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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
I should probably write down all the things I've wanted to say about this book before I forget them.
First off, I totally adored the first three hundred pages or so of this book. It's sad and funny and Dickens is a fantastic writer. I did enjoy the rest of the novel, but I didn't fly through it as I did through David's childhood years.
This is mostly, I think, the unfortunate side-effect of Dickens being clever. First sentences of novels are always important, and the first line of David Copperfield is pretty crucial: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
Is David the hero of his own life? As a child, he is, and that's what makes the story so engaging. Beset by difficulties, we watch him persevere defiantly, despite his innocence and helplessness. It's a powerful, simple narrative for the rest of the story elements to group around.
As he grows older, however, David rather strikingly loses his agency. For one thing, he explicitly goes from making use of his own moral resources to choosing between the examples of Steerforth and Agnes. By the last paragraph of the novel, it is clear that Agnes is in many ways the hero of David's life. I suspect that Dickens is implicitly questioning whether it's even a good idea to be the hero of one's own life. This is a pretty cool statement about selflessness and humility, so Dickens's choice seems to have some merit.
However, there are some negative results of de-heroizing David. David's loss of agency (dear God this is beginning to sound like a paper) is especially evident near the end of the novel, when all the major subplots of the novel - Little Em'ly, the Micawbers, even Uriah Heep - are pretty much resolved without David's help; he is merely a witness. Again, Dickens seems to have set up David to be a non-hero. But he's sort of shooting himself in the foot here in terms of narrative coherence. It's uncomfortable to read about someone who stops being the main character halfway through, which arguably is what happens to David Copperfield.
For me, the most engaging subplot during David's adult years was Dora's story. She's so likable yet so pathetically tragic, a wonderful critique of Victorian ideals of femininity. I love the moment when David, in the process of trying to form her character, realizes that "her character had already been formed." Their flawed love story is often quite powerful and unadorned, simply human in a way that David and Agnes's (don't worry, there will be a rant about Agnes later on) is not. Moreover, their marriage is the result of David's first important moral choice as a man. It was a bad choice, but seeing David deal with the consequences in a frankly heroic way is satisfying in a way that watching him watch Uriah Heep's defeat is not quite.
I am not sure whether Dickens wanted us to view David's loss of power as sinister in any way. Probably not very, considering the happy ending we get. Still, small details worry me - such as the way that Betsey Trotwood, a wonderful character in her own right, renames David, and he never corrects her or Agnes about what to call him. When a novel is called David Copperfield and the main character ends up being called by a different name, what are we supposed to think? I find it just a bit worrisome, personally.
Anyway, to the Agnes rant I promised. In my opinion, the most problematic element of David's anti-heroic status is poor Agnes. I thought she was simply a terrible character. Her list of qualities looks good at first glance - she's kind, practical, smart, compassionate, and not nearly as much as a pushover as I'd initially feared. However, the way Dickens writes her, she's only a laundry list of characteristics, and not a real person at all. She has no physical presence in the novel; whenever she's described, it's in terms of abstract adjectives - "practical" and "calm" are repeated more time than I can count. She's even described as having a spiritual aura that fills Canterbury with goodness and light. It's not merely that Agnes is every Victorian notion about women as spiritual examples and angels of the household wrapped into one quite improbable girl; if she felt real, I could forgive Dickens for, well, being a Victorian. It was really the manner in which she was presented that make her totally unlikable. Unlike Peggotty and Dora and Betsey Trotwood and even Mrs. Copperfield, who are all psychologically believable flesh-and-blood women, Agnes is a spiritual ideal masquerading as a person, and Dickens was proudly showing this off rather than giving her a human face.
The result of this choice is really rather odd. On one hand, Agnes's characterization means that David's moral agency merely consists of choosing Agnes as his moral guide. That's all very nice and selfless and Christian, although a bit frustrating for the reader, who probably wants David to make more complex choices. But at the same time, Agnes feels like this insubstantial idea who only exists to give David Copperfield moral bearings. Despite David's passivity, I started feeling as if everyone in the novel were just planets rotating around his immense gravitational field. Everything was about David Copperfield! Now, perhaps this is an unfair criticism for a book that is, after all, titled David Copperfield, but most of the characters maintain a solidity and self-possession that Agnes simply does not have. At her worst, she's a woman who really and truly exists for the sake of a man. While Dickens' failure is fascinating to analyze, I still have to regard it as a failure.
Needless to say, it's a very big novel and I would have to reread it again to even begin to organize the rest of my thoughts on it. Generally, I thought Dickens managed this bigness well, and it was a very good read full of very good characters, my criticisms notwithstanding. And in terms of the bildungsroman that is the first few hundred pages, I think it's probably one of the most important novels ever written in English, because I see its legacy very clearly in all sorts of coming-of-age novels written since.
First off, I totally adored the first three hundred pages or so of this book. It's sad and funny and Dickens is a fantastic writer. I did enjoy the rest of the novel, but I didn't fly through it as I did through David's childhood years.
This is mostly, I think, the unfortunate side-effect of Dickens being clever. First sentences of novels are always important, and the first line of David Copperfield is pretty crucial: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
Is David the hero of his own life? As a child, he is, and that's what makes the story so engaging. Beset by difficulties, we watch him persevere defiantly, despite his innocence and helplessness. It's a powerful, simple narrative for the rest of the story elements to group around.
As he grows older, however, David rather strikingly loses his agency. For one thing, he explicitly goes from making use of his own moral resources to choosing between the examples of Steerforth and Agnes. By the last paragraph of the novel, it is clear that Agnes is in many ways the hero of David's life. I suspect that Dickens is implicitly questioning whether it's even a good idea to be the hero of one's own life. This is a pretty cool statement about selflessness and humility, so Dickens's choice seems to have some merit.
However, there are some negative results of de-heroizing David. David's loss of agency (dear God this is beginning to sound like a paper) is especially evident near the end of the novel, when all the major subplots of the novel - Little Em'ly, the Micawbers, even Uriah Heep - are pretty much resolved without David's help; he is merely a witness. Again, Dickens seems to have set up David to be a non-hero. But he's sort of shooting himself in the foot here in terms of narrative coherence. It's uncomfortable to read about someone who stops being the main character halfway through, which arguably is what happens to David Copperfield.
For me, the most engaging subplot during David's adult years was Dora's story. She's so likable yet so pathetically tragic, a wonderful critique of Victorian ideals of femininity. I love the moment when David, in the process of trying to form her character, realizes that "her character had already been formed." Their flawed love story is often quite powerful and unadorned, simply human in a way that David and Agnes's (don't worry, there will be a rant about Agnes later on) is not. Moreover, their marriage is the result of David's first important moral choice as a man. It was a bad choice, but seeing David deal with the consequences in a frankly heroic way is satisfying in a way that watching him watch Uriah Heep's defeat is not quite.
I am not sure whether Dickens wanted us to view David's loss of power as sinister in any way. Probably not very, considering the happy ending we get. Still, small details worry me - such as the way that Betsey Trotwood, a wonderful character in her own right, renames David, and he never corrects her or Agnes about what to call him. When a novel is called David Copperfield and the main character ends up being called by a different name, what are we supposed to think? I find it just a bit worrisome, personally.
Anyway, to the Agnes rant I promised. In my opinion, the most problematic element of David's anti-heroic status is poor Agnes. I thought she was simply a terrible character. Her list of qualities looks good at first glance - she's kind, practical, smart, compassionate, and not nearly as much as a pushover as I'd initially feared. However, the way Dickens writes her, she's only a laundry list of characteristics, and not a real person at all. She has no physical presence in the novel; whenever she's described, it's in terms of abstract adjectives - "practical" and "calm" are repeated more time than I can count. She's even described as having a spiritual aura that fills Canterbury with goodness and light. It's not merely that Agnes is every Victorian notion about women as spiritual examples and angels of the household wrapped into one quite improbable girl; if she felt real, I could forgive Dickens for, well, being a Victorian. It was really the manner in which she was presented that make her totally unlikable. Unlike Peggotty and Dora and Betsey Trotwood and even Mrs. Copperfield, who are all psychologically believable flesh-and-blood women, Agnes is a spiritual ideal masquerading as a person, and Dickens was proudly showing this off rather than giving her a human face.
The result of this choice is really rather odd. On one hand, Agnes's characterization means that David's moral agency merely consists of choosing Agnes as his moral guide. That's all very nice and selfless and Christian, although a bit frustrating for the reader, who probably wants David to make more complex choices. But at the same time, Agnes feels like this insubstantial idea who only exists to give David Copperfield moral bearings. Despite David's passivity, I started feeling as if everyone in the novel were just planets rotating around his immense gravitational field. Everything was about David Copperfield! Now, perhaps this is an unfair criticism for a book that is, after all, titled David Copperfield, but most of the characters maintain a solidity and self-possession that Agnes simply does not have. At her worst, she's a woman who really and truly exists for the sake of a man. While Dickens' failure is fascinating to analyze, I still have to regard it as a failure.
Needless to say, it's a very big novel and I would have to reread it again to even begin to organize the rest of my thoughts on it. Generally, I thought Dickens managed this bigness well, and it was a very good read full of very good characters, my criticisms notwithstanding. And in terms of the bildungsroman that is the first few hundred pages, I think it's probably one of the most important novels ever written in English, because I see its legacy very clearly in all sorts of coming-of-age novels written since.
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
Okay, first things first: this was a 100 pages too long. (Which, in hindsight, doesn't seem like a lot - but towards the end, it was really, really exasperating.)
I consider this to be the first Dickens' novel that I have read purely on my own will (I had to read A Tale of Two Cities for school and did not enjoy it at all) and I was fairly surprised, to say the least. Compared to my previous experience, I discovered that Dickens manages to write a story that is both compelling and engaging, with an array of charming characters that you seem to love from the minute they enter the plot and a wit that you find very rarely in novels these days.
David Copperfield is also the kind of the novel that is pretty easy to follow, given that it is narrated in first person. I found his writing wonderful, and am looking forward to reading more of his works.
I consider this to be the first Dickens' novel that I have read purely on my own will (I had to read A Tale of Two Cities for school and did not enjoy it at all) and I was fairly surprised, to say the least. Compared to my previous experience, I discovered that Dickens manages to write a story that is both compelling and engaging, with an array of charming characters that you seem to love from the minute they enter the plot and a wit that you find very rarely in novels these days.
David Copperfield is also the kind of the novel that is pretty easy to follow, given that it is narrated in first person. I found his writing wonderful, and am looking forward to reading more of his works.
I have fallen in love with David Copperfield and all that is in him.
This book is the best mix of absurd and tender, and all the things I love best in a book, including, very importantly, a whole cast of characters to care about and who form a close merry band. I think we could not have done without one.
I liked in the book how we are made to care about each character, despite there being so many, and even those who are not really part of the main story, or who pop in an out, some even without names, you feel you could read a whole story fleshed out about them, that behind the quick glimpse of them, they are actually real people, with their own desires and interesting stories!
I think that I owe my opinion of this book to having watched The Personal History of David Copperfield first. This modern adaptation made the story so colourful, focusing on the ridiculous, not doing all the characters, so it could do the ones it did well, even changing the story, but keeping the spirit, and also having a diverse cast of characters, opened a door to this story that I believe would have otherwise stayed firmly shut, or perhaps just peeked in.
Other movies are so serious that they make the lighter characters and moments seem slapstick, but once I had watched that movie, all of it is there, in the book, but I never would have seen it I don't think had I not watched it first!
The turn of phrase is everything, the language is delightful, the humour is the best, and the real life hurt and bad is treated with a gentle hope.
I can see why some complain of the neat tying up of the ends at the end, it's there for sure, but why do we have to pick a camp here? Some fiction is fiction for a reason, other fiction is a reflection of life, you can have both and you don't need to decide one is better. Sometimes you want to read hard truths and face reality, other times you want everything to turn out ok. I think David Copperfield does both.
In defence of Dora, (from what I don't know, probably mice) I like Dora a lot. I like the movie Dora, I like the book Dora and I think they have a lot in common,
The movie Agnes and book Agnes are very very different. Both of them I like, movie Agnes a little better. It's hard to have such a perfect character and not make her a little dull.
That being said, I don't think David Copperfield is so nauseatingly good as some make him out to be, he has his weaknesses, and if he overcomes them it's not because he is trying very hard at times. And sometimes it's like he's not really there at all, just as if a whimsy film is in front of our eyes as we're focused on the others in the cast around him, but really when you think about it, his perception IS him, and it may not seem like anything at all in the way air is not really there but is actually the most important thing.
I like how the movie plays on the theme of the book bearing his name, but everyone else calling him whatever the hell they want, which can vary from very sweet (see Dora & Mr Peggotty; Doady, and Mas'r Davy) to a bit annoying or weird, and I liked how they added dyslexia and getting ppls voices stuck in your head. However yes, this is a review of the book, sorry.
I have never read a book by Dickens before, I think I would like to read more, now that my eyes are opened to the whimsical nature of the ridiculous humor and real life descriptions that I don't think I would have really seen or appreciated just by reading on my own. Well maybe, I'm not sure. But I'm glad I picked up this book, even if it did take me 27.42 hours at 233 wpm from the 1st August 2021 - 5th September 2021 to finish the gargantuan thing!
This book is the best mix of absurd and tender, and all the things I love best in a book, including, very importantly, a whole cast of characters to care about and who form a close merry band. I think we could not have done without one.
I liked in the book how we are made to care about each character, despite there being so many, and even those who are not really part of the main story, or who pop in an out, some even without names, you feel you could read a whole story fleshed out about them, that behind the quick glimpse of them, they are actually real people, with their own desires and interesting stories!
I think that I owe my opinion of this book to having watched The Personal History of David Copperfield first. This modern adaptation made the story so colourful, focusing on the ridiculous, not doing all the characters, so it could do the ones it did well, even changing the story, but keeping the spirit, and also having a diverse cast of characters, opened a door to this story that I believe would have otherwise stayed firmly shut, or perhaps just peeked in.
Other movies are so serious that they make the lighter characters and moments seem slapstick, but once I had watched that movie, all of it is there, in the book, but I never would have seen it I don't think had I not watched it first!
The turn of phrase is everything, the language is delightful, the humour is the best, and the real life hurt and bad is treated with a gentle hope.
I can see why some complain of the neat tying up of the ends at the end, it's there for sure, but why do we have to pick a camp here? Some fiction is fiction for a reason, other fiction is a reflection of life, you can have both and you don't need to decide one is better. Sometimes you want to read hard truths and face reality, other times you want everything to turn out ok. I think David Copperfield does both.
In defence of Dora, (from what I don't know, probably mice) I like Dora a lot. I like the movie Dora, I like the book Dora and I think they have a lot in common,
Spoiler
since Dickens killed her off in the book just after she realised the same truth that movie Dora does, just a bit earlier. I do like their marriage, it's very sweet, even if David Copperfield does make her hold his pens.The movie Agnes and book Agnes are very very different. Both of them I like, movie Agnes a little better. It's hard to have such a perfect character and not make her a little dull.
That being said, I don't think David Copperfield is so nauseatingly good as some make him out to be, he has his weaknesses, and if he overcomes them it's not because he is trying very hard at times. And sometimes it's like he's not really there at all, just as if a whimsy film is in front of our eyes as we're focused on the others in the cast around him, but really when you think about it, his perception IS him, and it may not seem like anything at all in the way air is not really there but is actually the most important thing.
I like how the movie plays on the theme of the book bearing his name, but everyone else calling him whatever the hell they want, which can vary from very sweet (see Dora & Mr Peggotty; Doady, and Mas'r Davy) to a bit annoying or weird, and I liked how they added dyslexia and getting ppls voices stuck in your head. However yes, this is a review of the book, sorry.
I have never read a book by Dickens before, I think I would like to read more, now that my eyes are opened to the whimsical nature of the ridiculous humor and real life descriptions that I don't think I would have really seen or appreciated just by reading on my own. Well maybe, I'm not sure. But I'm glad I picked up this book, even if it did take me 27.42 hours at 233 wpm from the 1st August 2021 - 5th September 2021 to finish the gargantuan thing!
My Dear Copperfield! How sad I was when I thought that I have been so careless as to have left you on the 10:40 train to Cairo in Febuary. And how joyous I felt to find you among the arab gossipy news stack while I was unpacking!
It's not that you are a thrilling book. Or even that your story was really worth recalling (the rags to riches is soooo passe, besides cinderella did it better and more fashionably then you)
But how charming are the characters that I really wanted them to be real, that I wanted them to be my aquaintences and friends. I wanted to go calling on Aunt Betsy Trotwood and talk to Mr. Dick about King Charles. This is what made the book for me a wholly enjoyable good read.
It's not that you are a thrilling book. Or even that your story was really worth recalling (the rags to riches is soooo passe, besides cinderella did it better and more fashionably then you)
But how charming are the characters that I really wanted them to be real, that I wanted them to be my aquaintences and friends. I wanted to go calling on Aunt Betsy Trotwood and talk to Mr. Dick about King Charles. This is what made the book for me a wholly enjoyable good read.
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
This book took me a long time, but it was worth it! The edition I read was about 800 pages (Modern Library paperback). It is a great story with a few powerful themes that speak into the modern world. David Copperfield struggles with imposter syndrome, betrayal, a mismatched marriage, neglect, and many setbacks outside his control. Despite all his struggle he never gives into, or is even tempted by cynicism. Funny as it may seem, in many ways young Copperfield reminded me of Harry Potter (I know that is an anachronistic way to state it, but I read HP first).
So many great quotes, but one of my favorites came from chapter 59:
"That what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance. And do you know I must say... that I DON’T find authority for (them) in the New Testament?’
‘I never found it either!’ said I."
So many great quotes, but one of my favorites came from chapter 59:
"That what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance. And do you know I must say... that I DON’T find authority for (them) in the New Testament?’
‘I never found it either!’ said I."
It’s been years since I read this so it was great to revisit it. I listened to an audiobook, which was really well done but 34 hrs!
I loved this book so much. The beginning of David growing up was my favorite part but I loved how he same characters reappeared throughout his life. I learned more about Dickens' life while reading this book.
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes