David Copperfield

"I'm wallowing in words!--David, later working as a legal proctor on wordy legal documents, and I, the readers of this 900-page book!

I had several hours in a car so took on rereading this tome, listening to a great reader. I have a vague idea of then reading Barbara Kingsolver’s also huge book after that. We’ll see!

7/1/23: Can anyone do bathos (look it up, kids!) like Charles Dickens? The deliciously agonizing misery of childhood: Hard Times has depictions of harsh and cruel schooling and so does this tale, where poor David is made to wear a signboard that warns people that he bites people. This is like the orphanage of Oliver Twist, but is a school to punish bad children.

And what did Davey do? Well, his Dad died while Davey’s mom was pregnant and at 4 Davey has a new Daddy who outgrinds Gradgrind in “firmness” and beats him into submission until. . . that fatal bite that puts him in strict "charity" school for wayward children. What is it about nineteenth-century schooling? Jane Eyre’s school, yikes. But I understand that David Copperfield is seen as Dickens's most autobiographical novel. Virginia Woolf also said it was Dickens's "most perfect novel." It was Dickens's favorite book that he had written.

7/4: Still in the first 1/4 of the book, and it's such a continuing load of misery, as Davey is forced to leave the frying pan of the cruel charity school back to the fire of his step-father, and his cruelly manipulated mother, whom Davey is largely forbidden to speak with, and who now has a second baby with the evil Murdstone, who threatens him (he's ten now) with flogging if he disobeys him on any issue. Then. . . after he leaves to go back to school he learns (spoiler) that his mother and the new baby have died. He's an orphan, supported for a time by his loving nurse Peggotty, then (at ten) Davey's working long hours in London for a wine merchant at slave wages (no child labor laws in Victorian England, which some states are repealing in summer 2023 so we can go back to the good ol' days!). Early on there is almost constant misery in the Victorian fashion, but there are so many great characters in this bildungsroman, a coming-of-age book for the ages.

“It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.”

7/9/23: About halfway.

David Copperfield’s life is a rollercoaster of anguish and despair at the bottom, which constitutes largely the first third of the book where he, destitute, goes to an unlikely source of help, his grumpy Aunt Betsey Trotwood, who top of the rollercoaster!--surprisingly agrees to take him in, be his benefactor, gets him a good education where he is Head Boy in the school, and is given a healthy endowment to begin his life in London, where he finds good friends, and young women--oh, kissing! At one point he kisses a girl: “Oh! Ecstasy! I might have died happy that day.”

David’s the veritable Horatio Alger (not that secret Clarence Thomas society) Pluck ‘n’ Luck boy of the late nineteenth-century sentimental novels, but those others are pale copies; DC is the real thing, genuinely good and insightful, and all the supporting characters richly and entertainingly described. David befriends Steerforth, who betrays his wife and family and gets Emily, an old sweet friend, pregnant. He trusted and loved this guy! So good David is sometimes not as insightful as we’d like and altogether too trusting at times. He’s human. He makes mistakes, is not perfect, but in general he is what we know about Dickens, a veritable Boy Scout Handbook of virtues: charity, humility, kindness.

“. . . I hope that simple love and truth will be strong in the end. I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.”

From the beginning, reading bolsters him: “These books were a way of escaping from the unhappiness of my life.”

David learns how to face adversity, from Aunt Betsey: “We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down!”

Such great characters. David is out of money and needs to sell his coat to this old guy in London:

"Oh, my lungs and liver," cried the old man, "no! Oh, my eyes, no! Oh, my limbs, no! Eighteenpence. Goroo!"

--The Micawbers--kinda goofy, verbose, struggling, asking David for money, plotting schemes to make money.

--Uriah Heep (not the rock band!) is a creep, taking advantage of his (alcoholic) boss Mr. Wickfield, and aiming for David’s dearest Agnes. David initially says he is glad to meet young Uriah, and Uriah replies, “I would be proud to meet you, too, except I know pride is a sin.” Later he says, “Oh, I’m too 'umble to accept a gift from you!” But he finds a way to get over this fawning pride/humility conundrum when he has a chance to swindle Wickfield.

7/11/23: “I am almost completely earnest, all the time”--David

“I like to be liked”-Dora, who (spoiler) actually becomes David’s wife (oh no!).

So David/Davey/Davis/Doady/Trot (depending on who is talking to him) is doing quite well until Aunt Betsey suddenly loses most of her money and can no longer support him. David has fallen head over heels with and is engaged to (the pathetic) Dora, one of the shallowest characters ever, who does not want to marry him if he is poor. I guess in his defense, sweet Dora is a little like dear old Mum, nice but naive. She has no practical skills, and David even admits her family treats her like Dora treats her little annoying dog, doting on her, spoiling her. This is a flaw in David at this point, his idiocy in making romantic choices.

David’s lifelong friend Agnes even helps him change Dora’s mind, which leads to some excruciatingly painful/comical early marriage scenes. Yes, alas, dear reader, she marries him. Agnes at this time is being pursued by evil villain Uriah Heep (oh, no! hiss!), who has taken advantage of Agnes’s (alcoholic) father Wickham, and who now is partner with Wickfield.

A good deal of the last third of the book focuses on romance and the nature of true love and bad relationship choices, though we also began the book with a disastrous one, when David’s widowed mother for some reason chooses the vile Murdstone as a second husband. Barkis married nurse Peggotty and that worked out pretty well, so love can work.

I love Aunt Betsey Trotwood, one of the most insightful and outspoken critics of bad characters throughout, and an often admirable feminist.

David gets a job as a legal proctor, so he begins to make a decent living, and supplements this job working on mounds of legal documents-- “I’m wallowing in words!”--with writing articles, stories, and even beginning a novel. Dickens autofiction! At 900+ words, we who read David Coppperfield are ourselves wallowing in words, though I am not really complaining.

7/16/23: Okay, a nearly 900-page novel completed--check!--reread, and it is a triumph. We open in misery, a life Charles Dickens actually lived, recorded in this auto-fiction, experience that shaped all of his work, focused on cruelty to women and children at the hands of megalomaniac men, ending in a kind of triumph, good news pretty much all around, endorsing generosity and kindness, huzzah! That’s a good summary right there. Yes, if you are looking for happy endings (and some of the most entertaining characters in the history of literature, though I am thinking of all of his novels, too), it does not end at the bottom of the rollercoaster.

We have, in the last two hundred pages, a lot of plot threads to resolve, so (spoiler alert for this more than 100-year-old novel):

*Uriah Heep, the rockstar villain, we discover, has defrauded almost all of the good guys, and (improbably) the too-talkative, somewhat bumbling Mr. Micawber follows the clues to determine Heep (H-h-h-Heep, he calls him, unable to pronounce his name without stuttering) had taken money from not only Wickfield, but also taken (indirectly) money from Our Hero David, via his benefactor Aunt Betsy and others. Turns out there’s a very good reason that Micawber, Traddles and Copperfield Himself have gone into law careers. Lock him up!

*We also needed to resolve the situation with poor (young) Emily, done wrong by the villain Steerforth, who in typical patriarchal fashion is (cruelly) blamed by many for “ruining the life and career” of this profligate, dastardly married man and father, who had taken her to Europe and dumped her and gone on to other women. So the noble Uncle Daniel Peggotty rescues Emily from a life of destitution and prostitution to take her to Australia for a few years. But she comes back, saved from further ruin to see her childhood friend David again. The ways some characters humanely treated Emily is hopeful, finally.

*We meet the villain Murdstones again, destroying the life of yet another young person.

* We hear the villain schoolmaster Creakle (these names!) runs a prison according to his (“firm”) system.

*Spoiler now, but poor Rosa dies in complications following a miscarriage. David always loved the (sweet and shallow) Rosa, but in her parting words she admits that she had married David when she was too young and naive, and we agree.

*This leaves things open for the good David to marry the good Agnes. Yay! David, a sweet and trusting man, is a little slow to see the true nature of people. Doesn’t always make the best choices with women or men. Errs by seeing their potential, which sometimes gets him in trouble.

This autobiographical novel does not have adequate room to go deeply into David/Charles as a successful writer, but his fame grows by novel’s end.

I joked about all the misery of the opening 2-300 pages, but this is a great book, no question, and I am already reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, that (in part) maps a contemporary Southern trailer park on to Dickens’s template, showing us the relevance of Dickens's ideas for reflecting on the twenty-first century world.

This strong autobiographical novel by Dickens is plainly and straightforwardly spoken not more and not less than an absolute masterwork!!
To attempt an appropriate review at such a literary work as this one, I needed to be kind of an apt scholar..
Although I'm a simple layman, I have in my heart an unquenchable burning love and passion for books!!
David Copperfield was for me a buddy reading with my good friend Tracey..
So, thanks so much Tracey for letting me share with you my thoughts and comments and being so patient with me, also for being together with me in this adventure..
Well, let gets started..

David Copperfield is Dickens at his very best!!
Brimming with dramatic and funny characters, wicked villains, and insidious foes so full of vitality and life, that they feel totally like real persons..
The story itself is very complex and has many unexpected turns!!
A drama, a love story, a coming of age tale, a thriller, and a family saga!!

David Copperfields mother, a young widow get married to the inhuman and cruel Mr. Murdstone..
After the death of his mother,David must face an environment full of hostility and also must go trough dire and painful straits until he finds shelter with his aunt..

We have here unforgettable characters like Uriah Heep, the Micawbers, Agnes Wickfield, Steerforth and many many others!!!
Dickens endeavors and is successful in breathing life to every single one of them!!
I was hook from the first page on!!
Not only the characters, but also the story itself is full of drama and magic..
Let me put it in this way, Dickens with his words has achieve to create not a world, but much more a universe of feelings and emotions which will relentlessly increase the pressure on your literary throat!!!

And let me point out that although my paperback had more than 900 pages, it never was a dull or insipid meal for me..
I could speak for hours about Dickens and his David Copperfield..
But I want you to read it for yourself, so you can taste and savor the unique magic in Dickens world!!!

Happy reading to all my goodreads friends
Dean;)

This book is 35% filler (so many random scenes, coincidences and cardboard characters), 35% theatrics (all this moustache twirling bad guys; everyone is seconds before bursting into song and dance! passion!) and 30% emotional manipulation (the amount of tears shed would fill the ocean).

I liked the rest. I loved every scene with child-wife Dora and was so sad when he got free of her. Dickens did Dora dirty. Just ship her to Australia to get rid of her, come on! You shipped everyone else whose problems you did not care to resolve. #justicefordora

Was he paid by the word? Because it felt that way. He made up the story as he went and that's why it feels like a collection of random scenes for the most part and in the end when he tried to tie loose ends we got all these coincidences and encounters. The experience of reading this book reminded me binging a season of a soap opera on Netflix. And it was the soap of its day. But why it is valued now I have no idea.
Every character here being like:

Rilettura di un classico che ho sempre amato e che ritengo una delle prove più riuscite di Dickens. In quest'opera, la sua capacità di mantenere viva l'attenzione del lettore per centinaia e centinaia di pagine e di creare personaggi di spessore e caratteristiche tali da divenire quasi piccole icone della narrativa, raggiunge livelli altissimi. Forse alcune scene risentono di un patetismo non infrequente nei romanzi dell'epoca, ma ciò non inficia il risultato finale e passa quasi inosservato. Anche Dickens non ha fatto mai mistero di amare il Copperfield: forse perché più ancora che in altri suoi romanzi è riuscito a rendere viva la società dell'epoca nelle sue luci come nelle sue ombre.

I find it impossible to review such a classic or even to give it a star rating. I’ve been reading it for two months now, a chapter a day as a ‘buddy read’ with a small group, all of whom made valuable contributions that enhanced my reading experience greatly. I can’t thank them all enough.

David Copperfield was Dickens’ favourite and most autobiographical work. As I haven’t read a biography of him, I was much less well informed about his life than the rest of the group. It didn’t matter as we had notes from a previous buddy read to follow as well as our own.

Characters I will never forget are Aunt Betsey, Wilkins Micawber, Uriah Heep and Traddles. All gems! There are also many memorable scenes, some of which are beautifully written. The ending is a bit of an anticlimax after such an eventful tale but I struggle to think how else he would have finished other than he did, with a recap of the characters we had met and their present circumstances.

A thoroughly enjoyable read for which 5 stars is surely the only rating.

I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished.
David Copperfield ~~~ Charles Dickens



What a crackerjack story David Copperfield is!

I have a tradition of reading something by Dickens every December. Sometimes a full novel, often a short story, mostly re-readings of A Christmas Carol, this being my favorite of all Dickens' writings. Earlier this year I was speaking with my friend Matthew & told him I hadn’t settled on my Dickens read for the year; he suggested David Copperfield. I’m so glad I followed Matthew’s suggestion. One thousand plus pages later, I wanted David Copperfield for my best friend. Yes, I absolutely loved David Copperfield! I jumped the gun a bit by reading it towards the end of November, which frees up December for Oliver Twist.

Beginning just before his birth, with Copperfield telling the story as it was related to him, the first-person account ends sometime in Copperfield’s mid-life. From his orphaned childhood to a step-parent with less than scrupulous morality, Copperfield's childhood has all the hallmarks of 19th century England, at least in so far as it is portrayed by Dickens, the Bronte Sisters, George Elliot ~~ or even Victor Hugo, who finished Les Miserables in Britain’s Guernsey. Orphans, step-parents, premature death, the conflict between marriages for love or for money, and the constant worries about annual income, debt, and debtor’s prison all make their appearance in David Copperfield.



David Copperfield is the story of a young man’s adventures on his journey from an unhappy & impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the vivid cast of characters Master David encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr. Murdstone & his evil sister, Jane; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood ~~ who I loved; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; & the magnificently impecunious Micawber ~~ one of literature’s great comic creations.

David Copperfield begins like a gender-reversed Cinderella story ~~ Cinderfella. Young Master David lives happily with his widowed mother, until she marries mean Mr Murdstone ~~ the wiched stepfather. David's mother, Clara ~~ a weak-willed young woman ~~ loves her son dearly ~~ but lets him down. Not only does she fail to stick up for him, but even lets the evil Murdstones talk her into supporting their point of view. Eventually the poor young mother dies, and David is left at the mercy of Murdstone and his bitter, twisted, ugly sister; a terrible place for any child to be ~~ especially a sensitive child like Young Master David.

But Young Master David is no passive Cinderfella. Rather than sitting around crying, to be later rescued by a fairy-godmother, he takes his destiny into his own hands ~~ he seeks out his fairy-godmother on his own and at his peril. David has heard tales about his dead father's aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood. She's a man-hater ~~ with good reason ~~ who would have taken on his support if he'd been a girl, but she was present at his birth, and stalked off in disgust when he turned out to be a boy. Young Master David knows his only chance to escape a terrible fate is to set off on his own two feet to track her down, doing his best to convince his Great Aunt to give him another chance. It's a brave move indeed, since there's no guarantee Miss Trotwood will even let him in her door.



Betsey Trotwood ~~ the wonderful Betsey Trotwood ~~ David’s austere Great Aunt. She is a great example of one of the one dimensional characters Dickens introduces very early in his novels, who go on to become fully rounded, interesting and intensely human ~~ Dickens' writing is full of them. Betsey Trotwood is a real eccentric, but proves to be genuinely kind and warm hearted under her brusque exterior. She is the only person willing and able to confront and confound the evil Edward Murdstone, and his cruel sister Jane. And the way that Aunt Betsey nurtures and champions the simple-minded Mr. Dick is Dickens at his most humane. Betsey Trotwood is one of the most awe-inspiring figures in this intensely compelling read.

While we're at it, here are a few observations about some of the other interesting female characters in this book. Clara Peggotty ~~ the infant Copperfield’s nurse and friend is a lovely character ~~ one of Dickens’ quintessential nurturing women. She is completely loyal ~~ first to David’s weak and ineffective mother ~~ then to the David himself. There's Little Emily ~~ who David falls in love with on his very first visit to the Peggotty clan in Yarmouth ~~ a woman with a heart of gold, who falls victim to circumstances ~~ this being Dickens of course it's an exploitative man. Another ~~ Rosa Dartle ~~ who lives as a companion with Mrs. Steerforth ~~ an astonishingly cold and cruel woman. Later we meet Dora Spenlow ~~ Copperfield’s n  child-wifen ~~ an irritatingly feckless woman. It is said Dicken modeled her on Maria Beadnell, whom he was infatuated with for several years in his late-teens and who eventually rejected him ~~ due to his lower-class origins. Was Dora Dickens' revenge on Maria? Lastly, there's the angelic Agnes Wickfield ~~ Dickens’ ideal ~~ an unreal specimen of perfect womanhood. While I find Dora to be quite annoying, I do prefer her over the angelic Agnes.



As stated previously, Dickens loved him some orphans, cruel stepfathers, sadistic schoolmasters, and frail women crushed like fragile flowers. David Copperfield has an abundance of these things, and every other thing that makes a novel n  Dickensiann. David eventually finds a savior ~~ allowing his life to moves along with ups and downs that echo those of Dickens himself.

Much of the drama and humor in David Copperfield comes from the subplots ~~ David is the least interesting character here ~~ this is not a criticism ~~ David is the hub to which all these crazy spokes attach to. David lifts up those people in his world ~~ helping to redeem many of them. Along the way, he apprentices as a proctor, is smitten by his boss's daughter, proceeding from penniless youth to prosperous middle age as a successful author ~~ sound familiar? Along the way, his friends and associates have much more dramatic adventures, from the perpetual pecuniary difficulties of Mr. Micawber ~~ a gregarious but completely irresponsible fellow who Dickens based on his own father ~~ to the somewhat bumpier and less lofty ascendancy of his childhood friend Tommy Traddles ~~ to the fall of his childhood sweetheart Little Emily ~~ ensnared by his other childhood friend, the dastardly James Steerforth ~~ a sweet poor girl seduced by a rich dashing scoundrel was mandatory in Regency and Victorian novels.

Dickens' greatest talent is bringing outrageous characters to life ~~ in all their outrageous glory. I wanted to shake Clara Copperfield awake to act on behalf of her son, punish the Murdstones, and wished a house would fall on the wicked Rosa Dartle. Dora Spengler made me laugh and wince, while Wilkins Micawber made me laugh and groan ~~ and then there's Uriah Heep ~~ detestable and pitiable at the same time. How can David compete with this colorful cast of characters ~~ but, it was David who kept the novel grounded.

Dickens delivers his usual come-uppance for the wicked and satisfaction for the injured ~~ yes, sometimes in a far too convenient manner as to be unbelievable ~~ but this is Dickens after all.



So how do I really feel? I'll say it again ~~ n  What a crackerjack story David Copperfield is!n It’s about good and evil, kindness and venality, family real and by circumstance, avarice, power, and most of importantly, love. It’s filled with memorable characters with wonderful and distinctive names. It captures the manners and foibles of the time, as only Dickens could do. It tells a story of the working and middle classes in the first half of 19th century England ~~ speaking to the nobility and the depravity of the human condition.

If you were to choose to read only one of Dickens’ books, David Copperfield would have to be it. The sheer power of Dickens' story-telling is at its best, here ~~ the story is full of memorable characters and situations. If you want to know what all the fuss is about Charles Dickens, read David Copperfield and all will be revealed.

Dithering David, or: The Innocent Bystander

There may be spoilers in this review, and apart from that I have written it without summarizing its content and on the assumption that a reader already knows the events and people described herein. So if you want to read the novel without any previous knowledge, it is probably better to skip this review for the time being.

According to the author’s own testimony, David Copperfield, which he published between May 1849 and November 1850, was Dickens’s favourite child, and the reason for this may be the fact that Dickens here fell back on certain events from his own life in the telling of David’s story. This is not, in itself, so unusual since various characters in Dickens’s novels are based on people he knew from real life – just consider Mrs. Nickleby, who is to a certain degree the effigy of his mother, or the role that the debtors’ prison played in his novel Little Dorrit and even in his first major work of fiction, The Pickwick Papers. In David Copperfield, however, the biography of the protagonist has several close parallels with that of the writer himself, and he even unearthed his most dreaded childhood trauma, namely the four months he had to spend as a menial worker in Warren’s Blacking Factory – an experience that humiliated Dickens so much that he never spoke about it to his own wife and children, and it was only via David that Dickens could get this weight off his chest. Therefore, David Copperfield will surely afford special pleasure to dyed-in-the-wool-Dickensians in that they can feel invited to spot similarities between Dickens’s and David’s lives, e.g. in David’s unwise marriage with the empty-headed and spoilt Dora Spenlow, who seems to be modeled on Dickens’s former sweetheart Maria Beadnell.

Nevertheless, I could not enjoy Dickens’s favourite novel as much as I did enjoy Bleak House, Dombey and Son or Little Dorrit, and this has to do with the narrative perspective as well as with the protagonist, who constantly fails to stand up for those of his friends who need his support. There is Agnes Wickfield, his best friend from adolescent years, who is like a sister to him, and yet he allows the creepy Uriah Heep to web his net of deception around her and her father, David’s benefactor, instead of taking action against these machinations. He even does not interfere when Uriah makes it clear that he is, in fact, determined to force Agnes into matrimony, and when he notices that Agnes is quite on her own in fending off Uriah’s amorous ambitions, her father becoming more and more dependent on his former employee. David also lets Uriah have his way with Dr. Strong and his wife although the Doctor has been his friend and protector ever since his schooldays in Canterbury. He is also a mere spectator when Miss Rosa Dartle tortures Little Emily with her threats and her accusations although he could have ended that disgraceful scene by just stepping into the room. He furthermore ignores several letters coming from Mrs. Micawber in which she asks for his advice and help on behalf of her husband who is growing more and more sinister and secretive. He allows himself to be patronized and belittled by James Steerforth, whom he looks up to with eerie admiration, and he still seems to stand in awe of Steerforth after his former friend has shown his real face to him and brought ruin to a decent family. The only time that David ever actively does something out of the ordinary and when he shows pluck and determination is when he runs away from his factory job in London in order to implore his aunt to take care of him and to open up prospects in life for him that are more befitting to his middle class origins. David Copperfield may be seen as a Bildungsroman in that its protagonist rises in society through hard work and self-control – indeed Victorian virtues – but his growing maturity does not really show itself in its actions towards friends who are in need. Here he remains a mere observer so that it is difficult to detect any real moral growth in him.

This is probably because David Copperfield is told by the eponymous hero himself, as a first person narrator. It was Dickens’s first go at using a perspective different from the omniscient narrator in a large novel, and he must have felt the advantages – the density of the atmosphere, the charm that lies in the blending of the perspective of a child who is prone to wonder and exaggeration with the wider one of the narrator who actually tells the story against the background of all the experience he has gained since when he was a child; advantages which are most prominent in the first third of the novel – as well as the limitations, the major one being the fact that somehow David always had to be on the scene whenever something dramatic happens. This also accounts for his eavesdropping on Emily and Miss Dartle without interfering – a passiveness for which the narrator gives a rather lame excuse. In his next novel, Bleak House Dickens seems to have drawn his own conclusions from the limitations imposed by a first person perspective, and so we have two different narrators’ voices in that novel, one being a first person perspective, the other one a more ironic omniscient narrator.

The choice of the first person would also have made it awkward for Dickens to present David as an enterprising active hero because who likes a narrator that is blowing his own horn? Even the brilliant sleuth Sherlock Holmes normally leaves the story-telling to Dr. Watson, and if you want to know how cringeworthy a first person narrator hero of superhuman power can become, you would just have to read some adventure stories written by the German author Karl May. So, in a way, Dickens solved his problem rather decently, even if it was to the detriment of David Copperfield himself. And yet, there is a certain smugness about David that does not go down too well, and it is to be feared that here the author’s own voice is blending in. When he talks about his days as a factory worker, David leaves no doubt that he was head and shoulders above all the other workers and that even they were aware of it and kept themselves at a respectful distance. One wonders whether young Dickens had experienced the same respect from his co-workers or whether they had taken to making fun of him instead. David is furthermore always on the road to Smuggytown whenever he talks about his achievements or work as an author, and when he finally meets Dr. Chillip after many, many years, there is a toe-curling condescension about his taking such great pains to record the doctor’s admiration and intimidation in the presence of the great author. Neither can David help being condescending towards the best friend he probably ever had apart from his aunt, Traddles, who is infinitely more helpful in solving Agnes’s problem than David is. It is not very becoming in David to behave in such a patronizing way to the unassuming, yet efficient and sympathetic Traddles, when at the same time he is constantly kissing up to James Steerforth, who is such a bad and deceptive friend after all.

All in all, it is difficult to like David but luckily it is not necessary for enjoying the novel, which is cleverly constructed and seems to focus on the topic of marriage and family. It must be a very tricky task to write a fictional (auto)biography – unless one has recourse to the looser and more daredevil form of the picaresque – because a fictional autobiography is still a work of art and requires something like a premise and a theme to keep it all together, whereas a real biography can just try to make sense of the life that is being focused on without paying attention to the principle of artistic unity – it just has to make its point. In fact, David Copperfield seems to fall into three different parts, the most appealing one of which is the first one, where the narrator tells us about his early life. Here Dickens excels at language that makes us see the events from a child’s perspective, and at presenting a tale of lost bliss – thanks to the evil Murdstones –, hardships and a daring journey from London to Dover, undertaken by a timid child whose sole protector on his way is the presence of his late mother which, as he feels, gives him hope and strength. The second part of the novel, David’s youth, is still enthralling, last not least because of the menacing Uriah Heep and the sad tale of Little Emily. It is not until David has settled down as a married man and seen his first successes as an author that the novel begins to slacken – although even then there is the tragic comedy of David’s first marriage and the miracle of Dora’s becoming more and more loveable to the reader – at least, to me. Less of David’s soul-searching in those final chapters would have been more, though.

How now does Dickens knit these three parts together in order to make a unit of them? David’s own life, with the exception of his younger years, is not so interesting as to justify his telling us our story. As I already said, the novel plays on the theme of marriage and family, showing us all kinds of dysfunctional and some happy families. When Aunt Betsey and Peggotty sneer at the notion of ever getting married at all, there seems to be good proof of their being right in Betsey’s own past and in Mrs. Copperfield’s second marriage. There are also matrimonial problems for Dr. Strong and his wife, and then there is David’s rash marriage with Dora. Ironically, most of the so-called lower-class people seem to have happy marriages and family lives – as the Peggottys and even Uriah Heep and his mother, between whom there is genuine affection. Havoc seems to be lurking in the higher orders, and we can see the relationship between Steerforth and his mother, with their unflinching egoism and pride on both sides, as a mirror-image of the humbler couple Uriah and his mother, who seem to be happier with each other for all their villainy. There are many more parallels and links concerning this topic, and some fun can be derived from detecting them.

There are also some great characters, such as my personal hero Traddles, the grandiloquent Mr. Micawber, whose prose I most certainly admire, the excentric Aunt Betsey, the bitter Rosa Dartle, one of Dickens’s most complex female characters, or the slipshod Mrs. Crupp, David’s London landlady, who is redolent of good old Mrs. Gamp in many ways. Apart from that you can enjoy Dickens’s prose, especially in the scene of the storm or in the little vignette when David lists up his first love interests – picking up a Dickens novel is always entering a charmed world of plentiful imagination and vivid detail. It’s just that this time, Dickens was experimenting with a new perspective and was therefore not quite up to his usual standard. But it’s still way better than anything that is written today ;-)

I felt it to be such a daunting task to read this book! I'm not one to give up on a book once I begin reading, but I certainly came close with this one. It was by no means a poorly written story; actually, it was some of the best writing I have read in quite a while. I was sad for David Copperfield as he experienced so much loss in his life. I enjoyed the ending, which seemed a happy one, comparatively speaking.