Title: David Copperfield
Genre: Novel
Year: 1850
Pages: 980
Origin: read on the Kindle during August-September 2012
Nod Rating: 4 nods out of 5
‘Of all my books, I like this the 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.’Such is the beatification of David Copperfield: Charles Dickens has blessed it as his favourite, whilst other writers – of the high ilk of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Woolf – appear to be in unison on the greatness of the novel. Woolf, in particular, was read the book on several occasions, assessing it ‘magnificent’. These are massive endorsements, especially when considering the bulk and expanse of Dickens’ canon of fictional creations.
(Charles Dickens, 1869)
David Copperfield (or, to give its wondrously large original title: The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account)’) was initially published in serial form across two years – similarly to many other Dickens novels. It follows the life of its title character, from childhood to manhood, in what is hailed an example of a bildungsroman novel.
For the Worm, this was to be the second attempt at reading the novel whole. The first began many moons ago, having bought a cheap copy in a second hand book shop and spending days not going to class but rather read dusty volumes in a nearby park. Pretentious? Yes. And far too long for the attention span of a sixteen year-old. The moons have continued to pass, and now it was time to return to the novel, to continue beyond page two-hundred and finally attain closure on this story. Of course, the old dusty volume is no longer with us and is long gone; in its place is the robust and ever-ready (dependent on battery life) Kindle, that now homes many of Dickens’ famous novel. David Copperfield is one of the first in a journey through the mind of one of the world’s greatest writers.
Although the storyline is not – arguably - as well known as the other novels in Dickens’ catalogue (principally those of Oliver and Great Expectations), the colourful character descriptions find the author on the top of his game. Here are a few examples, including that of his nurse Peggotty, with ‘eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wondered the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples’; the ominous arrival of the Murdstone’s: ‘the gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful’; the hilarious and bumbling Mr Micawber ‘who was a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a creature about everything but his own affairs as ever existed, and never so happy when he was busy about something that could never be of any profit to him’; the villainous Uriah Heep: ‘All this time he was squeezing my hand with his damp fishy fingers, while I made every effort I decently could to get it away’; and the rather more cheerful names for his wife, Dora: ‘Child-wife’ and ‘Little Blossom’.
Furthermore, the description of thoughts, feelings and surroundings find a writer who has improved from earlier “fancies”; a writer who is stepping into a second, in-depth and all the more creative period of his life. The Worm delighted in reading the young Copperfield’s earliest memories of his dead father:
‘the remembrance that I have my first childish associations with his white grave-stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlour was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house were – almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes – bolted and locked against it’.And the recalling of his wedding day to his ‘Child-wife’:
‘Of her waving her little hand, and our going away once more. Of her once more stopping, and looking back, and hurrying to Agnes, and giving Agnes, above all the others, her last kisses and farewells. We drive away together, and I awake from the dream. I believe it at last. It is my dear, dear, little wife beside me, whom I love so well! “Are you happy now, you foolish boy?” says Dora, “and sure you don’t repent?” I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are gone, and I resume the journey of my story.’
The novel – the plots and subplots of which are far too vast to fully cover in this review – enrapture characters of the good (Traddles, Peggotty and her brother, Mr Peggotty, as well as Dr Strong), the bad (Uriah Heep and the Murdstones), the confused (the Micawbers), the mistreated (Mr Mell), the complex (Rosa Dartle) and the bold (Betsey Trotwood and James Steerforth); and unfortunately, the dull (chiefly, the angelic and dutiful Agnes). As in every Dickens novel, we have the battle between good and evil, the peculiar and comedic elements that surround us, as well as that classic Dickensian theme: the differences between class in Victorian society.
The Worm’s three largest gripes with this novel are the following: the first, is the weakness of Copperfield as a character. The book is filled with colourful people, memorably the likes of Steerforth, his aunt Betsey Trotwood and Peggotty. However, Copperfield himself appears devoid of doing evil or harm (bar, perhaps, the incident with Dora’s father); he is left to play the straight-man to the incidents of others around him, something of a blank canvas to be impressed upon. The book’s first quarter – that of Copperfield’s youth – hints upon the boy having been an unreliable narrator; an element not followed up by Dickens. The Worm’s evidence for this is, admittedly scant, and may have been an invention of his mind in the hope of a greater pay-off as Copperfield entered manhood. But there are a few remarks, including: ‘When my thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth, I wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a mist of fancy over well-remembered facts!’
The second gripe focuses on the supposed villainy of Heep. Undoubtedly, Heep plays the part of the “bad guy” in illicitly stealing the funds of those around him; but he has a long way to go to repeat the wickedness and complexity of other Victorian creations, principally that of Bronte’s Heathcliff. Furthermore, Copperfield’s instant dislike to this character is at odds with his transaction with every other person in this novel: after all, instant affection and warmth is one of Copperfield’s few saving graces.
But the gripe that eclipses all others is the rambling structure of the plot. This is a common complaint held against Dickens, who didn’t write succinct novels, but rather a series of chapters to be published week after week. This feature has a modern equivalent in the never-ending soap operas on television; or more exactly in the Worm’s reading material, that of an extended comic book run, with prints issued each month. It is clear that Dickens introduces characters, such as the legendary Micawber, to await a pay-off further down the road; what is not clear is the author’s actual intention in the finish line when commencing this story. It is this sense of chaos, of continuing to write until the story had worn thin, that demotes David Copperfield from the possible starry heights of a 5 nodder commendation.
But, dear reader, these gripes cannot wholly detract from what is a fantastic novel. Dickens’ love is clearly shown on these pages, and as becomes clear during Copperfield’s journey, the two – author and character – are undisputedly linked. As noted above, David Copperfield was Dickens’ ‘favourite child’; the Worm, however, will continue to plough through his back catalogue, to continue forwards to the exploits of Pip, of the deeds of Darnay and Carton from A Tale of Two Cities, as well as the adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
Buy it here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Copperfield-Vintage-Classics-Charles-Dickens/dp/0099511460/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349517253&sr=1-1
Read it here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/766
