Prepare to be captivated by the masterful storytelling of Charles Dickens in his renowned novel, “David Copperfield.” This literary gem takes readers on an unforgettable journey through the life of its eponymous protagonist, weaving a tale of love, loss, and personal growth that continues to resonate with audiences across generations.
Dive into the pages of “David Copperfield” and discover why this timeless classic remains a beloved favorite among readers worldwide. Experience the magic of Dickens’ prose and let yourself be transported to the vivid world he so expertly crafts.
Table of Contents
Genres
Motivation, Inspiration, Personal Development, Biography, Memoir, Bildungsroman, Victorian literature, social commentary, drama, romance, autobiographical fiction, satire, mystery, comedy, tragedy
“David Copperfield” follows the life of its titular character from childhood to adulthood, chronicling his struggles, triumphs, and relationships along the way. Born into a loving family, David’s world is upended when his mother remarries the cruel Mr. Murdstone. Sent away to school, David endures hardships and forms lifelong friendships. As he grows older, David navigates the complexities of love, facing both heartbreak and joy. He pursues his passion for writing while encountering a colorful cast of characters, each playing a significant role in shaping his identity. Through his experiences, David learns valuable lessons about loyalty, perseverance, and the power of self-discovery.
Review
Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield” is a literary masterpiece that showcases the author’s unparalleled ability to create vivid, multi-dimensional characters and engaging storylines. Dickens’ prose is rich and evocative, transporting readers to the heart of Victorian England. The novel’s themes of personal growth, social injustice, and the search for one’s place in the world are as relevant today as they were when the book was first published. Dickens masterfully balances humor and pathos, creating a narrative that is both entertaining and emotionally resonant. “David Copperfield” is a must-read for anyone seeking a timeless tale of resilience, love, and the indomitable human spirit.
Introduction: Discover a writer’s own story
David Copperfield (1850) follows the life of David Copperfield, from his troubled childhood and turbulent adolescence to his growth into a successful writer. It vividly portrays his struggles, relationships, and the colorful characters he encounters, and reflects the complex social issues of Victorian England.
Charles Dickens is one of the nineteenth century’s most celebrated, not to mention prolific, writers. He wrote 16 novels, some of them more than 1,000 pages long. With Dickens, then, the great question is always – where to begin?
No novel is a more perfect introduction to Charles Dickens than David Copperfield. The story contains all the Dickens trademarks: a dramatic plot, a cast of memorable characters from across the social spectrum, trenchant social commentary, and richly descriptive prose. In addition, it’s rightly considered Dickens’s most autobiographical work. Like David, the novel’s protagonist, Charles Dickens also fell on hard times as a boy and was put to work as a child laborer. Like David, Dickens pursued a career as a legal clerk, then turned his hand to writing, where he found great fame and fortune.
The story of David Copperfield echoes the story of Dickens himself. Whether you’re stepping into Dickens’s world for the first time, or revisiting it, David Copperfield gives an insight not only into Dickens at the peak of his powers, but into Charles Dickens himself.
David Copperfield’s England.
The story of David Copperfield begins –
Wait. Before we start, let’s take a moment to set the scene.
Over the course of this story, you’ll be taken across England, and through the nineteenth century, but the heart of the tale takes place in Victorian London, in the 1840s and 1850s. This was a time of rapid urban growth and industrialization, a time when the divide between rich and poor was growing increasingly stark. Reflecting this, the city’s streets were a study in contradiction. Along the grander avenues in the city center, well-appointed carriages clattered over cobblestones, carrying ladies in expensive gowns and gentlemen in finely tailored suits past grand buildings and stores selling luxury wares, like satin gloves, imported teas, watches, and jewelry.
Take a turn down one of the narrow side-streets, though, and the scene quickly shifts. Ramshackle tenements lean perilously against each other. Inside, up to dozens of families live, crammed into stifling quarters. The air is thick with the smell of burning coal and raw sewage. The genteel clip-clop of horse hooves on cobbled streets has given way to the clanking and grinding noises that emanate from the factories and workhouses, the laughter and shouts that spill from the open doors of local ale houses, the crying of babies, the sing-song slogans of street vendors hawking their wares, the rasp of knives on the knife-grinders whetstone.
Like London itself, David Copperfield bustles with a cast of characters from across the social spectrum, all trying to find their fortunes and assert their place in Victorian society. In the story, beginning in the Suffolk countryside, you’ll meet David’s gentle mother, Clara, and the steadfast family servant Peggotty, as well as Peggotty’s family – fishing people who live on the beach at Yarmouth. You’ll follow David to London where you’ll encounter the penniless but ever-optimistic Mr. Micawber, and his charming yet calculating schoolfriend Steerforth. And you’ll get to know some of David’s most loyal friends: his eccentric great-aunt, Betsey Trotwood, and the steadfast Agnes Wickfield.
The most memorable character, of course, is the titular David Copperfield. Shall we get acquainted with him?
A turbulent beginning.
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my life,” says David Copperfield in the opening lines of the novel, “or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” The rest of Dickens’s novel – all 1,000-or-so pages of it – is devoted to answering the question posed here.
David is born on a bleak Friday, at the stroke of midnight, a time which, according to village superstition, marks the young boy for a life of “immodest” fortune. His dramatic arrival is accompanied by the equally dramatic arrival of his great-aunt, Betsey Trotwood. Betsey intends to play the role of godmother to her niece Clara’s newborn daughter. She hasn’t considered that Clara might have a son instead. Finding that David is a boy, she leaves in disgust. Betsey suffered through a long marriage to a worthless husband and now professes to hate all men, infant boys included.
This turbulent beginning to David’s life soon smooths itself out into a peaceful, happy childhood, spent in the company of his sweet-natured mother and their kind, generous servant, Peggotty. David is fatherless. David Copperfield senior died when Clara was six months pregnant. He is also an only child. But David’s childhood is far from lonely and he is soon informally adopted into Peggotty’s own bustling family, which includes her brother (the fisherman Daniel) and Peggotty’s ebullient niece and nephew, the cousins Ham and Emily.
The arrival of Mr. Murdstone, a new suitor for his mother, casts a pall of gloom over David’s sunny childhood. Murdstone, and his spinster sister Jane Murdstone, are strict and sanctimonious. They believe children should be seen and not heard. They certainly don’t approve of David frolicking among fishing boats with his servant’s niece and nephew. Everything David does seems to displease Murdstone and when Murdstone is displeased with David, he beats the boy. During one beating, instinctively, David bites Murdstone’s hand. Enraged, Murdstone arranges for David to be sent to a boarding school called Salem House. Here, boys are violently disciplined, crammed into unappealing dormitories, and fed meager amounts of bad food – the conditions might best be described as Dickensian. On his arrival David is given a placard to wear around his neck at all times. It reads: Take care of him. He bites.
Salem House is not, however, unremittingly awful. David soon becomes fast friends with the genial Tommy Traddles and the charismatic James Steerforth, easily the most popular boy in school.
Although Clara Copperfield has proven too gentle and mild-natured to stand up to Murdstone’s ill-treatment of David, her unfailing love has been a steady comfort to him. Then, tragedy strikes: Clara dies after giving birth to Murdstone’s son. Callously, Murdstone withdraws David from school and sends him, at the tender age of ten, to work at a London bottling factory where Murdstone is part owner. Along with his fellow child laborers, David is set to work pasting labels onto endless streams of bottles. Glue seeps through his threadbare clothes. His fingers grow raw and cracked from the relentless work. No matter the weather outside, inside the factory it is always dank and dark, and the children work by the light of foul-smelling tallow candles. During this time he lodges with the convivial but penniless Micawber family. The ever-optimistic Mr. Micawber is never shaken in his belief that “something will turn up.”
Despite the friendship of the Micawbers, David feels his situation is hopeless – but then, he remembers his long-lost great aunt Betsey . . .
A change in fortune.
David pawns his few possessions to fund the journey to his great-aunt Betsey Trotwood’s house, in Dover. At last, after many days of travel, including long stints of walking country roads, he reaches his destination. The comfortable cottage in its lush garden looks, to David, like something out of a dream. But Betsey, who still hasn’t forgiven David for being born a boy, receives David as her guest with marked reluctance. But when the Murdstones arrive demanding David’s return, she makes up her mind about her unexpected visitor once and for all: she defends David fiercely and tells the Murdstones she has taken him on as her charge.
With this settled, Betsey sends David to Dr. Strong’s Academy, a school in Canterbury which is, thankfully, very different to Salem House. In Canterbury, he lodges with the Wickfields. Mr. Wickfield is a lawyer. His daughter, Agnes, is David’s age, and the two become fast friends. The Wickfields live a life of privilege and contentment, though the arrival of Wickfield’s newest employee, the clerk Uriah Heep, will soon sour their happy existence. Heep’s subservient manner conceals vile ambitions. Mr. Wickfield is a jovial occasional drinker, yet under Uriah’s influence he takes to the bottle more and more frequently.
As a trainee law clerk, David returns to London, where he reconnects with his school friends: Tommy Traddles is lodging with the Micawbers and, like David, pursuing a legal clerkship; Steerforth is as charming and dissolute as ever. At first, David is particularly pleased to be reunited with Steerforth and, funded by Steerforth’s inheritance, the pair enjoy the hedonistic pleasures London has to offer. But things take a turn when David and Steerforth take a trip to Yarmouth to visit Peggotty’s family. Peggotty is now happily married to a Mr. Barkis. David is disturbed by the attention Steerforth pays to the now-grown-up Emily, who is engaged to her cousin Ham.
Agnes cautions David that Steerforth is a bad influence. Meanwhile, in the Wickfield household, Uriah Heep is proving an equally malign influence. Uriah deceives Mr. Wickfield into believing he has committed financial misconduct while drunk and coerces Wickfield into making Uriah a partner in his law firm. Then he sets his sights on Agnes – Heep would like to marry her despite her open dislike of him, if only he can manipulate her into accepting his proposal. David, too, is thinking of marriage. He is in love with Dora Spenlow, daughter of the lawyer Mr. Spenlow, who has hired David as a clerk at his firm. Dora is sweet but rather silly and David is completely besotted. “What an idle time!” he writes, reflecting on that first sweet courtship with Dora. “What an unsubstantial, happy, foolish time!”
David, bolstered by the promise of an inheritance from his great-aunt Betsey, dreams of marrying Dora. But just as he is dreaming of a pleasant future, bad news seems to come from every direction: Betsey’s fortune has been lost, as a result of her business dealings with Mr. Wickfield and Uriah Heep. Mr. Barkis has died suddenly, leaving Peggotty a widow. And, worst of all, Emily has run off with Steerforth, leaving Peggotty, Peggotty’s brother Dan, and Emily’s fiancé, Ham, in deep distress.
Endings, sad and happy.
With his economic prospects considerably diminished, David tries to discuss financial practicalities with Dora, but his – admittedly rather spoiled and childish – lover is sent into hysterics at the mere mention of household management. Crestfallen, David seeks solace with the Wickfields. But here, too, fortunes have taken a turn for the worse. Wickfield’s business is completely in the hands of Uriah Heep. Wickfield is in Heep’s debt, and though Agnes does her best to resist Heep’s advances, she begins to feel she has no choice but to accept his proposal of marriage.
Dan Peggotty, meanwhile, feverishly pursues any leads he can find about Emily’s whereabouts, eventually tracing her to Italy. Steerforth’s manservant, Littimer, sends word to David that Steerforth has tired of Emily, leaving David and Dan to understand that Emily has been, essentially, abandoned. But when they try to deduce Emily’s exact whereabouts, her trail runs cold. Ham Peggotty, meanwhile, is wounded by his fiancée’s behavior but blames himself for not stopping Steerforth’s flirtation with the hapless Emily. He throws himself into his work as a fisherman.
Following Agnes’s wise advice, David starts working as a secretary to Dr. Strong, the head of the academy he attended in Canterbury, while also pursuing a writing career. Dora supports him unwaveringly and, as David begins to find modest success as a writer, he and Dora marry. The marriage is happy but short. Dora miscarries and her health never recovers. After a brief illness, she dies.
Uriah Heep has hired Micawber as an employee at Wickfield’s law firm, reasoning that Micawber’s own significant financial difficulties will incentivize Micawber not to expose Heep’s own fraud. He is sorely mistaken. Micawber, with the help of Tommy Traddles, compiles damning evidence of Heep’s financial wrongdoing. When the truth is laid bare, Wickfield’s fortune is restored – as is Betsey Trotwood’s.
A childhood friend of Emily’s, Martha Ednell, comes into the picture. As a wide-eyed young girl, Martha moved to London, but soon fell into disgrace – a euphemistic Victorian term for becoming a prostitute. Now Martha is reformed, but she still has plenty of contacts in the London underworld. She brings news to Dan Peggotty. Emily is a fallen woman – in other words, Steerforth has taken her virginity. Now Emily is living in London, in abject poverty, having been cruelly abandoned by Steerforth. Dan has been preparing to emigrate to Australia – now he takes Emily with him, so she can leave her scandalous past behind and start afresh. Ham Peggotty, meanwhile, has drowned after trying to rescue the passengers of a sinking boat. In a cruel twist, one of the drowned passengers Ham died trying to save is revealed to be none other than Steerforth.
Among all these resolutions – some happy, some not so happy – David himself still feels adrift. As he mourns the loss of Dora, he also reflects on his own twists of fate. As the village gossips predicted at his birth, his has been a life of immodest fortune. He has experienced abject poverty and relative comfort, great friendship and devastating betrayal, true love and true loss.
Through it all he has been nourished by Agnes’s grace, wisdom, and unflagging love. When he sees that his childhood friend has been, all along, his soulmate – a fact that has been very plain to the reader, as well as to Agnes herself, for some time – he wastes no time in marrying her.
Analysis
Charles Dickens’s sprawling novels typically intertwine subplots from every social stratum in Victorian England. David Copperfield is no exception – and it is a particularly excoriating exposé of the conditions the English working classes suffered in the Victorian era. Dickens is unflinching in showing how the most vulnerable in society – children, women, the poor – are routinely exploited and abused by those with power over them. His descriptions of David’s time at the bottling factory are especially harrowing: “The deep remembrance of the sense I had,” says David, “of being utterly without hope now; of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that day by day what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up by, would pass away from me, little by little, never to be brought back any more; cannot be written.”
As a child, Dickens himself was put to work in a blacking factory, pasting labels on jars of shoe polish. Once he achieved success as a novelist, he campaigned to reform child labor laws and used his novels to draw attention to the plight of the working classes.
Certainly, in David Copperfield, Dickens resists a popular belief of the time: that the upper classes were possessed of greater moral virtue than the poor. The well-to-do Steerforth is shown to be dissolute, selfish, and destructive. The Peggottys, meanwhile, are kind-hearted and steadfast, even in the face of terrible misfortune. Ham Peggotty even gives his own life in an attempt to save Steerforth.
As an advocate for the working classes, Dickens may be considered ahead of his time. But as his portrayals of women in David Copperfield show, he took a fairly traditional view of gender roles. Agnes and Emily map neatly onto the angel-whore dichotomy prevalent in Victorian attitudes to women, whereby women fell into one of two categories: the angel is pure and chaste, a wife or mother; the whore is promiscuous and immoral, and threatens the downfall of both the men she seduces and the social order itself. Though Dickens portrays Emily sympathetically, he also makes it plain that she has behaved wantonly and immorally. Her downfall is regrettable but not undeserved. In contrast, the virtuous Agnes is held up as a model of Victorian womanhood.
Dickens’s attitudes certainly weren’t uniformly progressive. What is undeniably radical, though, in David Copperfield and across his body of work, is the warmth, empathy, and rigor he brings to imagining and depicting his richly varied cast of characters.
Conclusion
In this summary to David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens, you’ve followed the story of David Copperfield from birth. David’s happy childhood was marred by the arrival of his cruel stepfather. After years spent at a harsh school and in child labor, David finds stability in London as a law clerk. But it is not until he pursues his ambitions as a writer and admits his love for his childhood friend Agnes that his story reaches a truly happy ending.