David Copperfield
6/10. Okay la. Because L told me that I should read more Dickens.
Dicken’s David Copperfield is an autobiographical novel tracking its titular character from birth to middle age. I recently learned that autobiographical novel doesn’t imply that the novel contains autobiographical elements pertaining to the author, although that is often the case. Throughout his life, David meets a cast of tremendously memorable people, witnesses extraordinary circumstances, and becomes successful and content in his old age. This is all set against the backdrop of not any momentous event, but the monotonous noise of Victorian England, sometimes in London, but mostly in port towns.
I had decided to review fewer old novels, but I hadn’t visited the library in too long, and I had to pull something from my bookshelf. My rate of reading has slowed compared to last year, so I don’t know how feasible it is for me to read random books and write a review on the one that I have the most thoughts on. Moving forward, I will probably have to choose my books by based on my ability to write a review on them.
David’s sad tale begins when an opportunistic gentleman, Murdstone, becomes his stepfather, stresses his mother, Clara, to death, and then sends him off to work. Fortunately, he is saved by the good graces of his rich aunt, Trotwood, and makes his way to adulthood through a series of mishaps and hilarious events, meeting various people along the way, and learning life lessons. It’s a positive novel, especially given that I had conflated it with Oliver Twist prior to reading it, and I was waiting for him to beg: “Please sir, I want some more.”
When reading older books or watching older movies, I often date the work, and then make allowances for its age. For example, I found that Citizen Kane had a slow pacing and boring transitions. The cinematography, acting, and storyline were average. Most critiques would delve into how the faults were with the era, and it was a ground-breaking work for the time. I’ve decided to stop doing that. Context is important, but as a modern reader, I can’t be expected to make an allowance for the rambling nature of a book because the author was paid by the word. Or lack of depth because it was the style of the time.
Consequently, there was only one aspect of the novel that impressed me, which was how it wove together a huge ensemble of characters perfectly, to an end. To start off, there is a huge cast of women with their own personalities, and who are subjects rather than objects, except when they are objects of David’s desire. There are strong maternal figures not only in Clara, his mother, but Peggotty, her servant and eventually David’s friend and finally Betsey, his aunt. Clara is a meek and submissive woman, the ‘ideal’ woman in the Victorian era, but both Peggotty and Betsey are strong-willed, and end up becoming on equal terms with David as he matures.
What I enjoyed the most however, were the passages relating to David’s love interests. I feel like most people consider themselves romantics or cynics, so it doesn’t really mean much to say here that I consider myself a romantic. But they manage to be both rousing and comedic. David falls in love with many women throughout the first half of the novel.
“What other changes have come upon me? I wear a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little finger, and a long-tailed coat; and I use a great deal of bear’s grease — which, taken in conjunction with the ring, looks bad. Am I in love again? I am. I worship the eldest Miss Larkins.”
“All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was — anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.”
David marries Dora, his employer’s daughter, and that almost proves to be disastrous, because they are poor, while Dora is accustomed to a life of privilege, and can do absolutely nothing practical. Here, Dickens dispenses the wise piece of advice: “There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.” He also reminds the male reader that “The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It’s not professional, but it’s very delightful.”
Of course, the part which I find the most charming is that Dora calls David “Doady”. The original girl with paternal problems. But there’s no way Dickens would have let his favourite child end up with Dora.
Instead, Dora dies, and David marries the sensible, intelligent and nice girl, his childhood friend Agnes. Dora and Agnes. Way to date the novel. I also found that it didn’t show character development for David because he waited until Dora died to get together with Agnes. It portrayed him in a gentler light, but denied him agency, consequently denying him development. I’m sure most readers wanted them to end up together. I imagine in its original serial publication it must have been a lot more exciting, but even compiled, I kept on checking to ensure that there were enough pages for them to end up together.
Agnes is one of many friends that David has in the novel. Some of them were mother-figures-turned-confidents like Peggotty and Betsey, but others were loyal friends like Traddles or the two male Peggottys that have both helped David and received his help. I found his most interesting friends to be Micawber.
Micawber is a perpetually poor, but optimistic and good-hearted man who initially encounters David when he becomes David’s landlord. He is sent packing shortly after to debtor’s prison, but he encounters David again and again throughout the novel. Ironically, his best line in the book was possibly “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty-pound ought and six, result misery.” He has children and a wife who is devoted to him, constantly proclaiming “I will never desert Mr. Micawber!” without much prompting. It is interesting that she sticks with him through thick and thin, but it appears that it’s because she believes in his ability. In the end however, her faith and his optimism are paid off as he becomes a chief magistrate in Australia.
After friends and females, that that’s left are the villains. And there are villains abound in David Copperfield. In Chapter 15, Betsey dispenses this advice to David: “Never, be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.” I noted this down because it sounded meaningful, and it took me a while to figure it out afterwards. “Mean” and “cruel” have similar definitions in modern English, but in Victorian English, it can also mean “cheap” or “base”. It might be too high-school-English-teacher-esque of me to ascribe the three principle villains of the story to each one of those traits, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
David first encounters evil by the name of Edward Murdstone, his new stepfather. At first, he just seems unnecessarily strict, beating David at every given opportunity. But he turns out to be cruel, reducing his mother to a simpering wallflower, and packing David off to boarding school. When his mother dies, Murdstone takes David’s inheritance, and forces him to work for his keep. I found the chapter title particularly amusing: “XI: I Begin Life on My Own Account, and Don’t Like It”. At the end of the novel, it seems to be confirmed that he marries for money, as he is seen signing another marriage contract with a young lady.
However, Murdstone is nowhere near as “mean” as Uriah Heep, a law clerk who takes over his boss’s business by abusing his gentle nature. His boss, Wickfield, also happens to be Agnes’ father, and Heep conspires to marry Agnes. He embezzles money through forging Wickfield’s signature, including that of Betsey Trotwood, David’s aunt. His end comes when he hires Micawber to become his secretary, who he believes to be of dubious morals due to his large debts. We know that Micawber is essentially a good person, and he manages to expose Heep’s treachery in his second-best line: “You HEEP of infamy!”. He is the most “Dickensian” villain in the novel, somehow managing to be both threatening and comedic at the same time through his insistence that he is “umble”, and only intends to do good.
The most deceptive of the villains in David Copperfield is James Steerforth, an upper-class manwho David first encounters as a boy at boarding school. He is handsome, smart, and has a way with words, so everyone perceives him to be good. However, he is condescending, and shows his true colours when he seduces and runs away with Em’ly, one of David’s friends who already had a fiancé. I didn’t see much wrong in eloping until it was revealed that he abandoned Em’ly in Europe instead of marrying her and didn’t have the courage to tell her face to face. His actions are a sign of callousness, and the ability of the rich to do whatever they so chose to the poor.
What were the takeaways from this cast of characters? In terms of writing, I think the major takeaway is that, memorable characters are believable characters. Counter-intuitively, the more ridiculous a character is, the more memorable they will be, and the more connections someone will be able to draw to them. In terms of life lessons, I think they are summed up by Dicken’s quotes on love, money management, and vices to avoid. Learn to discern your Agnes from your Dora, and your Steerforth from your Micawber.
Two books that come to mind when reading David Copperfield were Old Goriot and Middlemarch. Both novels with many events and characters, the former shorter and the latter longer. Although there were many memorable characters in all three, David Copperfield has the largest number of characters, and manages to deploy them effectively so that each one touches the maximum amount of other characters. However, the plot and intrigue of David Copperfield falls behind that of the other two, as do the depth of characters and character development. David Copperfield is almost written like a soap opera: a lot happens, but nothing happens, and if it wasn’t for a forced conclusion in the last 100 pages, the story could continue, moving to Australia in a few seasons.
But a soap opera does have watchers, and for very good reasons. I’ve attached a few more passages for your consideration:
The first sentence: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
While drunk: “Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was feeling for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing, took me by the arm and led me out. We went downstairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation for it.”
On returning to the old stomping grounds: “The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do I believe when we go back to them”
This was a bit longer than usual, probably a mix of unedited rambling and channeling my inner Dickens. Thank you for reading. It was fun to write.
