Editing David Copperfield (section)

===Reader's insight===
[[File:David Copperfield, The Wanderer.jpg|thumb|The Wanderer, Mr Peggotty talks to David as Martha overhears, by [[Hablot Knight Browne|Phiz]].]]
A third perspective is the point of view of the discerning reader who, although generally carried away by sympathy for the narrator's self-interested pleading, does not remain blissfully ignorant and ends up recognizing the faults of the man and of the writer, just as the reader also learns to identify and gauge the covert interventions of the author.

The discerning reader listens to the adult Copperfield and hears what this adult wants or does not want them to hear. "Even though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine", (chapter 42)<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=488}}</ref> the book exists, and the reader becomes ''[[ipso facto]]'' a "[[Confessor|father-confessor]]",<ref name=Cordery2008p373 /> knowing how to judge and even, at times, to doubt the sincerity of the emotion expressed. So, when Dora dies, the reader sees that the topic of grief is dropped in a hurry, as if Copperfield had more important things to do than to indulge in sorrow: "this is not the time at which I am to enter a state of mind beneath its load of sorrow",<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=619}}</ref> which creates a question and an embarrassment: is Copperfield protecting himself from his confusion, or does he shed some crocodile tears for form?

Copperfield also examines some of his most culpable weaknesses, such as unconscious connivance (his "own unconscious part") in the defilement of the Peggotty home by Steerforth, which he remains forever incapable of opposing: "I believe that if I had been brought face to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach."(chapter 32)<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=367}}</ref> The same treatment is given to his childhood love, his so much idealised Emily, who, once "fallen", is expelled from his consciousness to the point where his last comment, when he stealthily sees her aboard the ship leaving for Australia, is "a masterpiece of narrative duplicity": far from seeing in her what she has become, a real woman, he takes refuge behind the image of a pathetic religious icon elegantly allowing him to remove his own guilt for betraying her.<ref name=Jordan1985>{{cite journal |first=John O |last=Jordan |title=The Social Sub-Text of David Copperfield |journal=Dickens Studies Annual |volume=14 |number=14 |year=1985 |pages=61–92 |jstor=44371526 |publisher=Penn State University Press}}</ref>

These underground currents are thus revealed in David's psychological struggle, Gareth Cordery concludes, currents that his narrative unconsciously attempts to disguise.<ref name=Cordery2008p374 />