David Copperfield

To commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of Charles Dickens, born in February, I took on the task of reading David Copperfield, the fourth of his books I've read (after Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations). I started the book in early February, but didn't finish until this week, as it something of a doorstop (although I read it on my Kindle, so I didn't have to lug it around and bind it with a rubber band).

The book was written in 1850, after being serialized in the few years before, and Dickens considered it his favorite: "Of all my books, I like this best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield."

As with many of Dickens' tales, David Copperfield is a bildungsroman, and concerning an unfortunate orphan. It is narrated by the title character, and begins with the well-known lines: "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."

Thus we have a story that, however subtly, examines whether we live a life of destiny or of free will. Young David is posthumously sired, and his young mother soon marries a despicable fellow named Murdstone, who beats David like a mule. David fights back (by biting Murdstone's hand) and is sent to a school. In true Dickensian fashion, the school is full of men who delight in beating small children: "I heard that with the single exception of Mr. Creakle, Tungay considered the whole establishment, masters and boys, as his natural enemies, and that the only delight of his life was to be sour and malicious."

When a friend of mine posted about Dickens' 200th birthday, a friend of hers mentioned that she found there was too much child abuse in Dickens. I was taken aback--surely she must realize Dickens wasn't in favor of child abuse. In fact, he was ahead of his time in deploring the treatment of children as simply short adults. But I realize that the person didn't really think that--she was just too sensitive a soul to get through the harsh treatment that many of Dickens' characters endure, and David is in for his share. After his mother dies, Murdstone puts him to work (as Dickens himself did--this book is considered his most autobiographical).

He then runs away, and we come in for some harrowing chapters, where he must sell his clothes to eat. He is headed for Dover, where his great-aunt Betsey Trotwood lives. She had attended his birth, as David's father was a favorite of hers. But when it was revealed to her that the baby was a boy, she turned on her heel and walked out. But as David appears to her, disheveled, hungry and cold, she can't help but take him in. She later scolds Murdstone (and his deplorable sister Jane) in one of the book's best scenes.

All this is perhaps a quarter of the book, and the best part, and could have been a work unto itself. But we've got much more to come. Dickens introduces us to two of the most vivid characters in English literature: Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep. Micawber, modeled after Dickens' father, is mellifluent and perpetually in debt. He meets Copperfield when the narrator is a boy, but they become lifelong friends. Micawber disappears from the book now and then, but always returns gratefully. Micawber never says anything in one word when he can use ten, such as when Copperfield asks of Mrs. Micawber and the children: "'She is tolerably convalescent. The twins no longer derive their sustenance from Nature's founts--in short," said Mr. Micawber, in of his burst of confidence, 'they are weaned--and Mrs. Micawber is, at present, my travelling companion. She will be rejoiced, Copperfield, to renew her acquaintance with one who has proved himself in all respects a worthy minister at the sacred altar of friendship.'"

Heep, whose name has become an eponym for obsequiousness (and the name of a '70s hard rock band), comes into Copperfield's life when our hero takes a job with Mr. Wickfield as a proctor. A lot of the business stuff I couldn't quite understand (such as what a proctor is), and I felt that Dickens frontloaded the enmity on Heep--we know he's bad because Copperfield tells us he is, such as when he learns that Heep has eyes on Wickfield's daughter, Agnes: "I believe I had a delirious idea of seizing the red-hot poker out of the fire, and running him through with it. It went from me with a shock, like a ball fired from a rifle: but the image of Agnes, outraged by so much as a thought of this red-headed animal's, remained in my mind when I looked at him, sitting all awry as if his mean soul gripped his body, and made me giddy."

We don't know the full extent of Heep's treachery until late in the book, when Micawber exposes him as a cheat and a forger. Until then we know he's bad because he's got red hair, but more because he constantly tells everyone he's "umble." Surely a person who describes themselves as humble is not.

Most of the book is composed in this manner--black and white, good and evil. Copperfield himself is pretty much a non-entity. We really don't know much of what he's about, other than that he's loyal to his friends. I find it interesting that he is referred to by several names: David, Trotwood (by his aunt) and Doady (by his wife, Dora). Micawber, Betsey Trotwood, his nurse Peggotty and her brother, Mr. Peggotty, and Tommy Traddles, Copperfield's school chum--all are good. Heep and the Murdstones, bad.

The only character that has any ambiguity is part of the other major plot thread of the book. Steerforth, another of Copperfield's schoolmates (who calls him by yet another name, Daisy). Steerforth defends Copperfield in school, and becomes his champion, yet Dickens shows talons beneath the nail polish. Steerforth gets a teacher fired, without stopping to think of the consequences. He will later enjoy visiting the Peggotty's, as if he were a tourist in their near poverty. But he will seduce their niece, Emily, whom Copperfield loved when they were children, and then cast her aside, her reputation ruined. Steerforth's end is one of the most moving parts of the book.

As for Copperfield's love life, after his childhood love of Emily, and his tortured brother/sister love for Agnes, he marries Dora Spenlow:  "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 a 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."

Dora is similar to many women in Dickens, a kind of frail woman-child. She even asks that David call her a "child-wife," which surely must rankle some feminists. She can't be reasoned with: "I had wounded Dora's soft little heart, and she was not to be comforted. She was so pathetic in her sobbing and bewailing, that I felt as if I had said I don't know what to hurt her. I was obliged to hurry away; I was kept out late; and I felt all night such pangs of remorse as made me miserable. I had the conscience of an assassin, and was haunted by a vague sense of enormous wickedness."

In contrast, there is the evil Rosa Dartle, who is in love with Steerforth, but has been scarred by him, literally, when in childhood he threw a hammer at her. One can't escape the belief that Dickens viewed women in a patronizing, superficial way--if they were angelic and had curls of gold, they were child-like and adorable, dark and disfigured, they were dastardly.

I found some parts of David Copperfield incomprehensible--an entire subplot involving Copperfield's teacher Dr. Strong, his wife, and her cousin, could have been easily excised. But there's more than enough here to chew on, and the characters live beyond the page. There are also the usual brilliant passages of Dickens' prose: "Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil streets, and again mingled with the shadows of the venerable gateways and churches. The rooks were sailing about the cathedral towers; and the towers themselves, overlooking many a long unaltered mile of the rich country and its pleasant streams, were cutting the bright morning air, as if there were no such thing as change on earth."