English 12 - Mr. RinkaLesson #44

David CopperfieldBy Charles Dickens

David Copperfieldhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copperfield

David Copperfield is the common name of the eighth novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a novel in 1850. Its full title is The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He

Never Meant to Publish on Any Account). Like most of his works, it originally appeared in serial form during the two preceding years. Many elements of the novel follow events in Dickens' own life, and it is probably the most autobiographical of his novels. In the preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens wrote, "...like many fond parents, I have in my

heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.”

Summaryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copperfield

The story traces the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David was born in Blunderstone near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, in 1820, six months after the death of his father. David spends his early years with his mother and their housekeeper,

Peggotty. When he is seven years old, his mother re-marries Edward Murdstone. David is given good reason to dislike his stepfather and has similar feelings for Murdstone's sister Jane, who moves into the house soon afterwards. Murdstone thrashes David for falling behind in his studies. Following one of these thrashings, David bites him and

soon afterwards is sent away to a boarding school, Salem House, with a ruthless headmaster, Mr. Creakle. There he befriends James Steerforth and Tommy Traddles. David returns home for the holidays to learn that his mother has given birth to a baby boy. Shortly after David returns to Salem House, his mother and her baby die and

David returns home immediately. Peggotty marries a man named Mr Barkis. Murdstone sends David to work in a factory in London, of which Murdstone is a joint owner. Copperfield's landlord, Wilkins Micawber, is sent to debtors' prison (the King's Bench Prison) and remains there for several months before being released and moving

to Plymouth. No one remains to care for David in London, so he decides to run away. He walks from London to Dover, where he finds his only relative, his unmarried, eccentric aunt Betsey Trotwood. She agrees to raise him despite Murdstone's attempt to regain custody of David. David's aunt renames him "Trotwood

Copperfield" and addresses him as "Trot", and it becomes one of several names to which David answers in the course of the novel. As David grows to adulthood, a variety of characters enter, leave, and re-enter his life. These include Peggotty and her family, including her orphaned niece "Little Em'ly", who moves in with them and

charms the young David. David's romantic but self-serving school friend, Steerforth, seduces and dishonours Little Em'ly, precipitating the novel's greatest tragedy. His landlord's daughter Agnes Wickfield, becomes his confidante. The novel's two most familiar characters are David's sometime mentor, the debt-ridden Micawber,

and the devious and fraudulent clerk, Uriah Heep, whose misdeeds are eventually revealed with Micawber's assistance. Micawber is painted sympathetically even as the narrator deplores his financial ineptitude. Micawber, like Dickens' own father, is briefly imprisoned for insolvency. The major characters eventually

get some measure of what they deserve, and few narrative threads are left hanging. Peggotty's brother Dan safely transports Emily to a new life in Australia, accompanied by the widowed Mrs. Gummidge and the Micawbers. All eventually find security and happiness in their adopted country. David marries the beautiful but naïve Dora Spenlow,

who dies after failing to recover from a miscarriage early in their marriage. David then searches his soul and marries the sensible Agnes, who had always loved him and with whom he finds true happiness. David and Agnes then have three children, including a daughter named after his aunt Betsey Trotwood.

Characters as Focus

In David Copperfield Dickens gives us many characters to illustrate several points.•Economic and social status do not represent a person’s character.•Humans possess the potential to harm or hurt others.

• People have tremendous impact on an individual’s life.

• We don’t always have control over our encounters with others.

• Overall, the goodness in others seems to prevail.

David Copperfield the Character

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copperfield_(character)

Scholars believe that David Copperfield's careers, friendships, and love life were most highly influenced by Dickens' experiences, as well as his time working as a child. David's involvement with the law profession, and later his career as a writer, mirror the experiences of

Dickens. Many of David's acquaintances are based on people Dickens actually knew, and David's wives, Agnes Wickfield and Dora Spenlow, are believed to be based upon Dickens' attachment to Mary Hogarth. Dickens keenly felt his deprived education during his time at the blacking factory, and according to the famed Forster

biography, it was from these times that he drew David's working period. David Copperfield is first introduced in the novel when he is born on a Friday in March in the early 19th century. The pet of his mother Clara Copperfield and faithful nursemaid Peggotty, David lives an idyllic life for the first few

years of his life even though he is fatherless - David Copperfield Sr. died 6 months before his son's birth.

Here the reader experiences the importance of motherhood, nurturing love, and the early childhood influences on personal development.

David's happy childhood is marred by the arrival of his stepfather, Edward Murdstone. David suffers both physical and mental abuse from his new guardian. David is soon sent off to Salem House school for biting Murdstone, and is consistently bullied until he befriends the popular James Steerforth. David performs well and

is the resident storyteller until he is forced to return home upon the death of his mother and baby, his half-brother. Because of his hate for the child, Murdstone and his sister decide to send David to work in the family bottling factory.Now the reader sees the antithesis of good parenting and the lack of nurturing love.

Edward Murdstone is the main antagonist of the first half of the novel; he is Young David's cruel stepfather who beats him for falling behind in his studies. David reacts by biting Mr. Murdstone, who then sends him to Salem House, the private school owned by his friend Mr. Creakle. After David's mother dies, Mr Murdstone sends him to

work in his factory in London where he has to clean wine bottles. He appears at Betsey Trotwood's house after David runs away. Mr. Murdstone appears to show signs of repentance when confronted by Copperfield's aunt about his treatment of Clara and David, but later in the book we hear he has married another young woman and applied his old principles of "firmness".

Edward Murdstone

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_Murdstone_from_David_Copperfield_art_by_Frank_Reynolds.jpg

Life at the factory is miserable, even though David is befriended by the penniless Mr. Micawber and he soon runs away to his Aunt Betsey Trotwood in Dover. Aunt Betsey adopts him and sends him to Dr. Strong's private school in Canterbury where David meets his best friend Agnes Wickfield, as well as the slimy Uriah Heep.

Now the reader meets significant characters who represent many of the interesting qualities Dickens observed in real life that fascinated him. Although critical of the notion that economic worth and social status represented an individual’s positive or negative qualities, Dickens presents good and bad characters on both ends of this stratum.

Wilkins Micawber is a melodramatic, kind-hearted and foolish gentleman who befriends David as a young boy. He suffers from much financial difficulty and even has to spend time in a debtor's prison before moving to Plymouth. As an adult, Copperfield meets him again in London and gets him a job with Wickfield and Heep. Thinking Micawber is criminally-

minded, Heep forces him to be his accomplice in several of his schemes, but Micawber eventually turns the tables on his employer and is instrumental in his downfall. Micawber eventually emigrates to Australia, where he enjoys a successful career as a sheep farmer and becomes a magistrate. He is based on Dickens' father, John

Dickens who faced similar financial problems when Dickens was a child. Even with financial difficulties Micawber manages to survive and his basic goodness triumphs in the end.

Wilkins Micawber

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Micawber.jpg

Betsey Trotwood is David's eccentric and temperamental yet kind-hearted great-aunt; she becomes his guardian after he runs away from Grinby and Murdstone's warehouse in Blackfriars (London). She is present on the night of David's birth but leaves after hearing that Clara Copperfield's child is a boy instead of a girl, and is not seen until

David is older and flees to her house in Dover from London. She is portrayed as affectionate towards David, and defends him and his mother when Mr. Murdstone arrives to take custody of David. She confronts the man and tells him off for his abuse of David and his mother and drives him off the premises.

Betsy Trotwood has replaced David’s mother in the role of protector and defender of her “son.” Although wealthy, she is a force for good in David’s life and stands up to Murdstone’s cruelty. She is the counter to David’s stepfather’s role as abusive parent.

Betsy Trotwood

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Betsey_Trotwood_from_David_Copperfield_by_Frank_Reynolds.jpg

Agnes Wickfield is Mr. Wickfield's mature and lovely daughter and close friend of David since childhood. Agnes nurtures an unrequited love for David for many years but never tells him, helping and advising him through his infatuation and marriage to Dora. After David returns to England, he realizes his feelings for her, and she

becomes David's second wife and mother of their children.Marriage and parenting are underlying themes throughout this novel. The love and respect a man and woman hold for each other make for a good marriage and create a positive environment for raising children. It is David’s marriage to Agnes Wickfield which

follows David’s dysfunctional first marriage to Dora Spenlow that concludes the story on a happy note.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Agnes_Wickfield_from_David_Copperfield_art_by_Frank_Reynolds.jpg

Uriah Heep – The main antagonist of the novel's second half. Heep is a disturbing young man who serves first as secretary and then as partner to Mr. Wickfield. He appears to be extremely self-deprecating and talks constantly of being "humble", but gradually reveals his wicked and twisted character. He gains great power over Wickfield and

several others, but is finally discovered - by Wilkins Micawber - to have stolen money from Betsy Trotwood, fooling Wickfield into thinking he has committed this act while drunk and blackmailing him. Heep is forced to return the money and is defeated but not prosecuted. He is later imprisoned for an (unrelated) attempted fraud on the

Bank of England. He nurtures a deep hatred of David Copperfield and many others.As apparent throughout the novel, good triumphs and evil is punished. Some of the sentimentality that Dickens is criticized for by some is evident in David Copperfield.

Uriah Heephttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uriah_Heep_from_David_Copp

erfield_art_by_Frank_Reynolds.jpg

The rest of the novel outlines David's struggles through life and his involvement in other plotlines, including his friendship and consequent disillusionment with James Steerforth; his assistance to the destroyed Peggotty family; his concern and suspicion for the Wickfield, Micawber, and Strong families as they are being harassed

by Uriah Heep, and the development of his beginning writing career.

James Steerforth – A close friend of David who has known him since his first days at Salem House. He is a charismatic and outspoken hero of the younger boys, but he is also a snob who unhesitatingly takes advantage of his younger friends and uses his mother's power to get what he wants, going so far as to get Mr. Mell dismissed from the school

after he argues with him. Although he grows up into a well-liked and handsome young man, he proves to be lacking in character by seducing and later abandoning Little Em'ly. He eventually drowns at Yarmouth with Ham Peggotty, who had been trying to rescue him.

James Steerforth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Steerforth

As David juggles these problems he also must deal with his passionate, sincere, but highly impractical love for the innocent Dora Spenlow. After a humorously sentimental courtship, David marries Dora, whom he loves despite her uselessness in household chores. She soon falls ill and dies, leaving David single and heartbroken.

David and Dorahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dora_Spenlow_from_David_Co

pperfield_art_by_Frank_Reynolds.jpg

He travels throughout Europe, during which time he publishes his first (unnamed) novel with the help of old school-friend Thomas Traddles. During this odyssey he realizes he loves Agnes Wickfield, and prays she loves him too. Upon his return he proposes to her, and the two quickly marry. They later move into a house in London along with their young

children, which include at least three girls (Little Agnes, Dora, and Betsey Trotwood Copperfield) and at least two boys. They live a wealthy lifestyle on David's successful writing career.The obvious connection to Charles Dickens’s own life plays out in the end.

Tommy Traddles is David's friend from Salem House. Traddles is one of the only boys not to trust Steerforth, and is notable for drawing skeletons on his slate to cheer himself up with the macabre thought that his predicaments are only temporary. They meet again later and become eventual lifelong friends. Traddles works hard but

faces great obstacles because of his lack of money and connections. He eventually succeeds in making a name and a career for himself, becoming a Judge and marrying his true love, Sophie.Another happy ending for a good character.

Traddles, Micawber & David

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Traddles,_Micawber_and_David_from_David_Copperfield_art_by_Frank_Reynolds.jpg

Hallmark Movie

http://quietube5.com/v.php/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CohXIMqkZXI

Assignments 1 & 2

Continue reading A Christmas Carol.

English 12 - Mr. RinkaLesson #44

David CopperfieldBy Charles Dickens