A Bloody Wonder: Sweeney/Lovett (Sweeney Todd)
Title: A Bloody Wonder: The Butcher, the Baker, the Human-Pie Makers
Author: shyaway
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Pairing: Sweeney/Lovett
Spoilers: for the 2007 film version.
Notes: thanks to sandsdream for helping me find the fanart.
A Bloody Wonder: The Butcher, the Baker, the Human-Pie Makers
I was linked to the trailer for this film by my official fandom-enabler, camille_moineau. Folklore figures, Victorian London, and two of my favourite actors, all in a story as dark, satirical, and angsty as this one? I was lost.
Todd and Lovett, est. 1846
Sweeney Todd and Nellie Lovett [1] have a very long history together. First making their appearance in print in the penny dreadful A String of Pearls, they have since been the subject of plays, films, a ballet, novels, a musical, TV films, and most recently, the musical film, which is the version this essay is about.
They have always been business partners, with a simple but fiendishly clever business plan: Sweeney cuts his customers’ throats, and Mrs Lovett uses the corpses as fillings for her meat pies. Later versions have taken this symbiotic commercial relationship and developed it to suggest the possibility of something more intimate.
The Barber: Another Cog in the Machine
Sweeney Todd is, as stated on the tin, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Formerly the beautiful, naïve Benjamin Barker, he was extraordinarily talented at his job, being ‘a proper artist with a knife’ and an inspiration to his then-apprentice. His happy family and good nature were broken apart when Judge Turpin took an unreciprocated fancy to Benjamin’s beloved wife, Lucy, and consequently transported Benjamin to Australia on a false charge. After fifteen years of ‘sweating in a living hell’, he escapes and returns to London, a broken man, under the name of Sweeney Todd. What he finds waiting for him at his old home is not his wife and daughter, but his former landlady, Mrs Lovett. She gives him the news that Lucy, having been raped by Judge Turpin, poisoned herself, and Turpin took the baby, Johanna, to raise as his own. Sweeney vows revenge.
Left embittered, taciturn, and severely depressed by his suffering, Sweeney has little interest in other people except as potential victims. Indeed, his closest relationship is with his cherished razors. Mrs Lovett devotes herself to trying to change that.
The Baker: Rubies are a Girl’s Best Friend
When Sweeney returns, Mrs Lovett has fallen on hard times. Despite being thrifty (even her wallpaper is recycled from a burnt-down chapel) and industrious, she cannot compete with her professional rival Mrs Mooney, who has resorted to using cats as pie filling, much to Mrs Lovett’s professed disgust, and although she has by no means given up, she seems resigned to a life of poverty. Sweeney’s homecoming changes that. She has ‘always had a fondness’ for him, and she is soon at work both on utilising his skills - and later his madness - for social and financial advantage, and on getting closer to Sweeney himself.
She is also maternal (in her own estimation, she would make the best of wives and mothers). One of Sweeney’s murders results in her having a child to care for, expanding their dysfunctional family. Her greatest ambition is to marry Sweeney and for them to become respectable members of the middle class. In her pursuit of this end, she is determined, resourceful and utterly ruthless.
Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns
Mrs Lovett’s feelings for Sweeney become apparent early in the film, but for his part, it is some time before he even begins to really acknowledge her presence.
When we first see him, he is returning to London for the first time in fifteen years and recounting the circumstances of his transportation (without revealing that he himself is the subject of the story) to Anthony Hope, who assisted his escape from prison. In flashback, we are given a glimpse of his relationship with his wife - avenging her is to be his primary motivation, and it is clear from the flashback that he loved her very much.
He returns to his home, where Mrs Lovett greets him. It’s not an auspicious beginning; she pressures him into taking one of her disgusting pies without seeming to recognise him, although 'I thought you was a ghost' suggests that she might do so subconsciously. Sweeney being sickened by the pie he just tasted, she invites him into the parlour for a glass of gin, recognition perhaps dawning on her and wanting a better look at him. After a short conversation about the room above her shop where he used to live, she leans forward, certainly having suspicions as to his identity now, and in recollecting her former tenant, reveals her admiration for him:
he was beautiful,/A proper artist with a knife…
As she tells Sweeney of his wife’s fate, she also reveals her contempt for Lucy (‘silly little nit’), and implicitly, her jealousy. She spares him none of the gory details, except for neglecting to add that Lucy did not succeed in her suicide attempt, and is now begging on the streets.
Sweeney hears the tale with anguish, and declares that his former self is dead:
Todd now. Sweeney Todd. And he will have his revenge.
Mrs Lovett accepts the new name and revenge plot without a murmur, providing another indication that her love is somewhat twisted. Instead of exhibiting any concern about Sweeney’s state of mind, which is already obviously shaky, she invites him upstairs into his old home, almost into her lair.
”Nothing to be afraid of, love.”
As Sweeney follows her, we get the impression that he is already unconsciously falling in with her plans, going where he is led, literally and - with the suicide implication - figuratively. In many ways, this sets the tone for the relationship.
She has kept his razors, despite needing the money she could have got from their sale. As money is, over and above being necessary to live, a major concern for Mrs Lovett, this shows that Sweeney was on her mind throughout the years of his exile and she chose to keep this memento of him, which was also both the tools of his trade and his most treasured possessions, rather than make her life easier, even though she had no way of knowing whether she would ever see him again. It’s a selfless gesture, especially from her, but she also makes sure to tell Sweeney of it. Perhaps she was hoping to purchase his love with them?
While Sweeney is reunited with his razors, it becomes crystal clear that Mrs Lovett is as fascinated with him as he is with them.
"You're warm in my hand."
She is cautious at first, as he was with the razors, handling them with care and reverence; then she moves in on the oblivious Sweeney, touching, nuzzling, and finally trying for a kiss. That, he will not have, instead telling her to leave. She does so, content to wait and indicating that she feels sure her chance will come sooner or later.
Things have progressed by the time they go to St Dunstan’s Market with the aim of showing up the rival barber Pirelli and taking his business. Already they are making plans together. When Sweeney spots Beadle Bamford, who was instrumental in his transportation and Judge Turpin’s rape of Lucy, in the crowd, he immediately starts toward him, reaching for his razor. Unperturbed, Mrs Lovett stops him. This is important for showing that at this point, Sweeney is willing to be guided by her, and she is obsessed enough with him not to mind that he was about to commit murder, only that he was going to do it in public.
The subsequent scene illustrates that, as platonic partners, they are clicking; they mirror each other’s actions and echo each other’s lines, and their plan works perfectly (for the moment), as Sweeney does show himself to be a far more skilled barber than Pirelli. After the shaving demonstration, Mrs Lovett handles Sweeney, puts his coat on for him, taking every opportunity to touch him, and assumes the right to answer questions for him, displaying the two of them for the world as one unit.
Sweeney seems to be falling in with this, as in the song ‘Wait’, when he frets about ever realising his plans for revenge and Mrs Lovett attempts to soothe him, he asks her, “And the Judge, when do we [emphasis mine] get to him?”
They receive a number of visitors in this scene. The first is Anthony, bringing the news that he has fallen in love with Turpin’s ward, Johanna. He wants to ask her to elope with him, and bring her to Sweeney’s shop while he makes arrangements for them to leave the city. Sweeney, shaken by the prospect of seeing his long-lost daughter, further shows his reliance on Mrs Lovett by looking to her for advice. Once Anthony has left, she imagines herself Johanna’s mother:
Poor little Johanna, all those years without a scrap of motherly affection. We’ll soon see to that.
thus fuelling her fantasies of herself and Sweeney as a couple and a family.
Their second visitor is Pirelli, who brings with him his apprentice, Toby. While Mrs Lovett offers Toby ‘motherly affection’ and a pie, Pirelli goes to see Sweeney: he has recognised him as Benjamin Barker, and threatens to go to the law about him, an illegally-returned convict, unless he gives Pirelli half his earnings. This is enough to push Sweeney to his first kill.
Hopelessly devoted and completely obsessed, Mrs Lovett makes only the slightest protest when she realises that he has committed murder. Significantly, she shuts herself in the room with him. They still have Pirelli’s young apprentice on their hands. Sweeney is all for killing the boy, but Mrs Lovett wants to keep him, and Sweeney, still willing to listen to her, acquiesces to her wish, facilitating her desire for them to be a family.
At this point their third visitor arrives; it is the Judge, who has come to Sweeney on the advice of the Beadle. Sweeney settles down to shave him and take his revenge, but just as he is about to stick the knife in, Anthony returns, blurting out the news that Johanna has agreed to go away with him. Turpin leaves in a fury. Sweeney, also raging, chases Anthony out.
This leads into ‘Epiphany’, the most important song for Sweeney’s character development. The loss of his chance to kill the Judge has broken his mind completely. He vows to kill everyone. Mrs Lovett tries to calm him down as she did before; it doesn’t work, her hold has slipped, and for the first time, he is violent with her.
Despite the brutality of this, it does represent another important shift in the relationship, as it is also the first time that he has touched her rather than the other way around. For the first half of the film, it's Mrs Lovett who does all the touching, which, characteristically of her, tends to be gentle prodding and manipulation. She puts him wherever she wants him to be, and he, depressed and passive, doesn't resist. From ‘Epiphany’, it is generally the other way around. Sweeney starts to shove, throw, and sweep her to where he wants her to be. He has, in the most aggressive of ways, become an active participant in the relationship.
Mrs Lovett is unfazed by the death threats towards herself and the rest of the world. Her first thought is for the practical issue at hand - what are they going to do with Pirelli’s body? When she puts forward her pie idea, Sweeney responds enthusiastically.
What a charming notion,
Eminently practical and yet appropriate as always.
Mrs Lovett
How I’ve lived without you
All these years I’ll never know!
They dance with glee and swap puns about their diabolical plan, more united than they ever have been before.
‘God, That’s Good’ depicts the success of their plan and the continued harmony of their business relationship. Mrs Lovett winks at Sweeney as he takes a customer into his shop, and he smirks in reply. This coincides with her line ‘God watches over us’. As she is looking up at Sweeney at this point, it seems to imply that she has truly made him the centre of her existence.
This sequence also shows that she is keeping his wife from him, having Toby ‘throw the old woman out’ the moment she appears in the shop.
Later, Mrs Lovett takes her family to the park on a picnic. In this scene, they are behaving like an old married couple. Sweeney is giving “Yes, dear” responses and passively going along with what she wants to do.
Anything you say…
What she wants to do, she explains, is move to the seaside and get married. In a delirious, brightly-coloured fantasy sequence, we see what her castle in the air would be like.
Mrs Lovett looks ecstatic throughout. Sweeney, on the other hand, looks alternately furious, depressed, scared, and nauseated. Perhaps she is trying to keep him in character in her daydreams, but I think that she would be imagining him as more passionate and that, while the scenario is her idea, Sweeney’s reactions within it are his own - which would mean that when he grudgingly nods his consent to the wedding in the fantasy, that is his own doing. It provides support for the opinion that he would marry her, but as yet, he is very reluctant.
The song also contains the much-analysed line of Mrs Lovett’s, ‘Me rumpled bedding legitimised’, with its implication that they are already sleeping together. She says it; it isn’t contradicted. It offers further evidence that Sweeney might be willing to have something with her, but his body language - stony unresponsiveness to her kisses - indicates that it is not an affectionate sexual relationship.
Back in their reality, Sweeney experiments with reaching out to her:
but withdraws his hand with a grimace. Mrs Lovett has her own, quieter, epiphany and realises that Sweeney is never going to be enthusiastic about her plans for marriage.
She comes up with a compromise. Wearing a plain dark dress that reflects her more sober expectations, she gently asks him what his Lucy looked like. All he can answer is that she had yellow hair.
Then she puts her modified offer to him.
You've got to leave this all behind you. She's gone. Life is for the alive, my dear. We could have a life, us two. Maybe not like I dreamed. Maybe not like you remember. But we could get by.
His face shows that he is registering her suggestion, unlike the earlier conversations preceding ‘Wait’ and ‘By the Sea’, where he has nothing but revenge on his mind, and merely makes the right noises when she expects a response. This time, he is listening. Turning around and making eye contact is in itself a huge concession from him. It’s a fragile moment, fraught with possibilities. Perhaps he is going to accept … but then Anthony bursts in again, to tell Sweeney that he has found Johanna in a madhouse. Sweeney sees this information about his daughter as an excellent way to ensnare the Judge, and after Anthony’s interruption, he and Mrs Lovett snap back into their customary roles.
That evening, Toby comes to Mrs Lovett with his suspicions about Sweeney - he has realised that there is something suspicious going on. He is less perceptive with Mrs Lovett, though, and even though he just wants to defend her from what he recognises as a threat, once he insists on going to the law about Sweeney, the depth of her obsession is revealed: she will even sacrifice her child in order to protect him. She locks Toby in the cellar, and goes to fetch Sweeney.
Everyone converges on 186 Fleet Street; the Beadle arrives to carry out a health inspection on the bakehouse. Sweeney dispatches him, and they go on the hunt for Toby, who, realising the truth, has escaped into the sewers. Anthony and Johanna go to the shop, where he leaves her while he finds a cab. Hearing someone coming, Johanna hides herself. The new arrival is, unbeknownst to her, her mother.
Just after Lucy, Sweeney returns to his shop. Not recognising her, he briefly interrogates her. Mirroring Toby’s earlier warning to Mrs Lovett about Sweeney, Lucy tells Sweeney to beware of Mrs Lovett, for she is ‘the devil’s wife’. Before either Sweeney or Lucy consider the implications of that, the Judge’s voice is heard outside, and Sweeney cuts her throat and sends her down the chute. The Judge is soon to follow.
The moment after the Judge’s murder is possibly a significant one with regard to Sweeney’s expectations for the future. He might have been expected to be planning suicide after achieving his goal of killing the people who ruined his life and caused his wife’s death, but instead he lays his razors to rest. Perhaps Mrs Lovett has succeeded in bringing him round to her plans for the future? This peace does not last long, however, as he spots Johanna and, not recognising her, either, would have killed her had not Mrs Lovett screamed in the bakehouse.
He rushes down to her, and asks, "Why did you scream?" The question about whether the Judge still lives has been taken out, putting Sweeney's focus more on Mrs Lovett, although it's still not quite an expression of concern; he doesn't ask whether she is all right and he is immediately impatient and rough with her. A few moments later, he recognises his wife’s body.
Lips a-quiver, Mrs Lovett watches the reunion. In reply to Sweeney’s accusation that she knew Lucy lived, she fesses up.
”You lied to me,” Sweeney says, implying a personal betrayal that is painful in its source as well as its consequences. Mrs Lovett justifies herself - “Better you should think she was dead” than see what had really become of her, and “I’d be twice the wife she was.”
“Come here, my love,” Sweeney invites her…
Mrs Lovett has a moment of sensible panic and backs away, but Sweeney’s reassurances quickly have her in his arms again. They waltz as they did over their triumphant plans for human-meat pies, Mrs Lovett now gabbling with excitement over the prospect of their marriage - until he dances her into her own oven and she is burned to death.
Sweeney sinks to the floor by Lucy’s body, which is where Toby finds him. Sweeney allows the now-maddened boy to cut his throat. The tale of Sweeney Todd and Nellie Lovett ends in tragedy.
”We Could Get By”
This is not a comfortable relationship, to say the least. It starts with her lying to him and ends with him killing her. Her feelings for him are obsessive and deeply twisted; his for her are ambiguous and extinguished in flames. The whole relationship is wrapped up in violence. A truly happy ending seems very unlikely. That is part of the attraction. The pairing is about being sick sick sick and so wrong it’s right.
I believe that had Sweeney not recognised Lucy, he would have married Mrs Lovett. The AU possibilities of them working out how to live together are tantalising. She is resourceful, determined, and good at manipulating him, so it seems plausible that, even if she never managed to get him to fall in love with her - and he is extremely resistant to that - they would indeed have ‘got by’. The greatest fascination, however, comes from the tension within the relationship in the canon timeline.
Sweeney’s arrival revitalises Mrs Lovett. From the moment she recognises him, she starts making plans and implementing them. She keeps looking forward right up until the moment she dies. Sweeney, however, is always looking back. There is the friction between their modes of thinking; between her extroversion and his introversion; her delusional expectations and his unconventional one-track mind; the tension arising from her keeping such a secret as the continued existence of his wife from him.
They go straight from seeing each other for the first time in fifteen years (and previously they were just friends, or perhaps even just acquaintances) to being pseudo-married, so there is the attraction of the trope of an arranged or pretend marriage - how do the characters relate to each other within the confines of a socially pre-defined relationship? With a lot of conflict and small fleeting moments of tenderness, in this case.
On similar lines, there is the interest of seeing them, outwardly respectable people, exploiting the society that has placed them close to the bottom of the heap. They are good Victorian capitalists. In fact, they embody the cynicism of the system. They are meant for satire.
They are also meant for angst, particularly the pangs of unrequited love, and yet they aren’t canonically prevented from sleeping together. With their long and multi-faceted history - always partners, always a pair - even if they can’t live together, they can’t be kept apart, either.
Recs and links:
Fic:
Voyeur, by das_mervin
Propriety, by das_mervin
Two Ladies, by das_mervin
Not Barker, by sandsdream
The Bloodsuckers, by athousandwinds
five days later and she wants another teapot, by veils
Courage, My Love, by sweety167
Fanart:
Todd and Lovett, by *Tobitkiwi
’Romantic’ Outing by *JigokuHana
We all deserve to die, by ~e-f-e-u
Vids:
#1 Crush, by motherfukinartist
I Feel Everything, by whitegust
Girlfriend, by yunafire.
Sweeney/Lovett on LJ:
stifyouonlyknew
General links on LJ:
sweeneytoddfilm
sweeneytoddfic
sweeneyicons
sweeneyslash
Elsewhere:
The official website
Sweeney Todd on fanfiction.net
My own C2 comm (i.e. recs list) on ff.net.
The text of the original penny dreadful
Sweeney Todd site that includes the libretto.
[1] aka Margery, Sarah, etc.
Author: shyaway
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Pairing: Sweeney/Lovett
Spoilers: for the 2007 film version.
Notes: thanks to sandsdream for helping me find the fanart.
A Bloody Wonder: The Butcher, the Baker, the Human-Pie Makers
I was linked to the trailer for this film by my official fandom-enabler, camille_moineau. Folklore figures, Victorian London, and two of my favourite actors, all in a story as dark, satirical, and angsty as this one? I was lost.
Todd and Lovett, est. 1846
Sweeney Todd and Nellie Lovett [1] have a very long history together. First making their appearance in print in the penny dreadful A String of Pearls, they have since been the subject of plays, films, a ballet, novels, a musical, TV films, and most recently, the musical film, which is the version this essay is about.
They have always been business partners, with a simple but fiendishly clever business plan: Sweeney cuts his customers’ throats, and Mrs Lovett uses the corpses as fillings for her meat pies. Later versions have taken this symbiotic commercial relationship and developed it to suggest the possibility of something more intimate.
The Barber: Another Cog in the Machine
Sweeney Todd is, as stated on the tin, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Formerly the beautiful, naïve Benjamin Barker, he was extraordinarily talented at his job, being ‘a proper artist with a knife’ and an inspiration to his then-apprentice. His happy family and good nature were broken apart when Judge Turpin took an unreciprocated fancy to Benjamin’s beloved wife, Lucy, and consequently transported Benjamin to Australia on a false charge. After fifteen years of ‘sweating in a living hell’, he escapes and returns to London, a broken man, under the name of Sweeney Todd. What he finds waiting for him at his old home is not his wife and daughter, but his former landlady, Mrs Lovett. She gives him the news that Lucy, having been raped by Judge Turpin, poisoned herself, and Turpin took the baby, Johanna, to raise as his own. Sweeney vows revenge.
Left embittered, taciturn, and severely depressed by his suffering, Sweeney has little interest in other people except as potential victims. Indeed, his closest relationship is with his cherished razors. Mrs Lovett devotes herself to trying to change that.
The Baker: Rubies are a Girl’s Best Friend
When Sweeney returns, Mrs Lovett has fallen on hard times. Despite being thrifty (even her wallpaper is recycled from a burnt-down chapel) and industrious, she cannot compete with her professional rival Mrs Mooney, who has resorted to using cats as pie filling, much to Mrs Lovett’s professed disgust, and although she has by no means given up, she seems resigned to a life of poverty. Sweeney’s homecoming changes that. She has ‘always had a fondness’ for him, and she is soon at work both on utilising his skills - and later his madness - for social and financial advantage, and on getting closer to Sweeney himself.
She is also maternal (in her own estimation, she would make the best of wives and mothers). One of Sweeney’s murders results in her having a child to care for, expanding their dysfunctional family. Her greatest ambition is to marry Sweeney and for them to become respectable members of the middle class. In her pursuit of this end, she is determined, resourceful and utterly ruthless.
Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns
Mrs Lovett’s feelings for Sweeney become apparent early in the film, but for his part, it is some time before he even begins to really acknowledge her presence.
When we first see him, he is returning to London for the first time in fifteen years and recounting the circumstances of his transportation (without revealing that he himself is the subject of the story) to Anthony Hope, who assisted his escape from prison. In flashback, we are given a glimpse of his relationship with his wife - avenging her is to be his primary motivation, and it is clear from the flashback that he loved her very much.
He returns to his home, where Mrs Lovett greets him. It’s not an auspicious beginning; she pressures him into taking one of her disgusting pies without seeming to recognise him, although 'I thought you was a ghost' suggests that she might do so subconsciously. Sweeney being sickened by the pie he just tasted, she invites him into the parlour for a glass of gin, recognition perhaps dawning on her and wanting a better look at him. After a short conversation about the room above her shop where he used to live, she leans forward, certainly having suspicions as to his identity now, and in recollecting her former tenant, reveals her admiration for him:
he was beautiful,/A proper artist with a knife…
As she tells Sweeney of his wife’s fate, she also reveals her contempt for Lucy (‘silly little nit’), and implicitly, her jealousy. She spares him none of the gory details, except for neglecting to add that Lucy did not succeed in her suicide attempt, and is now begging on the streets.
Sweeney hears the tale with anguish, and declares that his former self is dead:
Todd now. Sweeney Todd. And he will have his revenge.
Mrs Lovett accepts the new name and revenge plot without a murmur, providing another indication that her love is somewhat twisted. Instead of exhibiting any concern about Sweeney’s state of mind, which is already obviously shaky, she invites him upstairs into his old home, almost into her lair.
”Nothing to be afraid of, love.”
As Sweeney follows her, we get the impression that he is already unconsciously falling in with her plans, going where he is led, literally and - with the suicide implication - figuratively. In many ways, this sets the tone for the relationship.
She has kept his razors, despite needing the money she could have got from their sale. As money is, over and above being necessary to live, a major concern for Mrs Lovett, this shows that Sweeney was on her mind throughout the years of his exile and she chose to keep this memento of him, which was also both the tools of his trade and his most treasured possessions, rather than make her life easier, even though she had no way of knowing whether she would ever see him again. It’s a selfless gesture, especially from her, but she also makes sure to tell Sweeney of it. Perhaps she was hoping to purchase his love with them?
While Sweeney is reunited with his razors, it becomes crystal clear that Mrs Lovett is as fascinated with him as he is with them.
"You're warm in my hand."
She is cautious at first, as he was with the razors, handling them with care and reverence; then she moves in on the oblivious Sweeney, touching, nuzzling, and finally trying for a kiss. That, he will not have, instead telling her to leave. She does so, content to wait and indicating that she feels sure her chance will come sooner or later.
Things have progressed by the time they go to St Dunstan’s Market with the aim of showing up the rival barber Pirelli and taking his business. Already they are making plans together. When Sweeney spots Beadle Bamford, who was instrumental in his transportation and Judge Turpin’s rape of Lucy, in the crowd, he immediately starts toward him, reaching for his razor. Unperturbed, Mrs Lovett stops him. This is important for showing that at this point, Sweeney is willing to be guided by her, and she is obsessed enough with him not to mind that he was about to commit murder, only that he was going to do it in public.
The subsequent scene illustrates that, as platonic partners, they are clicking; they mirror each other’s actions and echo each other’s lines, and their plan works perfectly (for the moment), as Sweeney does show himself to be a far more skilled barber than Pirelli. After the shaving demonstration, Mrs Lovett handles Sweeney, puts his coat on for him, taking every opportunity to touch him, and assumes the right to answer questions for him, displaying the two of them for the world as one unit.
Sweeney seems to be falling in with this, as in the song ‘Wait’, when he frets about ever realising his plans for revenge and Mrs Lovett attempts to soothe him, he asks her, “And the Judge, when do we [emphasis mine] get to him?”
They receive a number of visitors in this scene. The first is Anthony, bringing the news that he has fallen in love with Turpin’s ward, Johanna. He wants to ask her to elope with him, and bring her to Sweeney’s shop while he makes arrangements for them to leave the city. Sweeney, shaken by the prospect of seeing his long-lost daughter, further shows his reliance on Mrs Lovett by looking to her for advice. Once Anthony has left, she imagines herself Johanna’s mother:
Poor little Johanna, all those years without a scrap of motherly affection. We’ll soon see to that.
thus fuelling her fantasies of herself and Sweeney as a couple and a family.
Their second visitor is Pirelli, who brings with him his apprentice, Toby. While Mrs Lovett offers Toby ‘motherly affection’ and a pie, Pirelli goes to see Sweeney: he has recognised him as Benjamin Barker, and threatens to go to the law about him, an illegally-returned convict, unless he gives Pirelli half his earnings. This is enough to push Sweeney to his first kill.
Hopelessly devoted and completely obsessed, Mrs Lovett makes only the slightest protest when she realises that he has committed murder. Significantly, she shuts herself in the room with him. They still have Pirelli’s young apprentice on their hands. Sweeney is all for killing the boy, but Mrs Lovett wants to keep him, and Sweeney, still willing to listen to her, acquiesces to her wish, facilitating her desire for them to be a family.
At this point their third visitor arrives; it is the Judge, who has come to Sweeney on the advice of the Beadle. Sweeney settles down to shave him and take his revenge, but just as he is about to stick the knife in, Anthony returns, blurting out the news that Johanna has agreed to go away with him. Turpin leaves in a fury. Sweeney, also raging, chases Anthony out.
This leads into ‘Epiphany’, the most important song for Sweeney’s character development. The loss of his chance to kill the Judge has broken his mind completely. He vows to kill everyone. Mrs Lovett tries to calm him down as she did before; it doesn’t work, her hold has slipped, and for the first time, he is violent with her.
Despite the brutality of this, it does represent another important shift in the relationship, as it is also the first time that he has touched her rather than the other way around. For the first half of the film, it's Mrs Lovett who does all the touching, which, characteristically of her, tends to be gentle prodding and manipulation. She puts him wherever she wants him to be, and he, depressed and passive, doesn't resist. From ‘Epiphany’, it is generally the other way around. Sweeney starts to shove, throw, and sweep her to where he wants her to be. He has, in the most aggressive of ways, become an active participant in the relationship.
Mrs Lovett is unfazed by the death threats towards herself and the rest of the world. Her first thought is for the practical issue at hand - what are they going to do with Pirelli’s body? When she puts forward her pie idea, Sweeney responds enthusiastically.
What a charming notion,
Eminently practical and yet appropriate as always.
Mrs Lovett
How I’ve lived without you
All these years I’ll never know!
They dance with glee and swap puns about their diabolical plan, more united than they ever have been before.
‘God, That’s Good’ depicts the success of their plan and the continued harmony of their business relationship. Mrs Lovett winks at Sweeney as he takes a customer into his shop, and he smirks in reply. This coincides with her line ‘God watches over us’. As she is looking up at Sweeney at this point, it seems to imply that she has truly made him the centre of her existence.
This sequence also shows that she is keeping his wife from him, having Toby ‘throw the old woman out’ the moment she appears in the shop.
Later, Mrs Lovett takes her family to the park on a picnic. In this scene, they are behaving like an old married couple. Sweeney is giving “Yes, dear” responses and passively going along with what she wants to do.
Anything you say…
What she wants to do, she explains, is move to the seaside and get married. In a delirious, brightly-coloured fantasy sequence, we see what her castle in the air would be like.
Mrs Lovett looks ecstatic throughout. Sweeney, on the other hand, looks alternately furious, depressed, scared, and nauseated. Perhaps she is trying to keep him in character in her daydreams, but I think that she would be imagining him as more passionate and that, while the scenario is her idea, Sweeney’s reactions within it are his own - which would mean that when he grudgingly nods his consent to the wedding in the fantasy, that is his own doing. It provides support for the opinion that he would marry her, but as yet, he is very reluctant.
The song also contains the much-analysed line of Mrs Lovett’s, ‘Me rumpled bedding legitimised’, with its implication that they are already sleeping together. She says it; it isn’t contradicted. It offers further evidence that Sweeney might be willing to have something with her, but his body language - stony unresponsiveness to her kisses - indicates that it is not an affectionate sexual relationship.
Back in their reality, Sweeney experiments with reaching out to her:
but withdraws his hand with a grimace. Mrs Lovett has her own, quieter, epiphany and realises that Sweeney is never going to be enthusiastic about her plans for marriage.
She comes up with a compromise. Wearing a plain dark dress that reflects her more sober expectations, she gently asks him what his Lucy looked like. All he can answer is that she had yellow hair.
Then she puts her modified offer to him.
You've got to leave this all behind you. She's gone. Life is for the alive, my dear. We could have a life, us two. Maybe not like I dreamed. Maybe not like you remember. But we could get by.
His face shows that he is registering her suggestion, unlike the earlier conversations preceding ‘Wait’ and ‘By the Sea’, where he has nothing but revenge on his mind, and merely makes the right noises when she expects a response. This time, he is listening. Turning around and making eye contact is in itself a huge concession from him. It’s a fragile moment, fraught with possibilities. Perhaps he is going to accept … but then Anthony bursts in again, to tell Sweeney that he has found Johanna in a madhouse. Sweeney sees this information about his daughter as an excellent way to ensnare the Judge, and after Anthony’s interruption, he and Mrs Lovett snap back into their customary roles.
That evening, Toby comes to Mrs Lovett with his suspicions about Sweeney - he has realised that there is something suspicious going on. He is less perceptive with Mrs Lovett, though, and even though he just wants to defend her from what he recognises as a threat, once he insists on going to the law about Sweeney, the depth of her obsession is revealed: she will even sacrifice her child in order to protect him. She locks Toby in the cellar, and goes to fetch Sweeney.
Everyone converges on 186 Fleet Street; the Beadle arrives to carry out a health inspection on the bakehouse. Sweeney dispatches him, and they go on the hunt for Toby, who, realising the truth, has escaped into the sewers. Anthony and Johanna go to the shop, where he leaves her while he finds a cab. Hearing someone coming, Johanna hides herself. The new arrival is, unbeknownst to her, her mother.
Just after Lucy, Sweeney returns to his shop. Not recognising her, he briefly interrogates her. Mirroring Toby’s earlier warning to Mrs Lovett about Sweeney, Lucy tells Sweeney to beware of Mrs Lovett, for she is ‘the devil’s wife’. Before either Sweeney or Lucy consider the implications of that, the Judge’s voice is heard outside, and Sweeney cuts her throat and sends her down the chute. The Judge is soon to follow.
The moment after the Judge’s murder is possibly a significant one with regard to Sweeney’s expectations for the future. He might have been expected to be planning suicide after achieving his goal of killing the people who ruined his life and caused his wife’s death, but instead he lays his razors to rest. Perhaps Mrs Lovett has succeeded in bringing him round to her plans for the future? This peace does not last long, however, as he spots Johanna and, not recognising her, either, would have killed her had not Mrs Lovett screamed in the bakehouse.
He rushes down to her, and asks, "Why did you scream?" The question about whether the Judge still lives has been taken out, putting Sweeney's focus more on Mrs Lovett, although it's still not quite an expression of concern; he doesn't ask whether she is all right and he is immediately impatient and rough with her. A few moments later, he recognises his wife’s body.
Lips a-quiver, Mrs Lovett watches the reunion. In reply to Sweeney’s accusation that she knew Lucy lived, she fesses up.
”You lied to me,” Sweeney says, implying a personal betrayal that is painful in its source as well as its consequences. Mrs Lovett justifies herself - “Better you should think she was dead” than see what had really become of her, and “I’d be twice the wife she was.”
“Come here, my love,” Sweeney invites her…
Mrs Lovett has a moment of sensible panic and backs away, but Sweeney’s reassurances quickly have her in his arms again. They waltz as they did over their triumphant plans for human-meat pies, Mrs Lovett now gabbling with excitement over the prospect of their marriage - until he dances her into her own oven and she is burned to death.
Sweeney sinks to the floor by Lucy’s body, which is where Toby finds him. Sweeney allows the now-maddened boy to cut his throat. The tale of Sweeney Todd and Nellie Lovett ends in tragedy.
”We Could Get By”
This is not a comfortable relationship, to say the least. It starts with her lying to him and ends with him killing her. Her feelings for him are obsessive and deeply twisted; his for her are ambiguous and extinguished in flames. The whole relationship is wrapped up in violence. A truly happy ending seems very unlikely. That is part of the attraction. The pairing is about being sick sick sick and so wrong it’s right.
I believe that had Sweeney not recognised Lucy, he would have married Mrs Lovett. The AU possibilities of them working out how to live together are tantalising. She is resourceful, determined, and good at manipulating him, so it seems plausible that, even if she never managed to get him to fall in love with her - and he is extremely resistant to that - they would indeed have ‘got by’. The greatest fascination, however, comes from the tension within the relationship in the canon timeline.
Sweeney’s arrival revitalises Mrs Lovett. From the moment she recognises him, she starts making plans and implementing them. She keeps looking forward right up until the moment she dies. Sweeney, however, is always looking back. There is the friction between their modes of thinking; between her extroversion and his introversion; her delusional expectations and his unconventional one-track mind; the tension arising from her keeping such a secret as the continued existence of his wife from him.
They go straight from seeing each other for the first time in fifteen years (and previously they were just friends, or perhaps even just acquaintances) to being pseudo-married, so there is the attraction of the trope of an arranged or pretend marriage - how do the characters relate to each other within the confines of a socially pre-defined relationship? With a lot of conflict and small fleeting moments of tenderness, in this case.
On similar lines, there is the interest of seeing them, outwardly respectable people, exploiting the society that has placed them close to the bottom of the heap. They are good Victorian capitalists. In fact, they embody the cynicism of the system. They are meant for satire.
They are also meant for angst, particularly the pangs of unrequited love, and yet they aren’t canonically prevented from sleeping together. With their long and multi-faceted history - always partners, always a pair - even if they can’t live together, they can’t be kept apart, either.
Recs and links:
Fic:
Voyeur, by das_mervin
Propriety, by das_mervin
Two Ladies, by das_mervin
Not Barker, by sandsdream
The Bloodsuckers, by athousandwinds
five days later and she wants another teapot, by veils
Courage, My Love, by sweety167
Fanart:
Todd and Lovett, by *Tobitkiwi
’Romantic’ Outing by *JigokuHana
We all deserve to die, by ~e-f-e-u
Vids:
#1 Crush, by motherfukinartist
I Feel Everything, by whitegust
Girlfriend, by yunafire.
Sweeney/Lovett on LJ:
stifyouonlyknew
General links on LJ:
sweeneytoddfilm
sweeneytoddfic
sweeneyicons
sweeneyslash
Elsewhere:
The official website
Sweeney Todd on fanfiction.net
My own C2 comm (i.e. recs list) on ff.net.
The text of the original penny dreadful
Sweeney Todd site that includes the libretto.
[1] aka Margery, Sarah, etc.