This novel is a journey and a half. With something as near-autobiographical as this, that is to be expected, of course. I embarked on the task I don’t know when, a while ago, and finally finished reading this afternoon. And I can say with conviction, it was worth the read.
My choice in reading David Copperfield was very simply based on appearance: a big old copy bound in red, with gold imprinted designs on the spine, and on the cover the badge and motto of my grandfather’s school. Inside the cover: a little label naming my grandfather as a prize winner of Form II, midsummer 1935. Even without any interest in reading it, it deserves a place on a bookshelf for display.
But looks don’t matter past the front cover. The life story of David Copperfield meanders and flows, featuring a complete circus of vivid characters, reaching heights of humour and pathos, and then looping around and tying itself together in a way that probably was foreshadowed right at the beginning.
It has a lot to say about the society of its day. I believe the same can be said for most of Charles Dickens’ novels. This particular one, originally published in instalments 1849-1850, is said to be his favourite and the one that most closely follows his own life story. Through every character, setting and subplot it teaches a little lesson to the eponymous protagonist.
Although probably not quite winning the prize for “most realistic novel of the century”, it feels genuinely written by a man with a talent for observation, a keen sense of humour and a desire to tell his (artistically stylised) story. The characters are brilliantly memorable, attached to their own symbols and caricatures – Uriah Heep the humblebragging eel, Steerforth the charismatic asshole, Dora the cute airhead (I don’t know whether I could call her lovable). I think real people can likewise be portrayed as simple collections of personalities and habits, by an astute enough observer.
David Copperfield himself, however, can’t be so easily described. And rightly so! It’s a Bildungsroman, of course the development of the lead character puts them on a whole new level from all the rest. David is introduced to the reader as a baby, and we see every stage of his life up to middle age; each stage seems like its own mini-life, and to hammer in this point is the long list of names David acquires.
If I may wax philosophical, this is the whole thing about life: you are the only person you truly understand, most complex person you know; life is a series of events by which you get to know yourself; many different hypotheses and drafts may be worked upon, may be named and put aside in a box as a closed chapter after a while, but in the end there is only one titular character who lives throughout. I could say that the best improvement possible for the novel in this respect would be to extend it to cover David’s life through old age until his death, because only in death does a person’s own narrative end.
As a little tangent, the “life as a series of chapters” thing calls to mind the “seven ages of man” described by Jacques in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. I knew nothing about this play before seeing it performed at The Globe in London, and it far surpassed my expectations with this gem of a monologue, which I had heard of already. Even before it was spoken, I decidedly loved the character Jacques – played by a woman in the version I saw – whose sole purpose as a melancholy cynic was to say such grandiose things.
So Jacques said famously, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. Then he lists the seven roles a man plays throughout the course of life: the baby, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon, and the “second child”, reduced to infantile helplessness in old age. David Copperfield reached the point of justice, I think, when he decided to lay down his pen at the end of the book. And fair enough, you could say – it’s only downhill from there.
Links to some things
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-dickens/david-copperfield Get a free ebook of David Copperfield
https://www.thoughtco.com/all-the-worlds-a-stage-quote-2984636 A brief explanation of Jacques’ speech and other bits of As You Like It
RaincoatGinger 
“David Copperfield” is one of my favourite Dickens novels. What do you reckon to the question our narrator poses at the start – is David the hero of his story?
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I don’t think there is an overall hero to the novel. There are multiple story arcs which I guess have their own heroes and villains, but the whole book as a “story” spanning about 40 years is more lifelike and can’t be reduced as easily. I don’t think David Copperfield sees himself as the hero either – probably he’d give that honour to Agnes. His role seems to be more of an observer and documenter of things that happen to him, instead of a hero actively going out doing things. Seems he’s being modest – the book isn’t about his rise to fame as a writer, which it could have been with some spin. It would have been less enjoyable to read if it was one big boast by a self-proclaimed hero.
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