David Copperfield

I got to meet Uriah Heep.

There’s a lot to love about David Copperfield. If you’ve ever read Dickens, this is possibly the most Dickensian of all—with eccentric characters, class conscious themes, and it feels very affectionate.

I had heard of David Copperfield for years and hadn’t thought much about it, then when watching an episode of the Twilight Zone (the one where the guy ends up as the last person on earth and looks forward to being able to read interrupted before breaking his glasses), the character mentioned that he was reading David Copperfield and what a good story it was. So I decided to read it. And now having read it, I’m not really sure what to make of it. In one sense, I realize I am missing a lot of context that I would need to more accurately evaluate the story. It is a historical piece, so being able to understand what social interactions were acceptable or not at the time is skewed by how those same interactions are viewed today. But even more complicated than that is that it takes place in a culture that I know little about, i.e. 19th century England, things like how the class structure was viewed and the way men and women were viewed would have been helpful.

This isn’t necessarily always bad, one of the things I often look forward to is comparing the social norms of such a book with the norms of today, just to gain perspective on how things evolve over time. The most striking of these differences, at least in my mind was the roles of male and female characters. While we still struggle with the idea that we live in a patriarchal society, if this book is any indication, we have come a long way. While there are important male and female characters in the book, it is clear that it is only the male characters that possess any true agency. All the female characters seem to exist purely to provide service or support for the male character to which they are associated. Even David Copperfield’s relatively independent Aunt, seems to really only be there to help guide David to the right path or to rescue him from the wrong one.

Another thing I found interesting about the depiction of gender was what seemed to define what it means to be a good woman. While there were a few exceptions (i.e. David’s stepfathers sister when growing up), nearly all of the women in the story are deemed good by the level of their purity, innocence, and frailty. This is often conflated with beauty and attractiveness for some reason. Two characters close to David who are supposed to be amongst the most beautiful and attractive, his mother and his first wife, are so innocent and frail, they just die for some reason that never seems to be really explained (maybe their type of innocence and purity can’t exist in the real world?). I don’t know if this was just a reflection of how people like Charles Dickens viewed women of the time or if he was somehow making some sort of social commentary on how ridiculous it was to cherish absolute weakness in women (this is where knowing something about how society actually viewed women at the time would have been helpful). Meanwhile the men could be whatever they wanted, evil, good, screwups, bullies, and still be admired for who they were.

This brings me to the main character. It was, for me, a strange way for a main character to move through a story. For large parts of the book, maybe all of it, he doesn’t seem to drive the story, rather the story just seems to unfold around him. It was as if some aliens got intel on 19th century England, created a character possessing all of the most moral and ethical standards as they understood them and then plopped him down into society to observe how it interacted with him. How does such a character interact with a bully, with trauma, with friendship, with love. We get a window into how a character with such high moral and ethical standards reacts to these events through his own narration of the story, but he doesn’t really seem to affect change. Rather outside characters or outside events move the story in the direction of resolution. When David wants to marry his first wife over her father’s objections, her father just dies. When Uriah Heep’s evil influence is growing and threatening to destroy the lives of those close to David, it's his friends, Traddles and Mr. Micawber who take him down. When his overly entitled friend Steerforth (who seems to only ever take advantage of David’s friendship) decides to “corrupt” and steal away another overly innocent and pure female character (Lil’ Emily, what a ridiculous nickname), from marrying her cousin of all people, and eventually abandon her in the middle of Europe after he’s done having his fun with her, David doesn’t even seem to really hold it against his friend, still seems to hold on to fond memories of him, but it’s a freak storm that takes care of him by killing him.

Anyway, it was a strange story in that respect. It also didn’t really have any suspense or plot twists, just a meandering plot that follows David Copperfield’s life as he experiences a range of different events and people. It seems to be trying to make some point about it being the relationships you make in life are what bring meaning to one’s life, but I’m not sure that really came across to me until the very end when it was all but spelled out. All in all, it wasn’t a book that I felt compelled to keep reading because I wanted to know what happened next, but it wasn’t a horrible book that I wanted to stop reading altogether either.

Been trying so hard to get into the story but no matter how much I've tried even if I finished the book I couldn't really tell you what it's about. Found the writing to be, I really don't know but maybe too complicated for me. But I have handled many other classics in English so I don't know what my problem was. Might give the Swedish translation a try someday

I would like to remind you all that Charles Dickens was paid by the word....which makes his books drag a bit to a modern reader.

However, the soap opera DRAMA you get when you wade through all those words is worth it.

"Undisciplined Heart" is my band name.

That concludes this review.