David Copperfield

This is not the first time I had read David Copperfield, it probably won't be the last either. There is always something new to see and discover - as verbose as Dickens tends to be, he also knows how to use these words and he builds such memorable characters that revisiting them is always bound to make you notice something more about them. As in most of his novels, it is the secondary characters that shine - David and his love life can be dull at times but there is always someone else in the frame - his aunt and Mr. Dick, the Peggotty family and Ms. Mowcher; the Micawbers and Agnes; Emily and Martha. Even the villains are full blooded - cruel, awful and despicable but oh so human. There is only one exception in the whole book and it is show more Dora - and even that makes sense to some extent - it almost feels like a protection mechanism from an older David who is trying to reconcile the love of his youth with all he had learned about himself - so she needs to become a perfect ghost, a presence which does not contradict his own heart.

One thing I never appreciated was how skillful Dickens is with the timing of the actions in the novel - modern editions rarely mark the serialization breaks. The edition I read had the original layout of the serialization (including the advertisements) and having to stop at the end of each installment (to either look at the ads or leaf through them to get to the next part) made me see the novel in a somewhat new light. It was always a novel of redemption for anyone even remotely good - even the incorrigible rascal Mr. Micawber manages to find his niche. It was always a novel of contrasts - Dora to Agnes, Mr. Murdstone to Mr. Peggotty, Uriah to Mrs. Micawber (in some things anyway - they both kept repeating what they are but only one of them meant it), Betsey Trotwood to Mrs. Steerforth - the more you look, the more pairs you will find. But reading the novel in its original installments added another layer to it - with contrasts (good/bad) between different installments and sometimes in the actions inside of the same one; with the choice of which characters to revisit in the same installment - some of those chapters which may sound almost as fill-in and removable in the novel, suddenly appear a lot more logical - they are fill-ins but they are necessary so that the installments work the way they were designed.

It was also interesting to see all the advertisements from those days - from books to alpaca umbrellas (what's with that?), from snake oil medicines to clothes (one of these even had a poem written in almost every installment). The world had changed a lot since then but some of the ads could be written for something today and still work... most of them around the "fast cure" and "solve your problems" variety and I am not entirely sure what that says about humanity. show less

Probably Dickens's best-known full-scale novel, and certainly his most personal from the numerous ways it draws on his own early life. We all love it because of the striking, scary childhood scenes: I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had nightmares about Mr Creakle's appalling school, the rat-infested blacking factory, or David's walk from London to Dover. And because — as always with Dickens — it's packed with memorable minor characters, most of them entirely gratuitous. There's absolutely no necessity in the plot for Miss Mowcher to be a dwarf hairdresser, but it wouldn't have been the same book without that. Best of all, of course, are the endlessly lovable Micawbers, the slimy villain Uriah Heep, and the feisty Miss Betsey show more Trotwood. But they are only the tip of a very large iceberg.

As usual, Dickens manages to get in some house-trained but still quite fierce social criticism, most of all in defence of his idea that childhood should be about fun and discovery, not being "firm" and "earnest" and prematurely taking on adult responsibilities. He also takes time off along the way to bash familiar targets like unregulated private schools, imprisonment for debt, and the continued existence of obsolete parasitic branches of the legal system (Doctors' Commons).

It's harder to get involved with what should be the main channel of the novel, the marriage plot. We know that there's only one way David's story can end, and it's hard not to find his wrong turnings along the way contrived and artificial, and to feel sorry for poor Dora who is so obviously only there in the story on condition that she can be eliminated when no longer convenient. I find myself dreaming up silly alternative endings in which Dora goes off to join Miss Mills in India where she learns to play the sitar in an ashram (David would meet her, many years later, lecturing on Eastern religions). Or Agnes gently refuses to marry David until she's finished her legal studies and taken control of her father's old firm. And it goes without saying that Em'ly really ought to return in triumph to Yarmouth with her Neapolitan husband and horde of bambini, to set up East Anglia's first pizzeria ("La piccola Emilia")... show less

The audio version of this work, narrated by Nicolas Boulton, is fabulous. His deep sonorous voice and varied voices and dialects made listening a pleasure and keeping the characters differentiated easy. Although long, over 33 hours, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the life and loves of the iconic David Copperfield: from his lonely childhood to his boisterous aunt ("The donkeys!"), from childhood infatuations to child wife, from beaten schoolboy to renowned author. The supporting characters are all larger than life, from the good (Mr. Peggotty, Em'ly, Agnes, Peggotty) to the deliciously evil (Uriah Heep, Rosa Dartle). It had been decades since I read Dickens, and I had forgotten how fun he can be. Now on to a modern adaptation, [Demon show more Copperhead]. show less

I read this on a transatlantic flight, and I have to say, it's very awkward to cry on an airplane because Dora is dying. And it's not even that Dora is a great character! Copperfield and Dickens both infantilize her, and my modern-day feminist sensibilities gag at all that "child-wife" business. (Of course, I gag at a lot of Dickens: Exhibit A being Mr. Peggoty and that "country dress" he was bringing to Em'ly so she could humbly accompany him back as an honest woman and what the hell?)

But it doesn't matter that Dora is given the depth of a dime, because Dickens and I are on the same page regarding melodrama: the more, the better. Which is why I found myself, hunched in the window seat, attempting to surreptitiously conceal my tears as show more Dora bit the dust and my seatmates ate their complimentary peanuts. show less

De initialen van David Copperfield zijn dezelfde als die van Charles Dickens, maar dan in omgekeerde volgorde.
Is dit een subtiele hint dat het verhaal wel op zijn eigen leven gebaseerd is, maar geen volledige autobiografie is geworden?

Alhoewel het leven van de jonge David niet gespaard blijft van rampen en tegenslagen, zorgt de boeiende vertelstijl van Charles Dickens ervoor dat het verhaal nergens in een bodemloze tristesse blijft steken.

Zijn tegenspoed begint al vroeg, want nog voor David geboren wordt, sterft zijn vader. Zijn moeder is mooi, jong, maar ook erg naïef, wat haar een makkelijke prooi maakt voor Mr. Murdstone. Gelukkig is er Pegotty, die meer is dan een kindermeisje: tot op het einde zal ze zijn surrogaatmoeder zijn.

Het show more "kwade" wordt altijd door het "goede" gecounterd en het lijkt alsof Dickens zo een evenwicht nastreeft.
Dat is ook zo in zijn vertelstijl: in de beschrijving van een personage met slechte inborst is er altijd wel wat humor, zodat je nooit het gevoel krijgt dat David gebukt gaat onder gevoelens van wraak en haat.

"(...)since Miss Murdstone looked at me out of the pickle-jar, with as great an access of sourness as if her black eyes had absorbed its contents"

"I (Copperfield) left him (Uriah) doubled up in the middle of the garden, like a scarecrow in want of support"

In dit lijvige verhaal duiken heel wat personages op, die soms van het toneel verdwijnen om enkele hoofdstukken later weer op te duiken. Achteraan het boek vind je een lijst, zodat je nooit het overzicht kwijt raakt. Het is volgens mij een van de redenen, waarom dit boek na eeuwen nog altijd graag gelezen wordt. Het verveelt nooit.

Mijn favoriet is tante Betsey Trotwood, omdat ze tijdens het verhaal evolueert. De eerste keer dat ze op het toneel verschijnt, is bij de geboorte van David. Ze is er zodanig van overtuigd dat het een meisje zal zijn, dat ze na de geboorte het huis verlaat, om nooit meer terug te keren. Dit vooroordeel kan ze wel opzij zetten als ze David echt leert kennen en hij naar nodig heeft. Waar ze voor het kinderlijke van Davids moeder een soort van minachting voelt, kan ze ook deze gevoelens onderdrukken als David met hetzelfde type vrouw trouwt. Ook als ze haar fortuin verliest, draagt ze dit verlies waardig, zoekt geen zondebok en blijft ze niet bij de pakken zitten.

De persoon voor wie ik het minst sympathie kan opbrengen, is Wilkins Micawber, gebaseerd op Charles Dickens' vader. Hij is een praatjesmaker en klaploper van koninklijke allure en komt door zijn financiële problemen in de gevangenis, net zoals de vader van Charles Dickens, waardoor Charles al vroeg gedwongen werd om te gaan werken.

Af en toe zit er ook een moraal in het verhaal. Er is de manier waarop tante Betsey met Mr. Dick omgaat, terwijl zijn familie hem in een tehuis wil wegstoppen. Mr. Dick is zich bewust van zijn "onnozelheid" en gebruikt die zelfs om een knoop in een huwelijk te ontwarren, een probleem dat niemand anders kan oplossen.

De zinnen die Dickens over Miss Mowcher, een dwergvrouwtje, schrijft, stemmen tot nadenken:
"You know you wouldn't mistrust me, if I was a full-sized woman"
"Try not to associate bodily defects with mental"
"She got over the fender now, and I had got over my suspicion"

Charles Dickens wordt een meesterverteller genoemd en dat kan ik enkel volmondig beamen.
Hij toont ook een gevarieerd inzicht in de menselijke psyche en denkt na over belangrijke levensvragen zoals het huwelijk "There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose" en heeft het enkele keren over "The first mistaken impulse of my heart". Het boek kwam uit voordat zijn huwelijk barsten vertoonde, maar misschien had hij al een voorgevoel.

Zowel vertelstijl als inhoud laten me geen keuze ***** show less

I do so enjoy Dickens when he's at the top of his game. It's as though he's emptied a box of thread on the ground and let it roll off in a million different directions, and then somehow he manages to weave the each one into something glorious and beautiful as the book concludes. Dickens at his best is immensely satisfying, complete literature.

I loved reading this, although I must say not so well as I loved "Great Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities."

Things to bear in mind when you read this book:

1) Be patient with Dora. She's doing her best.

2) It is appropriate to want to run certain characters over with a mail-coach at important points of the story.

3) Uriah Heep. That's all.

I know many people consider it one of Dickens's best-- my Penguin Classics edition's introduction by Jeremy Tambling makes the case that it unites the "early" Dickens with the "late" Dickens-- but for me, I think it's solidly middle-tier. It's no Great Expectations or Our Mutual Friend, but neither is it as dull as Hard Times or A Tale of Two Cities.

The first quarter or so of the novel, however, surely ranks among Dickens's best writing. Young David has a horrible life, and Dickens executes it with his trademark combination of melancholy, comedy, and well-observed character. The story of David's actual birth is hilarious (I subjected a lot of people to it after reading it), but the story of David's life with his stepfather and step-aunt show more is depressing and hard to take, especially what ends up happening to his mother. The stuff about David at school is funny; David's attempt to leave London and find his aunt is depressing and funny all at once. His relationship with Peggotty is touching.

The effect is all aided by some nice narrative choices by Dickens. We (and I kind of blame the modernists for this) like to stereotype Victorian fiction as being very staid. But there are some bits of David Copperfield we might call "experimental," except I think Dickens was less concerned with experimenting and more concerned with just telling the story the best way possible. Though most of the story is told in the first-person past tense, every now and again the narrator (an older David; the full title is The Personal History and Experience of David Copperfield the Younger) shifts into the present tense as he re-enacts a particularly vivid memory. It's a neat technique and usually very effective, isolating key moments and heightening their emotional repercussions-- because you can tell how important they still are to the narrator all those years later, so much so they he thinks of them as still happening.

After David reunites with his aunt, though, I found the energy of the novel dissipated. The last three-quarters just don't have the same drive as the first quarter. Not that it's ever bad: nothing here ever sinks as low as the tedium of the middle of A Tale of Two Cities or Hard Times, and there are lots of good jokes still (I liked when David tries to get out of his apprenticeship at the law firm). But for big chunks, the stakes are vague, and I have to admit I never really cared about Uriah Heep. But every now and then you still get that flash of Dickensian brilliance, and the ending is excellent, so there you go. show less