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isabellaroden 's review for:
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens
A deeply compassionate book. 800 pages of seeing the world through Copperfield’s eyes as he grows up means being able to see characters with mental illness, physical disabilities, different extremes of poverty, and “weaknesses of character,” as valuable and heroic. It’s a rare and beautiful thing. While still being very funny. And Great Aunt Betsey Trotwood is one of the best characters of all time and a feminist icon I aspire to be more like in life.
It’s Dickens so it’s very plot-driven and character study-focused, but by the end I found it deeper than it first appeared. His observations sadly remain too relevant and those in power today could learn a thing or two. For example, after Copperfield is invited to observe a fancy new jail that had just been constructed: “I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving old.”
It’s Dickens so it’s very plot-driven and character study-focused, but by the end I found it deeper than it first appeared. His observations sadly remain too relevant and those in power today could learn a thing or two. For example, after Copperfield is invited to observe a fancy new jail that had just been constructed: “I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving old.”