What the Dickens? David Copperfield - an update upon rereading

right so hello and welcome back to books and things and welcome to a new episode of what the Dickens so if you have been around here on the channel for a while you may remember that back in February I did two weeks of Charles Dickens I did a fortnight of talking about Charles Dickens everyday a series called what the Dickens in which every day I took a different Dickens novel and I discussed what the book was about things I loved about it and things I didn't love as much now at the time when I made that series I had read every Dickens book two or more times with the exception of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield have you read Oliver Twist back in July I think that most of my opinions didn't change member of my comments about the plot were not as accurate as I thought but all of my opinions basically stayed the same Oliver Twist is still my least favorite Dickens book but I have recently finished rereading slash listening to an audiobook David Copperfield and I feel like I need to make a new video on David Copperfield because so many of my opinions have changed or been updated or been refreshed and I have forgotten when I made what the Dickens just what an incredibly brilliant beautiful wonderful book David Copperfield is so I thought I would do a new what the Dickens for David Copperfield and tell you about all the reasons why this book is incredible and why I heartily recommend it and I have so much to say about this book because it's great so yes let's let's begin chapter one I am born whether I shall turn out to be the hair of my own life or whether that station will be held by anybody else these pages must show to begin my life with the beginning of my life I record that I was born as I have been informed and believed on a Friday at twelve o'clock at night it has been remarked that the clock began to strike and I began to cry simultaneously I first read David Copperfield when I was probably about 14 or 15 and I remembered I really enjoyed it but over the years I had forgotten about it mostly I think when I made what the Dickens last time this I had down as my eighth favorite Dickens novel it's now after having me read it definitely my faith I'd prefer it to great expectations and I think there is so much to love in this book so many wonderful characters such an incredible plot I think it's a great starting place with Dickens as well because it's in the first-person and you get to see so many common that Dickensian themes and so many important Victorian themes but all through the lens and the journey of this one man's life it's also a perfect mix of incredibly funny and at times very very sad and David is quite an interesting and engaging character I don't always love him but I don't find him as irritating as I do pick from great expectations' and in that way he's a much easier character to read about and to follow along his story normally I find it really hard to explain what Dickens novels are about David Copperfield is a little bit more easy to explain it is about the life of David Copperfield David Copperfield is born at the beginning of the book he explains his childhoods the life with his mother what happens when his mother ends up remarrying and goes on into his life he begins life in a middle-class situation but ends up for various reasons becoming very poor and then trying to work his way up again and the book is basically a story about him growing up and also his progression through classes and his success almost as a middle-class professional man for me this is a book that is really about middle-class respectability and I know I go on about respectability a lot but it's really fascinating and important in this book is what this book emphasizes a lot is the virtue and merit of good honest hard work of having a profession but working really hard at it of being kind of economical with your money and being good and kind to people being right and upstanding but also working really hard and in that way the book is really interesting in terms of thinking about masculinity as well because David Copperfield's masculinity is a very emotional and masculinity but it's also very hard working masculinity as well very middle-class respectable a version of loyalty book begins when david copperfield is a child and the main body of the plot runs until he is about 25 I think we're in his late 20s in that way the book is really one about growing up it's about David's journey from being a child to being an adult how his views change how his opinions are developed how his feelings mature and how he discovers his kind of calling in life and what he wants to do with his life how he discovers the way in which he wants to lead his life it's also about all of the people he meets along the way because the book sounds a long period of his life there are a lot of people who he meets in childhood and then rediscovers in adulthood a lot of friends and characters and surrogate family members that he meets over the course of his life that play a really important role in his development as a person and in what he comes to value and David Copperfield was actually Charles Dickens his favorite of his own novels in fact Charles Dickens once said will be easily believed that I'm a fond parent of every child of my fancy and the no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them but like many fond parents I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child and his name is David Copperfield so David Copperfield was Dickens is a favorite novel of his own and it's often considered to be quite autobiographical for example there are passages of David Copperfield's childhood which resemble passages of Charles Dickens's especially in terms of being born into a kind of educated middle-class family and then suddenly becoming quite poor and having to go and work in a factory there's also something which I'm not sure how much this has been written on I do feel that the character of Dora is to an extent connected with Charles Dickens his wife Catherine I'm not in general someone that likes to poor authors biographies into their books and read tons of like life facts about them from it but I do think from what I know about the way the Dickens had spoken about his wife Catherine after they separated and some of the complaints that he held levelled at her as it were are quite similar to the way he talks about Dora who's something that occurred to me reading at this time that I hadn't thought of before David Copperfield also later on in the book becomes a writer which obviously ties into Dickens quite a lot I don't in general often that Dickens is one of those authors that puts a lot of his life in his work he must a lot of his opinions are social criticism into his work but not in general a lot of his life David Copperfield is generally considered to be in the exception and to be considered at least partially autobiographical or at least influenced by events in Dickens his own life now as have been the custom in my previous what the Dickens video I'm gonna start off by talking about the things that I love about David Copperfield and there are many there are many I love that you follow this one character through a lot of his life one of the things I tend to love by Dickens is all of it into eating plots and all of the different characters you follow but actually in David Copperfield I think it works really really well and the fact that you do meet so many characters and you do have so many different subplots which cross over into David's life does mean that still a really engaging read you still have a huge cast but you also get to follow David as he grows up then you get to see his progression as a character and he does change quite a lot over time in a very interesting way the difference in his character as a child and then as a very young man and as a slightly older man is just so significant and you do get to see his personality develop a lot and Dickens has quite a few chapters where he talks about David's growing up over a long period of time and it's all in the present tense and often called like a retrospect Museum through things quite quickly with various images kind of pushed at us and I think they're really effective and really beautifully written the chapters that are in the present tense in David Copperfield that the duties really interesting things are done so well and a really really effective and I love Dickens is clever impressive writing here because the right of look in which someone grows up that much over that long period of time is quite tricky but he does it very very well he doesn't just skip passages of time out and just skip like several years in the future he kind of does a little summary of the years that have passed in between which is done in a very clever beautiful way in which he picks out the moments of these years even if not like everything within them I also love that David Copperfield as a child really feels like a child one of the things I've mentioned before about why Oliver Twist is my least favorite Dickens is I just don't feel Oliver Twist feels like a child he just like cries more than adults do and that's about it and that's a story for another day I'll link my offered twist video down below but David Copperfield as a child for me really feel almost like a child and I think they do his character very very effectively I also love David's interest as a child in stories and his desire to lose himself in books which influenced is the fact that David goes on to her write her later in the book and the fact that although writing and books and stories isn't it's not exactly integral to David Copperfield doesn't seep into everything but the fact that it is there in the background this love of books and the stories the fact that David Copperfield makes up stories about people he walks past in the street and that kind of thing it's just really lovely and a nice like new added detail within the books I really enjoy reading about I also love with the cast of characters I think there are a vast quantity of incredible incredible characters in David Copperfield some of the most memorable and beautiful characters in all of Dickens I think that Tommy Traddles is probably my favorite male character and all of difference he's probably tired with Jenny Wren as my favorite character in all of Dickens Tory Traddles is a good friend of David Copperfield and it's funny because I remembered for my first reading of David Copperfield that Tommy Traddles had been my favorite character but I couldn't remember anything about him or why but he's just a charming wonderful lovable lovable character he is so thoroughly good but also at times not that effective but always worked hard and strives for things he has had always sticks on end and will never lay flat in a very caricatured but lovable way he's very entertaining as a school ball he drools skeletons everywhere when he's afraid and scared because he's a slightly nervous child but he also wants to stand up for what is right and I think Tommy shadows is just such a brilliant character I find him more endearing than David Copperfield but I think that's almost the point and as a friend for David he does complement him quite well because David Copperfield often views shadows as a kind of failure but actually many of the mistakes that David makes in his life travels does not make and Traddles is actually much more consistent and correct and right and knows himself better than David knows itself and travels kind of modesty and assessment of his own situation and opinions it's often really sad he often feels that he's not very good at things but actually he is such a wonderful character and he his role in the kind of dramatic climax in the book is so good and I'm so glad that he's involved in that I actually like it's interesting that at the beginning of the in in David Copperfield's are a very opening paragraph David Copperfield poses the question whether or not he will be the hero of his own life in the graphic climax of the book the villain as it were believes that what is going on is all of David Copperfield was doing and blames David Copperfield for his kind of downfall but actually it's not David Copperfield who organizes this it's Traddles and I would argue that Traddles is for me the real hero of David Copperfield and he is the person that does all the heroic actions in the end of the book and actually he he is kind of rewarded as well I've spoken before about these kind of male angel figures within Dickens such as Tom Pyncheon Martin Chuzzlewit but often Dickens ismaïl angels are not rewarded with like a romantic plotline they kind of Angela and good that they must therefore because they are so good be like ugly and doomed to a life alone trans has a love interest in the book and it's quite significant that he can be so good and so important but also have a love interest cause it moves him from being just a male Angels were also being a hero I'm also perhaps from David Copperfield I think Traddles is just a wonderful character and I love him a great deal so yes anyway other characters who are brilliant in David Copperfield it is important that you spend a moment pondering on the great character of Betsey Trotwood I see Trotwood is David Arendt she is first in the book appears quite a sinister imposing figure but David goes to know how much better later on in life and we discover a lot more about her and a lot more many complex things about her character she's not quite the dragon she seems to be when she first appears but in fact has a lot of kindness and tenderness in her as well and has had quite a hard life which is fascinating a fascinating character especially in terms of looking at Dickens and gender because she is such a strong imposing and often terrifying woman that she acts both as a surrogate mother and a father to David Copperfield but also as a friend and confidant as well it's very very important messy Trotwood is also just thoroughly awesome and hilarious the first time we encounter Betsey Trotwood she is expressing her great fury that David Copperfield has been born as a boy rather than a girl because she doesn't she doesn't like boys she doesn't like men she only wanted a nice and the fact she has a nephew is greatly distressing to her and then later on in the book we discover her great anger at donkeys whenever donkeys come across the path outside of her cottage she sends her servant a blur goes out herself to beat away the donkey's until they leave and she just quite an eccentric character and I love that she is both very strong and very eccentric and very odd but also very like nice and understanding and kind as well and she's such a complex and interesting character and especially good at this you are looking at kind of interesting female characters in Dickens it's also Peggotty another fascinating character who is David Copperfield's nurse when he is a boy and another surrogate mother figure for him how after goodness and lovable nature is very very important to the book and also important in terms of the way that David Copperfield as a novel looks at class because Peggotty introduces David Copperfield to her family and he comes to know them quite well and she being his nurse and their family servant is obviously from a lower class background to him and introduces David Copperfield to the rest of her family all of whom are from a working-class background they become preferred as a child and even as an adult doesn't really feel the difference and the distinction between him and these people one of his friends their fourth who is from a slightly higher class background than David really does and barely considers these people human at all it's the way that class is explored and david copperfield is really really interesting because the complete snobbery of James sniffles and missus fearful with his mother and also of Rosa dartle is very very very interesting and very very complicated Lee and horribly at times done James therefore there's another interesting character within David Copperfield the influence he has over David Copperfield as a child and their life as an adult is very interesting and you can really see how it develops the fondness David always expresses towards Steerforth's even when he realizes that Steerforth might not be quite what he always thoughts therefore horse is very very interesting and there are so many other wonderful characters in David Copperfield from the eccentric Micawber who is always constantly in debt and always waiting for something to turn up and really hoping it does and of course it doesn't really ever happen there's also the humble but ever creepy Uriah Heep for the wonderful parties ham Peggotty and mrs. Gummidge and this family who like so many of the successful families in Dickens are not nuclear family at all when David Kaba thoris goes to visit peggotty's at the family he meets mr. Peggotty and assumes that ham and Emily are both mr. Peggotty's children and the mrs. Gummidge is his wife for know mrs. Gummidge is the widow of an old friend of his Emily is his niece and ham in his nephew and they create this family that from the outside you think is a nuclear family and then you realize it's not it's something much more complicated than that I love the way that David Cobb Authority explores family David Copperfield himself goes through a lot of different surrogate parent and sibling figures and the way that this is done is very very interesting and comments a lot on family within the Victorian period I mentioned this before but Dickens actually has a very very few and nuclear families within his work for a writer that was often praised and lauded as an advocate of domestic II yes all his books end in marriage but there are very few happy marriages within his books and most of the happy families and the functional families within Dickens are not parents and their children they are surrogate parent or figures and like families that are meshed together basically in a lovely way because it's really Dickens exploring the fact that family is much more than blood so family it's a very important theme in David Copperfield and another theme that I've already touched upon is respectability and kind of honesty and truth and goodness which is so important throughout the book this idea of being honest and good and the idea of the corrupting influence often of of the world and various people within the world there's also a lot of that perspective david copperfield spends quite a lot of it being quite naive and his opinion of various people is kind of changed and shifted over the book yes sometimes his instincts are right but there are a lot of people like James Steerforth or like and strong who he misjudges in various different ways and it's only later on in the book that he comes to realize their characters are not precisely what he thought they were and that is also very important to this book as well I've already spoken about the ideas of masculinity which are so important in David Copperfield's kind of growing up and becoming a man it's basically a book about becoming a man and the way that hard work builds in to David Copperfield's identity as a man but also there's a lot about the role of women that is sometimes done really interestingly and sometimes done slightly less well like I said I think that Betsey Trotwood and Peggotty are two absolutely fascinating female characters in the Victorian period I think mccourt mrs. micawber as well for all her eccentricity and fainting is much more complicated than often she immediately appears on the surface level they'll see things the way that little Emily is this is explored and examined is done quite interesting Lee and that Dickens does quite important things in that plot line however moving on to things I like less about David Copperfield it's not that I like it less exactly but I feel uncomfortable with David Copperfield's in love life and it's the only thing in David Copperfield that stops it from being utterly utterly brilliant like as I've been listening to the audiobook which by the way is narrated by Richard Armitage and I strongly recommend it's very good for the first like half two-thirds of the book I was thinking that it would probably beat Bleak House in my Dickens estimation that it might become my fourth favorite Dickens but it isn't I've put it as my fifth favorite Dickens because I like it more than gray expectations but I don't like it more than Bleak House and there was one thing one aspect which mostly occurs in like the last third of the book which makes me uncomfortable and I remembered that it did before and I remembered to be on the lookout for this because I knew that I wanted to look at gender and the presentation of women it within they've a call phone especially in the presentation of a comparison between Dora and Agnes and it doesn't spoil the book for me because for me the book is about all the people that David Copperfield meets more than it is about David Copperfield and the fact that I don't feel like the fact that I'm not in love with his love stories is kind of okay but I do find the presentation of Dora and Agnes and the comparison between them problematic but also really really fascinating as someone that's interested in Dickens and gender is really interesting and I want Dickens within his work tends to have two different kinds of heroines in his early work most of the heroines he have tend to be beautiful and good and that's about the substance of their character in his later books his heroines tend to be good yes sometimes beautiful but it becomes less important but also useful intelligent good at housekeeping good at helping other people really effective and efficient in life they're not just good pretty objects who sit and look pretty they actually do things and are really useful and effective and they don't necessarily need the help of men as much as the female characters in his early books and David Copperfield for me always presents like a literal turning point between his early novels and his later novels because Dora represents the archetypal heroine of his early novels she is beautiful she is good she is nice she is sweet but she is also that pathetic she also is not very good at housekeeping she uses a cookery book as a dumping stand for her dog when David tries to teach her how to do housekeeping she just breaks down and cries she is very sweet and very silly but she is very very childish she refers to herself as a child a lot and also gets other people to treat her like a child and even asks other people to refer to her as a child at this point where David mentions that various people around Dora seem to treat her as a child and because everybody treats Dora as a child even though she's like an 18 year old woman he ends up falling into the same trap as well and he doesn't mean to it he doesn't want to but he always can't help it and this way Dora represents Dickens is early heroines which are often kind of infantilized and also represents this this problematic presentation of a certain kind of woman within Victorian literature and Victorian culture where women are infantilized and that is one obviously very problematic aspect of women within Victorian culture Agnes is very different Agnes is much more like the later Dickensian heroine she is very very useful she is very very moral and more moral than Dora Dora like Dora is moral but not in a car actively more alway more under kind of passively more alway she would never do anything she thought would be wrong but nor would she necessarily know exactly what she thought was right Agnes is like a pinnacle of beacon of morality she is also very very good very very useful she is a housekeeper she is good with a count she is her father's housekeeper from a young age and carries the keys around with her a symbol from the first time we see her of usefulness she says that her great ambition in life is to be happy and useful and she has David's confidant and advisor who tries to make everything in his life easier who tries to make everything in everyone's life easier and to be of use to as many people as she can she's also very intelligent both unlike a intellectual level but also on an emotional level and she is often much more aware of David's emotions than David is himself she is beautiful but whenever Agnes is described as being beautiful it always comes along with being described as being good there is this idea almost that her beauty comes from her in a morality shining out ricketts her soul that makes her beautiful on her face and in this way Agnes is much more similar to the later heroines of Dickensian novels and represents another problematic aspect of the presentation of women within Victorian literature and culture and that is the angel ization of women I don't think that is actually a word but here we have two very Pro ematic presentations of women within the Victorian period Ora representing women as child and Imus representing women as angel and I do find it problematic and sometimes I feel like Dickens is doing something interesting with the way that women are perceived and by putting these two characters together and almost comparing them he is exploring - all of the issues of the day and there are points when I do think Dickens is criticizing society for producing women like Dora almost for educating women of a certain class to be showy and to be good at you know singing and painting but actually not have any useful skills and there is a genuine social criticism and complaint against society for treating women like children so that they become like children as Dora is and I do think that although the presentation of Dora is problematic and a Tyrus feels quite harsh and her dismissal at times and the way she is presented as being so stupid almost is really sad and really hard I do find it problematic to read but I do think that beneath that Dickens has genuine criticism of the Victorian social conventions or the Victorian social ideas that creates characters such as Dora and that makes people makes women into people like Dora Agnes though I don't think there is any critical nurse under there like I think Dickens is really presenting Agnes as the perfect woman David Copperfield frequently refers to Agnes houses angel his good angel his better angel this idea that Agnes it's the moral force who can guide him through his life and that is problematic as well and I do find it unsettling and I find the way that David talks about both Dora and Agnes way the book progresses and deals with both of these characters slightly unsettling it so that reason the David Copperfield isn't my fourth favorite Dickens no but like it's not really unsettling I still on the book and I do find certain aspects of that slightly unsettling and slightly uncomfortable they don't sit as well with me as the rest of the book I'm very interested to know other people who've read David Copperfield if you feel I guess at all and how you feel about Dora and Agnes presentation of these two women and also like the love arc that David Copperfield goes through over the book it makes me slightly uncomfortable I love all of the other plots and I think there are so many wonderful parts and there's so many wonderful wonderful characters I think it's a brilliant brilliant Dickens novel a wonderful place to start with dick in the wonderful place to continue with Dickens I think everybody should read it and it's just just a thoroughly enjoyable book as well and the hina is so good and so many parts are so like emotionally intelligent and so moving and wonderful but I do find that slightly unsettling and that's why it doesn't quite beat Bleak House partly because of the gender stuff but also because of the presentation of Dora and Agnes I don't find the like love story and David Copperfield as satisfying as I find the love stories in various other Dickens books with a me and David Copperfield what I love is not the love stories and not David Copperfield himself but it's all of the things around it all of the other plots going on all the other wonderful wonderful characters that occur all of the wonderful themes are explored and the fact that it's just such a thoroughly thoroughly enjoyable book so there we go I love David Copperfield very much it is now officially my fifth favorite Dickens novel I hope you have enjoyed this updated what-the-dickens video please let me know down in the comments below if you have read they become a filled or not and what you think of it and I back very soon with another video

Channel: Books and Things

Views: 8,043

Keywords: booktube, books, literature

Id: _C3uU3Fc5XQ

Length: 23min 8sec (1388 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 03 2016