Reading David Copperfield is like eating your way through the cuisine of, say, India, in one meal. It's like Tony Soprano's New-Jersey-embracing drive home in the credits for The Sopranos. It's like the Star Trek TNG episode where Jean-Luc experiences a whole lifetime in a few hours due to an alien energy beam.
It's a very full experience.
Dickens, being Dickens, doesn't merely jump the shark in David Copperfield. He romances the shark, he goes all the way with the shark, he moves in with the shark and marries the shark and they have lots of little shark babies together and they all play leapfrog all over the whole ocean of literature. If you've never read it, then there's a much better use of your time available than reading ABOUT it. Get the book! $1.95 on Kindle, free at your local library, also available on the 'net, here.
It's the story of a gentle, bright-but-easily-influenced boy in Victorian England who's orphaned at 10 and how he grows up, is educated, marries, is widowed, becomes a writer, and marries again. He and a huge cast of supporting characters weave in and out of each other's lives in a wonderful shimmering dance, foreshadowing, if-only-ing, jumping from one subplot to another, all leading to a grand symphonic finale complete with fireworks and metaphorical cannon fire, where every character who's still alive gets to take a bow.
You could write a book about this wonderful book, starting with its themes of loss (the orphan count is very high, starting with David himself). Characters like Mr. Micawber deserve diaries to themselves. But whenever I reread it, I'm always struck by its treatment of evil. There are three really evil major characters:
David's stepfather: Mr. Murdstone,
David's enemy: Uriah Heep,
David's friend: James Steerforth
Each stands for one of three vices that drain away their humanity. Just to make sure we don't miss the importance of these vices, Dickens lists them early on.
David, orphaned and homeless at 12, is rescued and adopted by his aunt, Betsey Trotwood, who always calls him Trotwood or Trot. When she enrolls him in the GOOD school, she dispenses some advice before she leaves abruptly, overcome by her emotion.
"Never," said my aunt, "be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you."
David loves and admires his aunt, who adores him. The reader trusts her. We're meant to take her words to heart.
NEVER BE CRUEL: Mr. Murdstone
Murdstone (what a great name!) marries David's mother when David is a little boy. When David is introduced to him, he first sees "a gentleman with beautiful black hair and whiskers." But within a minute David, inspired by jealousy, has his number: "At this minute I see him turn round in the garden, and give us a last look with his ill-omened black eyes, before the door was shut."
Seen through David's eyes, Murdstone is a monster, who, aided by his sister, torments David and then sends him away to a BAD, abusive, degrading school while he slowly crushes the vitality out of David's sweet, silly mother -- not physically, but with his hyper-religious, rigid severity. From David's POV, and perhaps in fact, his cruelty finally kills her and as a result her newborn baby. As soon as she is dead, Murdstone pulls David out of his horrible school and sends him into virtual slavery, working in London. David's experiences there are horrific.
Finally he runs away and goes to his aunt Betsey, who takes him in. When Murdstone and his sister come to reclaim David, because they see him as their property, there's an epic battle, which Betsey wins.
But Dickens shows, and David himself acknowledges, that Murdstone isn't a one note poster child for Evil Stepfather. In the heartbreaking chapter when David comes home from school for his mother's funeral,
Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in his elbow-chair.
[He] took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. He would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to and fro in the room. I used to sit with folded hands watching him, and counting his footsteps, hour after hour. He very seldom spoke...and never to me. He seemed to be the only restless thing, except the clocks, in the whole motionless house.
And his hatred for David increases. I think that Murdstone looks at David and feels remorse for his own behavior -- which of course makes him angry. Here, David is talking to his old nurse.
'Peggotty,' I said in a thoughtful whisper, one evening, when I was warming my hands at the kitchen fire, 'Mr. Murdstone likes me less than he used to. He never liked me much, Peggotty; but he would rather not even see me now, if he can help it.'
'Perhaps it's his sorrow,' said Peggotty, stroking my hair.
'I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow, I should not think of it at all. But it's not that; oh, no, it's not that.'
'How do you know it's not that?' said Peggotty, after a silence.
'Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is
sorry at this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone;
but if I was to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.'
'What would he be?' said Peggotty.
'Angry,' I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark
frown. 'If he was only sorry, he wouldn't look at me as he does.
I am only sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.'
NEVER BE MEAN: Uriah Heep
I take "mean" as I think Betsey uses it, to signify low, stingy, ungenerous, grasping. David calls him "that mean, fawning fellow!" Uriah Heep has always reminded me of Nixon.
David knows from the beginning how he feels about Uriah. They meet as teenagers, when Uriah is clerking for Mr. Wickfield, father of the Good Heroine, Agnes. Look how "mean" his appearance is; no extra flesh, hair, clothing to be seen:
The low arched door then opened, and the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired people. It belonged to a red-haired person - a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older - whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony's head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us in the chaise.
I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,' said Uriah Heep, modestly; 'let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father's former calling was umble. He was a sexton.'
....
He certainly did look uncommonly like the carved face on the beam outside my window, as he sat, in his humility, eyeing me sideways, with his mouth widened, and the creases in his cheeks.
Apart from his instant dislike, David slowly comes to realize that Uriah is very bright, and he has his plans (including lewd aspirations to Agnes, the Good Heroine). As the years pass, Uriah takes advantage of Mr. Wickfield's alcoholism to delude and defraud him, always with the utmost umbleness, as he tells David at one point:
"If anyone else had been in my place during the last few years, by this time he would have had Mr. Wickfield (oh, what a worthy man he is, Master Copperfield, too!) under his thumb. Un--der--his thumb,' said Uriah, very slowly, as he stretched out his cruel-looking hand above my table, and pressed his own thumb upon it, until it shook, and shook the room.
And when he's confronted by the good guys, he makes explicit where he got that mean, grasping character: he's the product of a mean, grasping, ungenerous system of "charity" education.
'As I think I told you once before,' said I, 'it is you who have been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death.'
'Or as certain as they used to teach at school (the same school where I picked up so much umbleness), from nine o'clock to eleven, that labour was a curse; and from eleven o'clock to one, that it was a blessing and a cheerfulness, and a dignity, and I don't know what all, eh?' said he with a sneer. 'You preach about as consistent as they did. Won't umbleness go down? I shouldn't have got round my gentleman fellow-partner without it, I think.'
But like Murdstone, he's not a one note character. He loves and cares for his mother, and she loves him.
'Ury, Ury!' cried the mother, 'be umble and make terms. I know my son will be umble, gentlemen, if you'll give him time to think. Mr. Copperfield, I'm sure you know that he was always very umble, sir!'
It was singular to see how the mother still held to the old trick, when the son had abandoned it as useless.
'Mother,' he said, with an impatient bite at the handkerchief in which his hand was wrapped, 'you had better take and fire a loaded gun at me.'
'But I love you, Ury,' cried Mrs. Heep. And I have no doubt she did; or that he loved her, however strange it may appear; though, to be sure, they were a congenial couple. 'And I can't bear to hear you provoking the gentlemen, and endangering of yourself more. I told the gentleman at first, when he told me upstairs it was cometo light, that I would answer for your being umble, and making amends. Oh, see how umble I am, gentlemen, and don't mind him!'
NEVER BE FALSE: James Steerforth
In the BAD school to which Murdstone sends David, he meets James Steerforth, whom he comes to idolize.
The reader feels Steerforth's attraction:
There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even now, in the remembrance.
Unlike David, though, the reader can't overlook the gigantic warning billboards Dickens puts up:
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.
'What money have you got, Copperfield?' he said, walking aside with me when he had disposed of my affair in these terms. I told him seven shillings.
'You had better give it to me to take care of,' he said. 'At least, you can if you like. You needn't if you don't like.'
....
'Perhaps you'd like to spend a couple of shillings or so, in a bottle of currant wine by and by, up in the bedroom?' said Steerforth. 'You belong to my bedroom, I find.'
It certainly had not occurred to me before, but I said, Yes, I should like that.
'Very good,' said Steerforth. 'You'll be glad to spend another shilling or so, in almond cakes, I dare say?'
I said, Yes, I should like that, too.
'And another shilling or so in biscuits, and another in fruit, eh?' said Steerforth. 'I say, young Copperfield, you're going it!'
I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little troubled in my mind, too.
'Well!' said Steerforth. 'We must make it stretch as far as we can; that's all. I'll do the best in my power for you. I can go out when I like, and I'll smuggle the prog in.' With these words he put the money in his pocket, and kindly told me not to make myself uneasy; he would take care it should be all right. He was as good as his word, if that were all right which I had a secret misgiving was nearly all wrong - for I feared it was a waste of my mother's two half-crowns - though I had preserved the piece of paper they were wrapped in: which was a precious saving.
Steerforth, who has plenty of his own money, BTW, continues to lead David astray, luckily not all time because he has other things to do. When they reconnect as young men, David takes Steerforth to visit his old nurse, his mother's ally, Peggotty. She's part of a simple extended fisherfolk family, resplendent with all the virtues, which includes her brother, his orphaned nephew, and his orphaned (by another sibling) niece Little Em'ly (N.B. Little Em'ly is a great character in her own right, but for now it's enough to say that she's very pretty, reckless, and likes sparkly things). Little Em'ly has just gotten engaged to her cousin Ham, and David and Steerforth join the celebrations. Then they leave and walk towards their lodgings. BTW, Steerforth calls David Daisy. Almost no one calls him David.
'That's rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn't he?' said Steerforth.
(I must note here that Steerforth is correct. Ham is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly,
courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent, but he's not exactly quickwitted. The engagement is a bad idea.)
[Steerforth] 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! ... 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!'
He stopped, and, looking in my face, said, 'Daisy, I believe you are in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!' Next moment he was gaily singing Mr. Peggotty's song, as we walked at a round pace back to Yarmouth.
Well, you know what's coming next. Steerforth buys a boat, hires Mr. Peggotty (Em'ly's uncle) to take care of it, and hangs out at the beached boat where all the Peggottys live. He seduces Em'ly, runs away with her, then abandons her. Months later, directed by the gods of literature, he sails by again, right when a big ole storm is bearing down, and shipwrecks on the very shore where the Peggottys live. Ham drowns in an attempt to rescue him. Steerforth drowns too. The Peggotty boat/home is destroyed. David is on hand and finds Steerforth's body the next morning.
But he led me to the shore. And on that part of it where she and I had looked for shells, two children - on that part of it where some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had been scattered by the wind - among the ruins of the home he had wronged - I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school.
(Poor Em'ly, this being a Victorian novel, has to go all the way to Australia to hide her shame and has to do good works all her life and never gets to have any more fun.)
Steerforth knows that he's a false friend and is bothered by the knowledge, though not to the extent of doing anything about it:
'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.'
Betsey Trotwood need not have worried. David himself stands in utter contrast to these three characters and their besetting sins. He's a generous, faithful, kind child and a generous, faithful, kind adult. In fact, most of his own problems in the novel spring from these virtues: His inability to disguise his feelings makes it easy for Uriah and others to manipulate him. His marriage to the enchanting but dim Dora Spenlow is "the first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart," as he realizes after her death. His unquestioning loyalty to Steerforth makes him an unwitting accomplice in Steerforth's seduction of Little Em'ly.
Nevertheless, the reader can appreciate Betsey's warning and enjoy its thorough illustration in Murdstone, Uriah, and Steerforth. It's one of the countless reasons to embrace your own inner shark and read David Copperfield.
And don't forget Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2 on July 15. Dickens is one of Rowling's major influences.