David Copperfield (Signet Classics)
by Charles Dickens
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Book Summary Information
Author: Charles DickensEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-02-07
ISBN: 0451530047
Number of pages: 880
Publisher: Signet Classics
Book Reviews of David Copperfield (Signet Classics)
Book Review: great eccentric characters, Victorian moralizing wore thin,
Summary: 4 Stars
I just finished reading DC, and although I enjoyed it, I was also heartily glad to be finished. The Victorian ideals did not wear well through such a long novel. I began to feel that Dicken's emotional values were creepy.
To me, Dickens showed himself in this book to be primarily concerned with moral education. He is holding up various models to the reader, in order to `form their character', although ironically, efforts to do so in the book are either evil (the Murdstones) or useless (David trying to give his bird-brained wife some character). Yet this is Dicken's passion: to teach us to be affectionate above all, utterly selfless, incapable of self-assertion (the highest praise he gives to Traddles and his perfect wife Sophy), simple as the madman Dick, kind and patient. These are Christian virtues, and yet religion per se is virtually absent in the book - oddly so, given how steeped it is in Christian self-abnegation and kindness. I almost wonder if Dickens were antireligious; I assume he was anticlerical given his critique of most social institutions. Yet Dickens himself is not so much a student of the human heart as a preacher. All his characters are there to teach a lesson.
Yet he carries you along as the reader with the pleasantness of his loving characters, the fun of the eccentric characters, and his powers of careful observation, which brings even cartoon-thin portrayals to life through original detail. His plot moves along, with many exciting incidents. He seems a primitive writer by todays standards, signaling crudely plot developments to come, and ham fistedly signaling what characters we are to admire, to pity or to loathe. All is done is broad strokes. At times his social satire and humor leaven the work. But mostly, it is his own goodness - his wish for happy, loving, tolerant relations, his desire to improve the world, that cast a pleasant glow on the work.
Still, three quarters through the book I perversely declared myself to be on Uriah Heep's side, and refused to let Dickens bludgeon me into believing Heep is evil. For what is Heep's overarching sin? The nightmare of Victorian society (of which Dickens professes to be critical in so many regards). Why, Heep is ambitious, he is upwardly mobile, he rebels against being `umble.' Dicken's paints Heep's means to success in wholly black colors - all rage and spite and jealousy and meanness, all cheating and blackguardery. But that is because this refusal to stay happily in one's place can have no positive colors in Dicken's imagination. (His own driving ambition as a writer did not make it into these pages.)
My favorite character is the Aunt, and my favorite scene, David's birth, when she puts cotton in her ears not to hear the mother's birth pains. I enjoyed the virtuous and happy fisherfolk, especially their cosy cottage which is an overturned boat, despite feeling it was awfully contrived, . The Happy Lower Classes, More Virtuous Than their Betters.
Most of the women characters lacked interest, and none won my empathy. (Dickens got me to cry more than once, but I can't say I really cared about his characters, not even David.) Agnes the Angel was too much Patient Griselda; Emily the fallen angel saved by forgiveness never came to life; the wicked women were flat as cardboard. I didn't believe in everyone's fondness for DC's `child-bride' because self-involved, vain, immature, shallow and lazy people - as she was - are not endearing, affectionate, and beloved. They are hard to take. I don't know if Dicken's was holding up a social ideal of the childish, spoiled woman, and trying gently to lead his readers to see her as inadequate.
Speaking of which, Dicken's himself definitely has a creepy repeated imaginative theme here about love and sex being mixed into father-daughter relations: we are given a beautiful love match between the old Doctor, seemingly 30 or even 40 years older than his lower class wife, who actually calls him her husband and father; Agnes replacing her mother in relation to her father; DC's `child-bride'; Emily and her clinging to her Uncle, and eventually foreswearing marriage to live with him. Traddle's and his wife are similar in age, but she is presented as a mother before marriage, taking care of her invalid mother and brood of 8. The only romance between those equal in age happens off-stage and is tragic, illicit and evil: Emily being seduced by DC's friend Steerforth. ( I wonder if when Dicken's left his wife and ten children for an actress, 8 years after this book was written, was the actress was 30 years younger? Answer - yes. She was 18 and he lived out the part of Steerforth himself. No wonder he has David being so tolerant of Steerforths ruining an entire family's happiness by his sexual predation of a young girl.)
The Micawbers again did not win me over - a pontificating loser of a lush, willing to ruin poor Traddles - yet we are to forgive him completely because, why? (Turns out he is modeled on Dicken's father.)
Which brings me to DC himself. DC is an anti-hero in 20th century terms: although he does eventually choose and embark on his own career as stenographer and then writer, the writer's amition and hard work is largely off-stage. What is on-stage is a person who relies on the kindness of others, who has no gumption or ambition, who is kind and dutiful and appreciative, who can't even assert himself with servants who steal his very clothes, and bursts into tears every other chapter if not more often. He chooses very stupidly in love, falling for a pretty face with an empty head (rather like his mother, but worse). As a child he is utterly helpless every time anyone wants to victimize him - not a resourceful impulse, let alone action - we are supposed to love him for his innocence and helplessness, but I would prefer a kid with quicker wits, more intiative, more courage, quicker fists, who solved some of his own problems
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