I’ve read Dickens’ David Copperfield at least ten times, which means that now I’m reading it for at least the 11th time. I used to read it once a year, and reading Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s fan fiction interpretation of DC, made me want to read it again. And it’s just as good as it always is. PS - this post contains many many spoilers. But even if you read all the way through, and you haven’t read the book yet, you should because it’s great.
I’ve read other Dickens novels too - Bleak House, and Hard Times, and Great Expectations. They're all great (especially Bleak House), but none have the hold on me that David Copperfield has. I’m going to read Little Dorrit, which I’ve never read, after I finish with David Copperfield. Dickens seems very relevant now.
*****
Because of family turmoil of one kind and another, my life was abruptly and completely turned upside down several times during my childhood. Maybe I’ll write all about it someday, but not today. I wasn’t shipped off to a boarding school run by an abusive psychopath, and I wasn’t forced to make my own living in a strange city at age 10 or so, as David Copperfield was, so I’m not drawing any exact parallels between my life and his. But just like David, I knew what it was like to have the rug pulled out from beneath my feet, and to have no idea what would happen next nor any say in the matter, and to always feel unmoored and uncertain and insecure. It leaves a mark.
It’s probably not that much of a spoiler to tell you that things turn out happily for David Copperfield, after many trials and tribulations. You also might already know that Dickens’ novels were originally published as serials in pulp magazines that apparently paid by the word. Dickens’ writing is beautiful and his work is a lot of fun to read, but economy doesn’t enter into the equation. If you prefer a spare and spartan prose style without a lot of unnecessary detail and embellishment - well first of all, what are you doing here; and secondly, Dickens might not be for you. Brace yourself also for the Victorian social mores. Dickens is rightly outraged at the grinding poverty of the working class in mid 19th century London, but he doesn’t question the hierarchy that places most people in positions of service in one way or another not to society itself but to its masters. He just wanted the people on the lower rungs to have a decent place to live and enough food to eat and enough money that they didn’t need to send their children out to work in factories.
And of course, we have to talk about the women of David Copperfield. Dickens probably never questioned the patriarchy even once - but I still believe that he thought more highly of women than a lot of 21st century men whom I could name but won’t.
David Copperfield’s society is one in which a fallen woman is literally better off dead. Although Dickens certainly doesn’t let the man or men involved in a woman’s downfall off the hook in terms of moral culpability, he also expects and accepts that a man who corrupts a young woman will eventually get on with his life. The young woman, however, is an outcast forever. Dickens, through his narrator David, obviously feels sorrow and compassion for such women, but doesn’t really seem to question why it’s necessary that they be separated from decent society.
But Dickens didn’t make the rules of this society, he just wrote stories about it. And his female characters, good and bad, are as interesting and beautiful and human as the male characters. David’s aunt Betsey Trotwood is an independent woman of means and one of the strongest female characters in the literature of that time. Miss Betsey doesn’t care about pleasing men; in fact, she goes out of her way to avoid pleasing men or really interacting with them in any way, with the exception of her beloved nephew, her friend and charge Mr. Dick, and a few other trusted gentlemen. Miss Betsey lives by her own rules, and she demands and receives respect from others, men and women alike. Her nephew David, whom she renames Trotwood (after herself, of course) admires and loves Miss Betsey without reserve, not only because he is rightly grateful to her for giving him a home and an education and a rich and interesting life, but for her own sake.
Agnes Wickfield, David’s childhood friend and eventual wife, is easily dismissed as a Victorian archetype - angelic, sweet, selfless, ladylike, accomplished in feminine pursuits, demure and deferential to her father and other men. David admires Agnes for her beauty and her other traditionally feminine virtues, but he and everyone around her also admire her for her strength, her courage, her intelligence, and her character. Agnes and David become acquainted at age 11 or so, and he recognizes Agnes’s brilliance quite early, noticing that her learning is quite equal to his own, even though she lacks formal schooling. Agnes sees and notices everything, and she is the moral heart and soul of the story.
The novel’s other female characters are also delightfully complex and nuanced and human. Peggotty, David’s childhood nurse and lifelong friend, is love and steadfastness and selflessness personified, with a near-flawless eye for human goodness and evil (it is she who spots Mr. Murdstone for what he is the moment she sees him - on the other hand, she is taken in by Steerforth just like everyone else). David’s mother Clara and his first wife Dora are young and beautiful and a little silly and vain. But they recognize their own flaws - Dora is particularly self-aware and perceptive, especially at the end of her short life. Mrs. Steerforth is a cautionary tale about misguided love - she worships her son, making it impossible for her to truly love him, to his detriment and hers. And although we know that Mrs. Steerforth has spoiled her child, Dickens makes quite clear that the responsibility for his bad behavior and his eventual downfall is entirely his. The same applies to the vile Uriah Heep and the unfortunate Mrs. Heep.
It is also interesting that of the two women most hurt by Steerforth - Emily Peggotty and Rosa Dartle - Emily recovers and gets a second chance at a new life, and Rosa spends the rest of her life mired in grief and bitterness and anger - even though it is Emily who is “fallen” in the sexual sense, and Rosa who remained chaste. Rosa and Mrs. Steerforth would be outraged at Dickens or any writer who didn’t properly punish a girl like Emily - preferably by killing her off in some dreadful way but at the very least by making her live out the rest of her days as a pauper and outcast. All of this is to say that although Dickens wrote from the perspective of 19th century attitudes toward women, he obviously also loved and respected them.
*****
I’m right in the middle of the book now. David has finished his education and is about to begin his proctor’s training at Doctor’s Commons. He’s going to fall in love with the wrong woman and then the right woman. Uriah Heep will try to ruin Agnes’s life and he will almost succeed, but for the unlikely intervention of the unlikeliest of heroes, Mr. Micawber. The Murdstones will reappear, like black mold. Miss Betsey’s secret will be revealed. Mr. Dick will keep trying to get Charles I and his troubles out of his head. Steerforth will die at sea despite the heroic effort to save him by a man whose life he ruined. Most of the people who deserve a comeuppance will get it. A bunch of people who suffered unjustly will pick up and move to Australia, where they will prosper. And David and Agnes will finally live happily ever after.
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