David Copperfield

“The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.”
― Wilkie Collins, My Miscellanies

The ‘literary exertion' Collins refers to, in the above cited quotation, is something Dickens wilfully exhibits as one glides through the self-consciously rendered train of thoughts and images, linked together as they are, in a whole different world of novelistic space from what modern literature readily deviates. Notwithstanding the effort, reading, first hand, about what is portrayed like a minutely observed phase in society the way Dickens does, seldom amounts to ‘waste of time'.

Years after this prodigious construct of realist imagination, expertly expressed with wit whet with irony, had been conceived and realized, as I sift through the word-voluble thickness of the ‘dull' Victorian life, I can't help feel the descriptive vividness of the towns, the school grounds or the sheer landscape of a reality depicted through the warm and snuggling narrative voice.

The novel of education presents a protagonist whose romantic idealism determines a natural inclination towards an infatuated sentimentalism. However, circumstances conditioned for a character as endearing as David, warrant the need for fancy:

‘From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time'.

That Copperfield does not merely remain confined to and projected upon a saccharine-coated screen has been duly demonstrated by Dickens through David's patiently handled or developed point of view with respect to dear friends and lovers.

As David's education ensues—especially at the hands of those whose hands do not miss the chance to spare the rods—he learns, as well, an essential aspect of discipline, the over application of which instills a shuddering shadow of guilt:
‘The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to any one. They occupy the place of years in my remembrance'
. . .
‘being ashamed to show myself at the window lest they should know I was a prisoner—the strange sensation of never hearing myself speak'

Early lessons of ‘firmness', at school and home, usher our ‘hero' into a phase of inevitability:

‘In the monotony of my life, and in my constant apprehension of the re-opening of the school, it was such an insupportable affliction'.

Dickens does not leave a stone unturned in presenting the stark contrast between David's imaginative garret of life and the real store-room of troubles.
If David is able to find a corner wherein the romantic idealism breathes, he is bound to, as it is made sure to witness, get handcuffed by the vagaries of the time. It's something beautifully portrayed, at times, in sprawling expressions:

‘A certain mysterious feeling, consequent on the darkness, the secrecy of the revel, and the whisper in which everything was said, steals over me again, and I listen to all they tell me with a vague feeling of solemnity and awe, which makes me glad that they are all so near, and frightens me'.

Soon, however, master Copperfield begins on his own and learns to choose . . . albeit waywardly and sentimentally. Infatuated with untested ideals, David receives life not as he would but as he must, laying the foundation of a character which is as much his as it is to be earned and deserved.
Being receptive to life is David Copperfield's biggest quality. When he is not among his peers because he can't be, David exhibits the capacity to respond humanely:

‘curious equality of friendship, originating, I suppose, in our respective circumstances, sprung up between me and these people, notwithstanding the ludicrous disparity in our years'.

Another attribute accredited to the protagonist's growth is time itself, which David knows he has aplenty to learn from. In many of the firsts, he learns to hold on to the young years of affliction, only to assimilate differences that prove to be pivotal for David Copperfield:

‘When my thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth, I wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a mist of fancy over well-remembered facts!'

As he is aptly called by another character, David also is, notwithstanding what coming of an age would mean to himself, a very ‘Daisy!' proudly blowing in the wind as an emblem of sensitivity. Yet, who is the real David Copperfield; he would live to learn and, hence, be able to discern through the trifling details life bestows upon him.

Character is built as much from love and affection as it does through the ‘humble' concern measured by hatred. And in Heep does Copperfield find his rival to be:

‘I was so haunted at last by the idea, though I knew there was nothing in it, that I stole into the next room to look at him. There I saw him, lying on his back, with his legs extending to I don't know where, gurglings taking place in his throat, stoppages in his nose, and his mouth open like a post-office. He was so much worse in reality than in my distempered fancy,'

Strangely enough, though, David Copperfield gets goaded by what stands in the face of his being. It's odd for a sensitive character as he is; but there he does get, holding on. What drives him away from the comfortable world of fancy is exactly what makes him arrive to himself, where he would rather be.

But what would David be. Who is he? One could immediately hear him whisper, ‘I don't know' sitting on the anvil of uncertainty which permeates his life, right from where the narrative voice begins the story. However, he learns to wait and receive what doesn't turn up or what just shows up nonchalantly:

‘Whenever I fell into a thoughtful state, this subject was sure to present itself, and all my uneasiness was sure to be redoubled. Hardly a night passed without my dreaming of it. It became a part of my life, and as inseparable from my life as my own head'.

Learning comes from loss. David Copperfield suffers at the hands of not knowing what. It, however, does not stop him from breaking new ground with his effort. David has experienced absence, separation as well as disquiet of guilt. It leads him back to himself, where David searches and finds best: ‘I wanted to be cutting at those trees in the forest of difficulty, under circumstances that should prove my strength'.

And yet, Copperfield does not find; even as he does not know what to find. Again does he fixate life within the idealistic, in the fancy of beauty that sweeps him off his feet. Again does David recognize the constant gnawing at his heart, which is taken care of only by more toil from his character:

‘I was a boyish husband as to years. I had known the softening influence of no other sorrows or experiences than those recorded in these leaves. If I did any wrong, as I may have done much, I did it in mistaken love, and in my want of wisdom. I write the exact truth. It would avail me nothing to extenuate it now'.

The writing is soon on the wall for David, as he reads without repentance: ‘There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose'. In more than a single way, David Copperfield manifests someone who grows up to consider, ‘The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart'.

Death too catches up. The sense of loss after his wife's death had never been stronger with David. Restlessness tests him all the more:

‘There are some dreams that can only be imperfectly and vaguely described; and when I oblige myself to look back on this time of my life, I seem to be recalling such a dream. I see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign towns, palaces, cathedrals, temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets—the old abiding places of History and Fancy—as a dreamer might; bearing my painful load through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as they fade before me. Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was the night that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it—as at last I did, thank Heaven!—and from its long, sad, wretched dream, to dawn'.

Finally, Copperfield is able to cope for he is able to express. As he finds the vehicle of his being, David writes: ‘I worked early and late, patiently and hard. I wrote a Story, with a purpose growing, not remotely, out of my experience'.

No more an ‘undisciplined heart', David Copperfield is finally able to feel when he least expects or desires: ‘And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my heart. Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with the quietly sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and shook me more with hope than fear or sorrow'.

Absence, loss, incompleteness and frustration leads him back to his own self, as he returns to the ideal he missed and overlooked for another which beckoned him in his impatience: ‘My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.'

Apparently, ‘retrospect' is a word that Dickens has profusely used, among others; and I get this feeling strongly about how David Copperfield is a book about going back; or the importance of retracing one's steps back, lest one forgets one's own, precariously poised, divergent self. This marks David's character as someone who manifests, eventually, an assiduous walk on the track of life which tracks forward as well as backward; which presents ‘absence' as an essential presence in life. In the end, he is ... because of realizing he is more than and beyond what he thinks he is.

It is a kind of book which, for me, gets populated with words, conversations, scenes and images, as well as the most important base to bring them all together, a narrative cohesion that sketches diligently one shade after another; that is perhaps the biggest strength of the book. And charmingly as it is, Dickens achieves this by employing what he sincerely believes in, that is;

‘trifles make the sum of life'.