David Copperfield Charles Dickens

Dickens's approach to the novel is influenced by various literary genres, including the picaresque novel tradition,[113] melodrama,[114] and the novel of sensibility.[115] Satire and irony are central to the picaresque novel.[116] Comedy is also an aspect of the British picaresque novel tradition of Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett. Fielding's Tom Jones[117][118] was a major influence on the nineteenth century novel including Dickens, who read it in his youth,[119] and named a son Henry Fielding Dickens in his honour.[120][121] Melodrama is typically sensational and designed to appeal strongly to the emotions.

Trevor Blount comments on the fascination that Dickens has always exercised on the public. He mentions the lavishness, energy, vividness, brilliance, and tenderness of Dickens's writing, along with the range of his imagination. Blount also refers to Dickens's humour, and his use of the macabre and of pathos. Finally, Blount celebrates the artistic mastery of an overflowing spontaneity, which is conveyed with both delicacy and subtlety.[122] What Blount admires, in the first place, is the vigour with which the characters "rise" from the page and create a "phantasmagorical" universe, which is seen by the reader with the intensity of an hallucination. This is best illustrated in many of Dickens's works, by the powerful figure of a weak individual. In David Copperfield Mr Wilkins Micawber is such a figure, someone who is formidably incompetent, grandiose in his irreducible optimism, sumptuous in his verbal virtuosity, and whose grandiloquent tenderness is irresistibly comical.[123] Micawber has been described as "With the one exception of Falstaff, ... the greatest comic figure in English literature".[124]

In this novel, one characteristic noted by Edgar Johnson is that Dickens, in the first part, "makes the reader see with the eyes of a child",[125] an innovative technique for the time, first tried in Dombey and Son with an omniscient narrator, and carried here to perfection through the use of the 'I'.

Modernist novelist Virginia Woolf writes, that when we read Dickens "we remodel our psychological geography ... [as he produces] characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks".[126]

Satire and pathos

The very principle of satire is to question, and to tear off the masks, so as to reveal the raw reality under the varnish.[127] Dickens use the whole arsenal of literary tools that are available to the satirist, or rather supplied by his narrator, David, who even directs satire upon himself. These tools include irony, humour, and caricature. How it is employed relates to the characters' differing personalities. Satire is thus gentler towards some characters than others; toward David the hero-narrator, it is at once indulgent and transparent.

Types of character

There are several different types of character: On the one hand, there are the good ones, Peggotty, Dr Strong, Traddles, Agnes etc., on the other hand, there are the bad ones, Murdstone, Steerforth, Uriah Heep, etc. A third category are characters who change over time, including Betsey Trotwood, who at first is more obstinate than nasty, it is true, and Martha Endell, and Creakle, etc. There is also a contrast drawn between ever-frozen personalities such as Micawber, Dora, Rosa Dartle, and those who evolve. The latter includes David, Mr Mell, Miss Mowcher. There is also a contrast drawn between the idiosyncrasies of Mr Dick, Barkis, Mrs Gummidge, and the subtle metamorphosis from innocence to maturity of characters like David, Traddles, Agnes.

Dickens worked intensively on developing arresting names for his characters that would reverberate with associations for his readers, and assist the development of motifs in the storyline, giving what one critic calls an "allegorical impetus" to a novel's meanings.[128] The name Mr Murdstone in David Copperfield conjures up twin allusions to "murder" and stony coldness;[129] Strong is definitely not "strong"; Creakle "squeaks and grinds". There can also be a visual dimension to Dickens's humour. This includes Micawber's rotundity, his wife's dried-up body, which forever offers a sterile breast, Betsey's steadfast stiffness, Mr Sharp's bowed head, Daniel Peggotty's stubborn rudeness, Clara Copperfield's delicate silhouette, and Dora's mischievous air. Then there are exaggerated attitudes that are constantly repeated. Dickens creates humour out of character traits, such as Mr Dick's kite flying, James Steerforth's insistent charm, Uriah Heep's obsequiousness, Betsey pounding David's room. There are in addition the employment of repetitive verbal phrases: "umble" of the same Heep, the "willin" of Barkis, the "lone lorn creetur" of Mrs Gummidge. Dickens also uses objects for a humorous purpose, like Traddles's skeletons, the secret box of Barkis, the image of Heep as a snake, and the metallic rigidity of Murdstone.

Pathos and indulgent humour

In David Copperfield idealised characters and highly sentimental scenes are contrasted with caricatures and ugly social truths. While good characters are also satirised, a considered sentimentality replaces satirical ferocity. This is a characteristic of all of Dickens's writing, but it is reinforced in David Copperfield by the fact that these people are the narrator's close family members and friends, who are devoted to David and sacrificing themselves for his happiness. Hence the indulgence applied from the outset, with humour prevailing along with loving complicity. David is the first to receive such treatment, especially in the section devoted to his early childhood, when he is lost in the depths of loneliness in London, following his punishment by Mr Murdstone. Michael Hollington analyses a scene in chapter 11 that seems emblematic of the situation and how humour and sentimentality are employed by Dickens.[130] This is the episode where the very young David orders a pitcher of the best beer in a public house, "To moisten what I had for dinner".[131] David's memory has retained the image of the scene, which is so vivid that he sees himself as from the outside. He has forgotten the exact date (his birthday). This episode release David's emotional pain, writes Michael Hollington, obliterating the infected part of the wound. Beyond the admiration aroused for the amazing self-confidence of the little child, in resolving this issue and taking control of his life with the assurance of someone much older, the passage "testifies to the work of memory, transfiguring the moment into a true myth".[130] The tone is nostalgic because, ultimately, the epilogue is a true moment of grace. The wife of the keeper, returning David's money, deposits on his forehead a gift that has become extremely rare,[132] a kiss, "Half admired and half compassionate", but above all full of kindness and femininity; at least, adds David, as a tender and precious reminder, "I am sure".

Theatricality

Dickens went to the theatre regularly from an early age and even considered becoming an actor in 1832.[133] "Many of the plays that he saw on the London stage in the 1820s and 1830s were melodramas".[134] There is a visual, theatrical—even cinematic—element in some scenes in David Copperfield. The cry of Martha at the edge of the river belongs to the purest Victorian melodrama, as does the confrontation between Mr Peggotty and Mrs Steerforth, in chapter 32:

I justify nothing, I make no counter-accusations. But I am sorry to repeat, it is impossible. Such a marriage would irretrievably blight my son's career, and ruin his prospects. Nothing is more certain than that, it never can take place, and never will. If there is any other compensation.[135]

Such language, according to Trevor Blount, is meant to be said aloud. Many other scenes employ the same method: Micawber crossing the threshold, Heep harassing David in Chapter 17, the chilling apparition of Littimer in the middle of David's party in Chapter 27. The climax of this splendid series of scenes is the storm off Yarmouth, which is an epilogue to the menacing references to the sea previously, which shows Dicken's most intense virtuosity (chapter 55).

Dickens made the following comment in 1858: "Every good actor plays direct to every good author, and every writer of fiction, though he may not adopt the dramatic form, writes in effect for the stage".[136]

Setting

Setting is a major aspect of Dickens's "narrative artistry and of his methods of characterization", so that "the most memorable quality of his novels may well be their atmospheric density [... of the] descriptive writing".[137]

In David Copperfield setting is less urban, more rustic than in other novels, and especially maritime. Besides Peggotty, who is a seaman whose home is an overturned hull, Mr Micawber goes to the naval port of Plymouth on the south coast after prison and appears finally on board a steamer. David himself is connected to Yarmouth, and Aunt Betsey settled in the Channel port of Dover. Young David notices the sea on his first day at her home; "the air from the sea came blowing in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers".[138] The city, London, is especially the place of misfortune, where the dark warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby are found. The philosopher Alain (pseudonym of Émile-Auguste Chartier) comments as follows about Dickens's portrayal of London (but it might also be applied to other locations), as cited by Lançon:

The Dickensian atmosphere, unlike any other, comes from the way the distinctive nature of a dwelling is linked to the personality of its inhabitant [...] [There is there] a look that creates a sense of reality, with the remarkable connection between buildings and characters.[139]

Symbolism

Important symbols include, imprisonment, the sea, flowers, animals, dreams, and Mr Dick's kite.[140] According to Henri Suhamy, "Dickens's symbolism consists in giving significance to physical details ... The constant repetition of these details ... contributes to deepen their emblematic significance".[141] This may include the characters, aspects of the story, and, more prominently amongst the motifs, places or objects.

Separating realism and symbolism can be tricky, especially, for example, when it relates, to the subject of imprisonment, which is both a very real place of confinement for the Micawber family, and, more generally throughout David Copperfield, symbolic of the damage inflicted on a sick society, trapped in its inability to adapt or compromise, with many individuals walled within in themselves.[142]

The imponderable power of the sea is almost always associated with death: it took Emily's father; will take Ham and Steerforth, and in general is tied to David's "unrest" associated with his Yarmouth experiences.[143] In the end nothing remains but Steerforth's body cast-up as "flotsam and jetsam, that symbolises the moral emptiness of David's adoration. The violent storm in Yarmouth coincides with the moment when the conflicts reached a critical threshold, when it is as if angry Nature called for a final resolution; as Kearney noted, "The rest of the novel is something of an anti-climax after the storm chapter."[143][144] Referring to the climactic storm scene in David Copperfield, the last in any Dickens novel, Kearney remarked that "The symbolism of sea, sky and storm is successfully integrated to achieve what amounts to a mystical dimension in the novel, and this mystical dimension is, on the whole, more acceptable than the ones found elsewhere in Dickens".[145]

According to Daniel L Plung, four types of animal are a particularly important aspect of the way symbolism is used: song birds symbolise innocence; "lions and raptors [are] associated with the fallen but not evil"; dogs, other than Jip, are associated "with the malicious and self-interested"; while snakes and eel represent evil.[146] A typical example of the way that animal symbolism is used is found in the following sentence: " 'the influence of the Murdstones upon me [David] was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird" '.[147] When David describes Steerforth as "brave as a lion" this is a clue to Steerforth's moral weakness and foreshadows subsequent events.[148]

Flowers symbolise innocence, for example, David is called "Daisy" by Steerforth, because he is naive and pure, while Dora constantly paints bouquets, and when Heep was removed from Wickfield House, flowers return to the living room. Mr Dick's kite, represents how much he is both outside and above society, immune to its hierarchical social system. Furthermore, it flies among the innocent birds,[149] and just as this toy soothes and gives joy to him, Mr Dick heals the wounds and restore peace where the others without exception have failed.

Dreams are also an important part of the novel's underlying symbolic structure, and are "used as a transitional device to bind [its] parts together" with twelve chapters ending "with a dream or reverie".[150] In the early dark period of David's life his dreams "are invariably ugly", but in later chapters they are more mixed, with some reflecting "fanciful hopes" that are never realised, while others are nightmares which foreshadow "actual problems".[150]

In addition physical beauty, in the form of Clara, is emblematic of moral good, while the ugliness of Uriah Heep, Mr Creakle and Mr Murdstone underlines their villainy. While David, the story's hero, has benefited from her love and suffered from the violence of the others.

Dialect

Dickens, in preparation for this novel, went to Norwich, Lowestoft, and Yarmouth where the Peggotty family resides, but he stayed there for only five hours, on 9 January 1849. He assured his friends, that his descriptions were based on his own memories, brief as were his local experiences. However, looking to the work of K. J. Fielding[151] reveals that the dialect of this town was taken from a book written by a local author, Major Edward Moor published in 1823.[152] There, Dickens found a beein (a house), fisherate (officiate), dodman (snail), clickesen (gossip), and winnicking (tears) from winnick (to cry) and so on.[153]