David Copperfield

I read this book maybe six months ago. It's been a while but yes, this blog is still alive, and being awoken by David Copperfield is a pretty good thing. Published in 1850, Dickens' eighth novel and one of the longer ones. It's said to be the most autobiographical of his books and in the 1867 preface, (there's an earlier one which is also good) he says David's his favourite novel: '… like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.'My favourite of his too, by the way, of what I have read thus far. It's very endearing and the way all the characters weave together is quite genius. Narrating David's comments on his younger, innocent, blind self is very heart-warming and amusing at the same time. But let's get straight into it.

So the summary is that David is born (Ch.1: I am born)and then he grows up to the point where he is narrating. You meet a lot of characters including Dora, Agnes, Steerforth, Traddles, Micawber and Uriah Heep, all of which are very comical, hilarious at times, heart-breaking at others...They really are the main focus. Them and watching David grow up: hating on his step-father (with good reason), going off to a school taught by an abusive teacher (there is literally a guy with a peg leg), making friends, fancying that he is falling in love, actually falling in love, having money issues, becoming a writer, all that stuff finally ending in the classical Dickens ending: the good people are happy, the bad people are sad and we all learn a handful of morals and gain a handful of fictional friends. If you're looking for a full-on driven plot, you should probably not read this. It's more about time than action, living life than living a moment.

Now you might have seen just how long these blogs can go, and this is probably at least four times longer than all the other books I've read, so I'm making a practical decision (for once.) I'm sticking to one character only: James Steerforth, because the characters are the most important aspect of a book and this plot is too winding to try to explain. As for writing style, check this out: 'The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account)' That is the original title of David Copperfield. That's pretty much the brunt of Dickens' writing style. His sentences are long, having six or seven clauses, (so this is a rather light example) and if he was in Holden's English class, Dickens would be lost amidst the shouting of 'DIGRESSION!!' Dickens calls this style 'meandering' by the way. He just goes on any tangent he wants to, any. So, moving swiftly onward.

Why do I pick James Steerforth? Well, Dickens' characters tend to be extremely unhuman. They are hardly believable as real people because they are such caricatures. Dickens is notorious for embodying a single idea or at least similar ideas, in a human form and making that his character. David = well-meaning honesty. Agnes = goodness. Uriah Heep = Evil. Dora = sweet silliness. And so on and so on. I don't think this is a fault of his, it's most likely intentional, and I think he does this to make a story more appealing to a greater mass of readers and to make more clear his intentions. He is simplifying life and humans greatly in order to bring some clarity to it. I think. So maybe his books as a whole, individually, can be a real human being. David is not a human, but the accumulation of all the characters together can add up to a complexity of attitudes, biases, backgrounds and relationships that can really mirror the confusion of the rue human being. Perhaps. Anyway, meandering...I picked Steerforth because he's one of Dickens' rarer, more complex characters.

James is complex because he clearly does bad things. He clearly has bad intentions and he clearly has bad emotions. However, unlike Uriah Heep, he seems to be aware of this and seems to want to change, to better himself, but also seems unable to. He at times falls into pits of moodiness as he laments over his inescapable badness. This conflict and the interesting idea of the inability to change, the inability to recreate yourself, is interesting and is unique amongst the characters in David Copperfield. So, let me throw some quotations out, show you what kind of person James is and show you David's interpretation of him.

Agnes, the angel of the story, warns David that he has two angels, a good one and a bad one: ‘I caution you that you have made a dangerous friend.’You the reader, have known this for quite a while. Before David even meets James he sees his name carved into a bench at school amongst other names and singles James out as probably the meanest and scariest of all the kids. Then he meets James and he seems pretty darn cool, being smooth in speech, the admiration of everyone, being older, handsome, and a daredevil. David practically falls in love with him and completely misses the fact that a few moments after meeting James, he had already swindled David out of his money, convincing him to spend his shillings on a feast for everyone. It's really mind-numbing how blind David can be, calling him 'sir' and going on huge rants when he actually is spending David's money.

James continues on doing bad stuff. I think the first time I was absolutely shocked in the book was when James insults and causes the dismissal of this really wonderful teacher, Mr. Mell, for no reason aside from his pride,boredom, and the fact that he can. David's really confused at this moment, not knowing whether to cheer for James or cry for Mr. Mell. David is so sucked into an idolatry of James by now that not even this turns him off.

This relationship is not one-sided by the way. James is not just using David to do his bidding; he actually likes David; he's actually somewhat fascinated by him. Get to that in a bit. The relationship takes a break after David leaves school and works for a while. Then David suddenly meets James in a restaurant and immediately starts crying, so glad to see him. James, after recognising David, is friendly and they just go straight to being friends, going to James' house and just hanging out. Here's where you start getting to know him better.

David goes to James' house eventually and meeting his mother, you start seeing how he got to be so messed up. James' mother absolutely idolises him. He can do no wrong in her eyes and it seems she feels so strongly the superiority of her son that she doesn't let him get any discipline, sending him to the boarding school so he wouldn't be challenged and could just live in his own splendour, and then sending him off to Oxford and just doting on him with her enormous amount of money. In short, James is spoiled both in money and compliments, and it really doesn't help his humility that he is so naturally good at everything. Then there's Miss Dartle, who lives with Mrs. Steerforth, who's obsessed with Steerforth and who James apparently scarred for life in childhood by throwing a hammer into her face. It's a dysfunctional household, and after you get out of there, James just seems so much worse and yet simultaneously, you sympathise for him more..

James and David then go to Yarmouth, where the Pegottys - David's good childhood friends or rather second family - live, and James is a huge hit. However, when they get to Yarmouth, you get to see James in one of his darker moods, saying, 'I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years! [...] I wish with all my soul I had been better guided! [...] I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!' You really feel sorry for him then. The scene when you see him is so dark and sad, and somehow you can just excuse James all he's done by hearing his painful expression of entrapment; it seems he's aware of his faults and his mother's faults, and he seems to be in remorse and yet unable to change. Anyway, he then goes off and insults the Pegottys right after he leaves their house. David still loves him though. Here's that whole bit.

That's rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn't he?' said Steerforth.

He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a shock in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:

'Ah, Steerforth! It's well for you to joke about the poor! You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman's, or humour a love like my old nurse's, I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you. And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!'

Yeah, David's well into blind love. James at this point is very endeared by David's loyalty in him. James is convinced he is a bad person but David believes so well, and considering his insecurity concerning his own misdeeds that followed the meeting with the Pegottys, this loyalty can mean a lot to James. Remember how I said James is fascinated by David. Well, this is what I mean. While he is so twisted with his inescapable coldness, David loves him purely as he loves many others. James, unknown to David, at this point has taken a fancy to Emily, Mr. Peggoty's niece, who happens to be engage to be married with the 'chuckle-headed fellow', Ham, above. So James is now in the wrong and will shortly begin pursuing Emily until he finally runs off with her (probably the worst think James does). So David's loyalty must mean all the more. He calls David Daisy, by the way, probably because of how innocent he is. James is fascinated by and envious of David's innocence and purity, really.

It's years after this amidst Jame's conniving plans to get to Emily, that Agnes warns David of James being his bad angel. David however says that whilst 'again his image, though it was still fixed in my heart, darkened', 'when he entered, and stood before me with his hand out, the darkness that had fallen on him changed to light, and I felt confounded and ashamed of having doubted one I loved so heartily.’ Needless to say yet again that David will not accept any image of James short of godliness. The interesting part about this bit is what James says when they part - which also happens to be the last time they talk since James after this goes off with Emily. James, knowing this will be the last time and knowing that he's about to become a bad person even in the eyes of Daisy, asks David to please remember him at his best. David, of course, answers that he can't possibly think of him otherwise and they have a little moment that then ends.

'Daisy,' he said, with a smile - 'for though that's not the name your godfathers and godmothers gave you, it's the name I like best to call you by - and I wish, I wish, I wish, you could give it to me!'

'Why so I can, if I choose,' said I.

'Daisy, if anything should ever separate us, you must think of me at my best, old boy. Come! Let us make that bargain. Think of me at my best, if circumstances should ever part us!'

'You have no best to me, Steerforth,' said I, 'and no worst. You are always equally loved, and cherished in my heart.'

That's basically it for James except that we find out that he eventually gets tired of Emily and leaves her, that he went off alone on his boat, and that a long while later, during a storm, his dead body is washed up on the Yarmouth shore where David fishes him out to return to his deranged mother and admirer. James thus ends up a pretty bad guy but David still remembers him at his best. To David, James died after the last meeting as the guy he loved and still does.

'I never had loved Steerforth better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him. Deeply as I felt my own unconscious part in his pollution of an honest home, I believed that if I had been brought face to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach. I should have loved him so well still - though he fascinated me no longer - I should have held in so much tenderness the memory of my affection for him, that I think I should have been as weak as a spirit-wounded child, in all but the entertainment of a thought that we could ever be re-united. That thought I never had. I felt, as he had felt, that all was at an end between us. What his remembrances of me were, I have never known - they were light enough, perhaps, and easily dismissed - but mine of him were as the remembrances of a cherished friend, who was dead.'

So it's pretty clear David's stance on James, and I'm pretty sure mine is too. I love him probably because he's so heart-breaking, wanting to change but not being able to. He
is trapped in his own self and actually says so, and actually is a likeable guy most the time, and does still end up as he says he will so early on, bad and it seems dead because of it, according to strange Dicken's story-writing logic. You have characters like Mr. Murdstone or Creakle or Uriah that are so terrible and they all look terrible and they're actually terrible inside too, twisted and violent They each have their own explanations for being evil, like Uriah's being poor and humiliated and thus seeking vengeful rise. However, that was a transformation from victim to villain, not like James' change from victim to a reluctant, conscious, remorseful and thus self-victimised villain. He also looks really nice too, and is very accomplished. fun, witty, smart, and most of all, courageous. You then get an anti-hero type, a Jacques Lantier thing going - it is clear that he's done terrible things and is doing terrible things right in front of you, but the remorse he shows still invites pity, and helped along with David's incredibly generous descriptions of him, rather than wanting him finished, I begin wishing him to be forgiven, understood, and I wish he can get better.

In the Dickens ending of good people have good endings and bad people have bad endings, James is an anomaly. He dies, seeming then like a bad person, but that is too harsh; there is the argument of how he has already died in the eyes of David, and that then he ended with a friend's loyalty which he then betrays, making him then end now in a very sad ending, filled with conflict, inevitability and disappointment. If James had ended up marrying, say Miss Dartle, who forgives him for his young crime, one of his first probably, and she then crawls out of her bitterness to become lovely, maybe, then that would be a quite nice redemption and James may then be forgiven everything because of his change. That would balance the whole is James a good or bad person dispute - James is a reluctantly bad person that escapes his badness and becomes good - but if that were to have happened, I don't know if I'd still like him so much. It's not something so childish as liking a rebel, but that you would lose the inevitability and lack of character change that makes James so interesting.

He represents classes, if you want to start getting political, that find themselves incapable of change, and if they do, well, then that's just too good of an ending and the message would break; the message that James actually cannot change, and that David believes he can, and most of all the James wants to and is suffering under his inability. James can do everything, he's an idol. Yet he cannot simply be considerate, compassionate, innocent, honest, simple; everything David is. That's why he loves David and that's why David is so wonderful; with all these qualities, he is able to understand that there are actually two James's: one that is good and one that is bad, and that they cannot co-exist and must therefore be regarded as two different people, one overriding the other to the death out of sheer kindness. James dies twice, and that is how he has managed to, after so greatly offending David, remain loved in his heart. When reading James's attack of Mr. Mell, it becomes difficult to be so kind to him. David doesn't want to see this side of him, wants to deny the bad James' existance, which he does. That seems weak and foolish but in the grand scheme of the book, looking back at James, he seems more of a victim than a criminal somehow, the darker side of him having murdered the lighter, and I love such despairingly ironic endings.

You don't get so long of a speculation concerning many Dickens characters. Perhaps the others you could do this for are Bill Sykes, Mr. Dick, Miss Havisham, Carton...well those are the books I've read so I don't know any more, but they are, in my opinion, the more interesting and deep Dickens characters and James is my favourite. That was one character and more of a summary than anything. Amazing. Well, I'll just leave some quotations then. Happy New Years.

Read, folks. Read.

'I was not considered as being formally received into the school, however, until J. Steerforth arrived. Before this boy, who was reputed to be a great scholar, and was very good-looking, and at least half-a-dozen years my senior, I was carried as before a magistrate. He inquired, under a shed in the playground, into the particulars of my punishment, and was pleased to express his opinion that it was 'a jolly shame'; for which I became bound to him ever afterwards.'

'Let me do myself justice, however. I was moved by no interested or selfish motive, nor was I moved by fear of him. I admired and loved him, and his approval was return enough.'

'All I know of the rest of the evening is…That I was lost in blissful delirium….That I caught a view of myself in a mirror, looking perfectly imbecile and idiotic. That I retired to bed in a most maudlin state of mind, and got up in a crisis of feeble infatuation.’

‘I only know that I swim about in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium.’

'What an idle time! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time! Of all the times of mine that Time has in his grip, there is none that is one retrospect I can smile at half so much, and think of half so tenderly.'

'Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the beginning, I have seemed to go wild, and to get into all sorts of difficulty. When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!'

'I pray Heaven that I never may forget the dear girl in her love and truth, at that time of my life; for if I should, I must be drawing near the end, and then I would desire to remember her best! She filled my heart with such good resolutions, strengthened my weakness so, by her example, so directed - I know not how, she was too modest and gentle to advise me in many words - the wandering ardour and unsettled purpose within me, that all the little good I have done, and all the harm I have forborne, I solemnly believe I may refer to her.'

There was a beggar in the street, when I went down; and as I turned my head towards the window, thinking of her calm seraphic eyes, he made me start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning: 'Blind! Blind! Blind!'