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Copperfield, now a famous novelist, takes his sufferings to Europe in a listless journey. The concluding chapters function as an epilogue to the first two parts. Idolatry also characterizes his relationship with the Byronic James Steerforth, whom Copperfield unwittingly assists in the seduction of young Emily away from her uncle’s care at Yarmouth. When the marriage dissolves, Dora dies in labor -quite conveniently, some critics have charged, for her death releases Copperfield of his conjugal obligations.
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The relationship falters and Copperfield begins to see parallels with the marriage of the aging Dr. Both relationships are portrayed as the “mistaken impulses of an undisciplined heart,” and we are meant to second Betsey Trotwood’s comment, “Blind! Blind! Blind!” In retrospect, Copperfield confesses that he “loved Dora to idolatry.” Dora, who resembles Copperfield’s mother in looks and manner, lacks the maturity required to share actively in David’s life or to take up the Victorian burdens of housekeeping.
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But his professional matters are of less importance than Copperfield’s two emotional attachments that frame this part of the novel: his relationships with James Steerforth and Dora Spenlow. In the novel’s second part, Copperfield establishes himself first as a legal clerk and parliamentary reporter, and later as a novelist. The practical lesson for Copperfield is to eschew the sternness of Murdstone as well as the carelessness of Micawber, the grandiloquent and improvident father figure who lodges Copperfield. Strong the callous neglect of his stepfather is replaced by the solicitude of his aunt. Creakle is replaced by the kind instruction of Mr. Made aware of the vicissitudes of life, Copperfield also learns of the cyclical patterns of life as “David Copperfield of Blunderstone” is reborn at his aunt’s as “Copperfield Trotwood” the barbarous schooling of Mr. In this orphan tale, Copperfield endures the hardships of his mother’s death, a wretched education at Salem House, the toiling at Murdstone and Grinby’s, and a desperate escape to his aunt’s. But, it may be Dickens’s most autobiographical novel, David Copperfield is a work of fiction.ĭickens divides the life of Copperfield into two distinct parts, the first recounting the untimely loss of his innocence.
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David Copperfield’s time at Murdstone and Grinby’s warehouse, his schooling at Salem House, and his relationship with Dora all have their bases in Dickens’s own life. Converting his autobiographical impulse into fiction allowed Dickens to explore uncomfortable truths about his life.
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Originally published in serial form from May 1849 through November 1850, David Copperfield is the first of Dickens’s novels written entirely in the first person. It was only after his biographer John Forster published his Life of Charles Dickens in 1872 that readers learned of Dickens’s difficult youth and of the autobiographical nature of one of his finest creations, David Copperfield.
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Dickens found these memories too painful to continue his autobiography in fact, he jealously guarded the facts of his London youth. This disruption to Dickens’s childhood and education remained a source of intense grief throughout his life. The imprisonment of his father forced the family to send the twelve-year-old Dickens to work in a blacking factory. “Even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget in my dreams that I have a dear wife and children even that I am a man and wander desolately back to that time of my life.”Ĭharles Dickens composed this passage between 18 referring to the dark times of his youth when his family moved to London in the early 1820s. READERS GUIDE Questions and Topics for Discussion