, struck him many times severely with the heel of his boot, so that his mouth was presently bloody.” Poor Lion is “deeply ashamed of having caused them this alarm,” and in order to escape Gowan’s assault, he crawls along the ground “to the feet of his mistress,” but Gowan is unforgiving, kicking him over and over again until he’s dead.
Like his master, Bull’s-eye lives a harsh life, but that doesn’t mean he’s not happy. Contentment, for people as well as dogs, seems to depend largely on familiar relationships and their accustomed dynamics, however difficult they may be for outsiders to understand. We like what we know. Some dogs—at least in literature—do seem to be both deprived and content, such as the mangy dog belonging to Meursault’s elderly neighbor, Salamano, in Camus’s The Stranger. For eight years, this old man beats and insults his dog; then, every night before going to bed, rubs him tenderly with ointment for his skin disease. “He was bad-tempered,” Salamano tells Meursault when his dog goes missing. “We’d have a run-in every now and then. But he was a good dog just the same.”
In the case of Bill Sikes and Bull’s-eye, the dog stands as a kind of avatar for the man—a common literary conceit. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the first sign of Mr. Rochester’s presence is the sight of his faithful companion Pilot, a “great black and white long-haired dog” that Jane, encountering on a dark night, first mistakes for a Gytrash, “a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head.” At the end of the novel, Jane returns to find that Mr. Rochester has lost his sight in the fire that destroyed his home and can’t tell who she is—but Pilot pricks up his ears when she enters the room; “then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and bounded toward me.”
At other times, the master’s dog has a more subtle function. In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Flossie, Oliver Mellors’s spaniel, always heralds her master’s approach. Before long, Lady Chatterley’s heart starts to flutter whenever she sees or hears the dog. Flossie is an indicator of Mellors’s presence, and stands guard during the lovers’ trysts. She’s a working sheepdog, a worthy companion, and such dogs, unlike the lady’s lapdog, are rarely dismissed as pets or playthings. According to the French author Colette Audry, “workmen are always ready to make rude jokes about poodles and basset hounds and their doting woman owners, but wolfhounds, Alsatians, and similar breeds they take very seriously indeed.”
English bulldogs are one of the breeds men take seriously, owing, presumably, to the breed’s apparent toughness and stamina. In 2012, according to a survey conducted by a British men’s grooming brand, the English bulldog was voted “the manliest dog on the planet.” It’s hardly surprising, then, that all kinds of macho objects and activities should be named after the sturdy-looking creature. There are Bulldog jeans and Bulldog knives; there’s Bulldog Gin, Bulldog Hot Sauce, and Bulldog Hardware. There are hundreds of sports teams named the Bulldogs. Vehicles named after the breed include a British fighter aircraft, a Royal Navy ship, an armored personnel carrier, and a German tractor. Could any dog be more butch?
Ironically, the English bulldog is a rather delicate beast, docile and affectionate, prone to health problems and easily tired. His small French cousin, on the other hand, although culturally coded as feminine (see ISSA), is muscular, dominant, and tough as a little tank, not to mention stubborn. Grisby was not the most obstinate dog in his obedience class—that dubious honor went to a terminally intractable terrier whom everyone, including his genteel owner, referred to as “the Nazi”—but he certainly placed a close second. Sometimes he did what was asked of him, but his “training” took only until we got home, whereupon he’d jump out of the car, barge rudely ahead, push through the front door, and run into the house. As our obedience instructor kept reminding us, going to class is the easy part; the hard part is reinforcing the lessons at home. She was, I thought, infinitely patient and, I was pleased to find, had no beef with affection and rewards. At first, I was worried she might endorse the techniques promoted by Cesar Millan, who insists that we assert dominance over our dogs instead of treating them like babies.
Personally, I don’t believe you need to act like an alpha dog at home, nor do I think badly trained dogs will always try to assert themselves over strangers. Still, I do understand the importance of consistency, and I realize Grisby is sometimes disobedient because, unable to bring myself to punish him, I’ve been unpredictable in my demands and rewards. In this respect, David has been—and continues to be—the better master. He’s firm, consistent, and not afraid to lay down the law. When—as sometimes happens—Grisby slips out of our apartment and runs into the hall, one strong word from David can make him skid to a halt, lower his ears, and submit to the leash. If I’m the one
