In persuading me to read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens this recent autumn, a friend described that book thus: “It’s basically David Copperfield’s whole life story. That’s it. Just his whole life.”
Some one thousand plus pages later (depending on which edition you read), it’s a pretty accurate description. Beginning just before his birth, with David 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 step-parents with less than scrupulous morality, David’s childhood has all the hallmarks of 19th century England, at least in so far as it is portrayed by Dickens, the Bronte sisters, or George Elliot (or even Victor Hugo, who finished Les Miserables in Britain’s Guernsey). Orphans, step-parents, premature death (as in, death by some means other than of old age), the conflict between marriages for love and for money, and the constant worries about annual income, debt, and debtor’s prison all make their appearance in David Copperfield.
When I first began reading David Copperfield, I bemoaned the length. I was reminded by another friend (who knew I had so many friends…and friends that read Dickens?) that unlike more recently written novels, 19th century writers like Copperfield (and Thackery) would publish their stories in serial format. Essentially, I was binge reading the 19th century equivalent of Netflix. Indeed.
Regardless, it is a long read, and there are times when it feels like it, as well. On the other hand, if you understand that it was read in weekly (or bi-weekly?) installments, by people whose light was limited to what was afforded by coal, oil, candle, or daylight, and this was the cutting edge of entertainment–the boob tube was still a century away–then the length takes on a different perspective. We are growing with Copperfield, sharing his travails as his mother is forced to send him away to boarding school, his adventures as he sets off on the road, alone and nearly penniless, to find a long-lost aunt who spurned him at birth upon discovering that he was, much to her dismay, a boy instead of a girl, and the warm flush of young love, as well as the loss of love’s labors lost…it’s a regular, serialized drama, fit for the age.
That said, it doesn’t lose much it’s shine, though the style took some time for me to warm to. By the end, though, if just be the sheer number of pages during which I’ve been in his head, Copperfield is a friend, and I was a bit sad to put down the book. Dickens’ world is small, even while it reflects a much larger world “out there,” and the universe of characters is finite and all of them will play a role in his protagonist’s life (a character who, in himself, often seems to echo Dickens’ own self-conception). Dickens gives each their own story that is both connected to and separate from the others. Their voices are distinct, proving Dickens’ ear for dialect, class, and education, not to mention character. I loved to hear the eccentricities of Betsey Trotwood’s aversion to donkeys in her yard, Wilkins Micawber’s elaborate way of speaking, the sniveling of the villainous Uriah Heep, and the contrasts between innocent Dora Spenlow and the “girl next door” Agnes Wickfield. Through both tragedy and triumph, all get their just deserts in way that is satisfying, if more trite than we might expect in a modern novel. But this is not a modern novel–it is a reflection of an age when life was short and brutal, when England ruled the waves, and literature was still a rare occupation. As such, it’s a rare treasure, a classic, and appreciable for the window it opens on an age now past.
David Copperfield
fiction
1849
1024
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 gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; & the magnificently impecunious Micawber, one of literature’s great comic creations.
In David Copperfield—the novel he described as his “favorite child”—Dickens drew revealingly on his own experiences to create one of his most exuberant & enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy & comedy in equal measure. Originally published as a monthly serial, from 4/1849 to 11/1850.
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