Editing David Copperfield (section)

===Bildungsroman===
====Different names====
[[File:David reaches Canterbury, from David Copperfield art by Frank Reynolds.jpg|thumb|upright|David reaches Canterbury, from ''David Copperfield'', by Frank Reynolds]]
Copperfield's path to maturity is marked by the different names assigned to him: his mother calls him "Davy"; Murdstone calls him as "Brooks of Sheffield"; for Peggotty's family, he is "Mas'r Davy"; en route to boarding school from Yarmouth, he appears as "Master Murdstone"; at Murdstone and Grinby, he is known as "Master Copperfield"; Mr Micawber is content with "Copperfield"; for Steerforth he is "Daisy"; he becomes "Mister Copperfield" with Uriah Heep; and "Trotwood", soon shortened to "Trot" for Aunt Betsey; Mrs Crupp deforms his name into "Mr Copperfull"; and for Dora he is "Doady".<ref name="Dickens pXV">{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=XV}}</ref> While striving to earn his real name once and for all, this plethora of names reflects the fluidity of Copperfield's personal and social relationships, and obscure his real identity. It is by writing his own story, and giving him his name in the title, that Copperfield can finally assert who he is.<ref name="Dickens pXV"/>

==== A series of lives ====
David's life can be seen as a series of lives, each one in radical disjunction from what follows, writes Paul Davis.<ref name=Davis1999p91 /> The young boy in the warehouse differs from Blunderstone Rookery's child, or Salem House student, and overall David strives to keep these parts of himself disconnected from each other. For example, in Chapter 17, while attending Canterbury School, he met Mr Micawber at Uriah Heep's, and a sudden terror gripped him that Heep could connect him, such as he is today, and the abandoned child who lodged with the Micawber family in London.<ref name=Davis1999p91 />

So many mutations indicate the name changes, which are sometimes received with relief: "Trotwood Copperfield", when he finds refuge in [[Dover]] at his Aunt Betsey's house, so the narrator writes, "Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new about me." Then, he realised "that a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life" and "that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby's".<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=176}}</ref>

There is a process of forgetfulness, a survival strategy developed by memory, which poses a major challenge to the narrator; his art, in fact, depends on the ultimate reconciliation of differences in order to free and preserve the unified identity of his being a man.

==== "Will I be the hero of my own life?" ====
[[File:Mr. Dick and his kite, from David Copperfield art by Frank Reynolds.jpg|thumb|Mr Dick and his kite, from ''David Copperfield'', by Frank Reynolds]]

David opens his story with a question: Will I be the hero of my own life? This means that he does not know where his approach will lead him, that writing itself will be the test. As Paul Davis puts it, "In this Victorian quest narrative, the pen might be lighter than the sword, and the reader will be left to judge those qualities of the man and the writer that constitute heroism.<ref name=Davis1999p90 />

However, question implies an affirmation: it is Copperfield, and no one else, who will determine his life, the future is delusory, since the games are already played, the life has been lived, with the novel being only the story. Copperfield is not always the hero of his life, and not always the hero of his story, as some characters have a stronger role than him,<ref>{{harvnb|Davis|1999|pp=90–91}}</ref> Besides Steerforth, Heep, Micawber, for example, he often appears passive and lightweight. Hence, concludes Paul Davis, the need to read his life differently; it is more by refraction through other characters that the reader has a true idea of the "hero" of the story. What do these three men reveal to him, and also to Dora, whom he marries?<ref name=Davis1999p91>{{harvnb|Davis|1999|p=91}}</ref> Another possible yardstick is a comparison with the other two "writers" of the novel, Dr Strong and Mr Dick. The dictionary of Strong will never be completed and, as a story of a life, will end with the death of its author. As for Mr Dick, his autobiographical project constantly raises the question of whether he can transcend the incoherence and indecision of his subject-narrator. Will he be able to take the reins, provide a beginning, a middle, an end? Will he succeed in unifying the whole, in overcoming the trauma of the past, his obsession with the decapitated royal head, so as to make sense of the present and find a direction for the future? According to Paul Davis, only Copperfield succeeds in constructing a whole of his life, including suffering and failure, as well as successes, and that is "one measure of his heroism as a writer".<ref name=Davis1999p91 />

==== The weight of the past ====
The past "speaks" especially to David, "a child of close observation" (chapter 2); the title of this chapter is: "I observe",<ref name=Dickens1999p14>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=14}}</ref> and as an adult he is endowed with a remarkable memory.<ref>{{harvnb|Davis|1999|p=99}}</ref> So much so that the story of his childhood is realised so concretely that the narrator, like the reader, sometimes forgets that it is a lived past and not a present that is given to see. The [[Simple past|past tense verb]] is often the ''[[preterite]]'' for the [[Historical present|narrative]], and the sentences are often short independent propositions, each one stating a fact. Admittedly, the adult narrator intervenes to qualify or provide an explanation, without, however, taking precedence over the child's vision. And sometimes, the story is prolonged by a reflection on the functioning of the memory. So, again in chapter 2, the second and third paragraphs comment on the first memory of the two beings surrounding David, his mother, and Peggotty:

<blockquote>I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart, dwarfed to my sight by stooping or kneeling on the floor, and I going unsteadily from the one to the other. I have an impression on my mind, which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of the touch of Peggotty's forefinger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its being roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutmeg-grater.<br />
This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go further back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.<ref name=Dickens1999p14 /></blockquote>

David thus succeeds, as [[George Orwell]] puts it, in standing "both inside and outside a child's mind",<ref name=Davis1999p90 /> a particularly important double vision effect in the first chapters. The perspective of the child is combined with that of the adult narrator who knows that innocence will be violated and the feeling of security broken. Thus, even before the intrusion of Mr Murdstone as step-father or Clara's death, the boy feels "intimations of mortality".<ref name=Davis1999p90 /> In the second chapter for example, when David spends a day with Mr Murdstone, during the first episode of "Brooks of Sheffield"<ref group="N">Word play containing the verb "brook", meaning "endure," and the town of "[[History of Sheffield|Sheffield]]," famous for the manufacture of cutlery. Hence Mr Murdstone's joke, "take care, if you please. Somebody's sharp".</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2016/feb/23/why-charles-dickenss-best-character-is-non-existent |title=Why Charles Dickens's best character is non-existent |last=Christie |first=Sally |newspaper=The Guardian|location=London |date=22 February 2016 |access-date=8 April 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/the-gift-that-led-dickens-to-give-up-his-treasured-copy-of-david-copperfield-7676012.html |title=The gift that led Dickens to give up his treasured copy of David Copperfield |newspaper=The Independent |date=25 April 2012 |last=Alberge |first=Dalya |access-date=8 April 2019}}</ref> in which, first blow to his confidence, he realises little by little that Mr Murdstone and his comrade Quinion are mocking him badly:

<blockquote>
'That's Davy,' returned Mr Murdstone.<br />
'Davy who?' said the gentleman. 'Jones?'<br />
'Copperfield' said Mr Murdstone.<br />
'What! Bewitching Mrs Copperfield's incumbrance?' cried the gentleman. 'The pretty little widow?'<br />
'Quinion,' said Mr Murdstone, 'take care, if you please. Somebody's sharp.'<br />
'Who is?' asked the gentleman laughing.<br />
I looked up quickly, being curious to know.<br />
'Only Brooks of Sheffield', said Mr Murdstone.<br />
I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield, for, at first, I really thought it was I.<br />
There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he was mentioned, and Mr Murdstone was a good deal amused also.<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=22}}</ref></blockquote>

The final blow, brutal and irremediable this time, is the vision, in chapter 9, of his own reflection in his little dead brother lying on the breast of his mother: "The mother who lay in the grave was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms was myself, as I had once been, hushed forever on her bosom".<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=110}}</ref>

====A series of male models for David====
David Copperfield is a [[Posthumous birth|posthumous child]], that is, he was born after his father died.<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=6}}</ref> From birth, his aunt is the authority who stands in for the deceased father, and she decides Copperfield's identity by abandoning him because he is not female. His first years are spent with women, two Claras,<ref group="N">The connotations of the first name "Clara" are clarity, transparency, brightness.</ref> his mother and Peggotty, which, according to Paul Davis, "undermines his sense of masculinity".<ref name=Davis1999p90 /> Hence a sensitivity that the same critic calls "feminine", made-up of a lack of confidence, naive innocence and anxiety, like that of his mother, who was herself an orphan. Steerforth is not mistaken, when from the outset he calls Copperfield "Daisy"–a flower of spring, symbol of innocent youth. To forge an identity as a man and learn how to survive in a world governed by masculine values, instinctively, he looks for a father figure who can replace that of the father he did not have.

Several male models will successively offer themselves to him: the adults Mr Murdstone, Mr Micawber and Uriah Heep, his comrades Steerforth and Traddles.

=====Mr Murdstone=====
[[File:David Copperfield (1850) (14777068141).jpg|thumb|Aunt Betsey & Mr Dick say no to Mr Murdstone and his sister, by [[Hablot Knight Browne|Phiz]].]]

Mr Murdstone darkens Copperfield's life instead of enlightening him, because the principle of firmness which he champions, absolute novelty for the initial family unit, if he instills order and discipline, kills spontaneity and love. The resistance that Copperfield offers him is symbolic: opposing a usurper without effective legitimacy, he fails to protect his mother but escapes the straitjacket and achieves his independence. Mr Murdstone thus represents the anti-father, double negative of the one of which David was deprived, model ''a contrario'' of what it is not necessary to be.

=====Mr Micawber=====
[[File:Traddles, Micawber and David from David Copperfield art by Frank Reynolds.jpg|thumb|Traddles, Micawber and David from ''David Copperfield'', by Frank Reynolds]]
The second surrogate father is just as ineffective, although of a diametrically opposed personality: it is Mr Micawber who, for his part, lacks firmness to the point of sinking into irresponsibility. Overflowing with imagination and love, in every way faithful and devoted, inveterate optimist, he eventually becomes, in a way, the child of David who helps him to alleviate his financial difficulties. The roles are reversed and, by the absurdity, David is forced to act as a man and to exercise adult responsibilities towards him. However, the Micawbers are not lacking in charm, the round Wilkins, of course, but also his dry wife, whose music helps her to live. Mrs Micawber has, since childhood, two songs in her repertoire, the Scottish "The dashing white sergeant"<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.scottishdance.net/ceilidh/dances.html#DashingWhite |work=Scottish Dance |title=Dances |access-date=19 July 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120806160908/http://www.scottishdance.net/ceilidh/dances.html#DashingWhite |archive-date=6 August 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and the American lament "The little Tafflin with the Silken Sash",<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/studies-folksong/studies-folksong%20-%200112.htm |work=Traditional Music (.co.uk) |title=American Sea-Songs |access-date=19 July 2012}}</ref> whose attraction has decided her husband to "win that woman or perish in the attempt"<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=342}}</ref> In addition to the melodies that soothe and embellish, the words of the second, with her dream "Should e'er the fortune be my lot to be made a wealthy bride!" and her [[aphorism]] "Like attracts like" have become emblematic of the couple, one is the opposite of reality and the other the very definition of its harmony.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dickens-theme.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/davidcopperfield.html |work=dickens-theme.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk |title=The themes at Dickens |access-date=19 July 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100510193044/http://www.dickens-theme.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/davidcopperfield.html |archive-date=10 May 2010 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

=====Uriah Heep=====
New avatar of this quest, Uriah Heep is "a kind of negative mirror to David".<ref name=Davis1999p91 /> Heep is clever at enlarging the pathos of his humble origins, for example, which ability he exploits shamelessly to attract sympathy and mask an unscrupulous ambition; while David, on the other hand, tends to suppress his modest past and camouflage his social ambitions under a veneer of worldly mistrust, prompting Paul Davis to conclude that, just as Mr Murdstone is adept at firmness, Heep, in addition to being a rascal, lacks the so-called feminine qualities of sensitivity which David does not lose.<ref name=Davis1999p91 />

=====Steerforth=====
[[File:Steerforth from David Copperfield art by Frank Reynolds.jpg|thumb|upright|Steerforth from ''David Copperfield'', by Frank Reynolds]]
For David, Steerforth represents all that Heep is not: born a gentleman, with no stated ambition or defined life plan, he has a natural presence and charisma that immediately give him scope and power.  However, his failure as a model is announced well before the episode at Yarmouth where he seizes, like a thief, Little Emily before causing her loss in Italy. He already shows himself as he is, brutal, condescending, selfish and sufficient, towards Rosa Dartle, bruised by him for life, and Mr Mell who undergoes the assaults of his cruelty. The paradox is that even as he gauges his infamy, David remains from start to finish dazzled by Steerforth's aristocratic ascendancy, even as he contemplates him drowning on Yarmouth Beach, "lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him at school".<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=640}}</ref>

=====Traddles=====
Now consider Traddles, the anti-Steerforth, the same age as the hero, not very brilliant at school, but wise enough to avoid the manipulations to which David succumbs. His attraction for moderation and reserve assures him the strength of character that David struggles to forge. Neither rich nor poor, he must also make a place for himself in the world, at which he succeeds by putting love and patience at the center of his priorities, the love that tempers the ambition and the patience that moderates the passion. His ideal is to achieve justice in his actions, which he ends up implementing in his profession practically. In the end, Traddles, in his supreme modesty, represents the best male model available to David.<ref name=Davis1999p90 />

There are others, Daniel Peggotty for example, all love and dedication, who goes in search of his lost niece and persists in mountains and valleys, beyond the seas and continents, to find her trace. Mr Peggotty is the anti-Murdstone par excellence, but his influence is rather marginal on David, as his absolute excellence, like the maternal perfection embodied by his sister Peggotty, makes him a character type more than an individual to refer to. There is also the carter Barkis, original, laconic and not without defects, but a man of heart. He too plays a role in the personal history of the hero, but in a fashion too episodic to be significant, especially since he dies well before the end of the story.

====The hard path to the right balance====

It is true that David's personal story makes it more difficult for him to access the kind of equilibrium that Traddles presents, because it seems destined, according to Paul Davis, to reproduce the errors committed by his parents.<ref name=Davis1999p91 /> So, without knowing it, he looks a lot like his late father, also named David, who, according to Aunt Betsey, had eyes only for the flower-women, and, as such, he finds himself as irresistibly attracted to Dora whose delicate and charming femininity, the sweet frivolity too, recall those of his diaphanous mother. The chapters describing their loves are among the best in the novel<ref name=Davis1999p91 /> because Dickens manages to capture the painful ambivalence of David, both passionately infatuated with the irresistible young woman, to whom we can only pass and forgive everything, and frustrated by his weak character and his absolute ignorance of any discipline. For love, the supreme illusion of youth, he tries to change it, to "form her mind", which leads him to recognize that "firmness" can to be a virtue which, ultimately, he needs. However, finding himself in a community of thought, even distantly, with his hateful and cruel stepfather whom he holds responsible for the death of his mother and a good deal of his own misfortunes, it was a troubling discovery.<ref name=Davis1999p90 />

[[File:David Copperfield (1850) (14777862664).jpg|thumb|Dr Strong and his young wife Annie, by [[Hablot Knight Browne|Phiz]]]]
It is his aunt Betsey who, by her character, represents the struggle to find the right balance between firmness and gentleness, rationality and empathy. Life forced Betsey Trotwood to assume the role she did not want, that of a father, and as such she became, but in her own way, adept at steadfastness and discipline. From an initially culpable intransigence, which led her to abandon the newborn by denouncing the incompetence of the parents not even capable of producing a girl, she finds herself gradually tempered by circumstances and powerfully helped by the "madness" of her protege, Mr Dick. He, between two flights of kites that carry away the fragments of his personal history, and without his knowing it, plays a moderating role, inflecting the rationality of his protector by his own irrationality, and his cookie-cutter judgments by considerations of seeming absurdity, but which, taken literally, prove to be innate wisdom. In truth, Aunt Betsey, despite her stiffness and bravado, does not dominate her destiny; she may say she can do it, yet she cannot get David to be a girl, or escape the machinations of Uriah Heep any more than the money demands of her mysterious husband. She also fails, in spite of her lucidity, her clear understanding, of the love blindness of her nephew, to prevent him from marrying Dora and in a parallel way, to reconcile the Strongs. In fact, in supreme irony, it is once again Mr Dick who compensates for his inadequacies, succeeding with intuition and instinctive understanding of things, to direct Mr Micawber to save Betsey from the clutches of Heep and also to dispel the misunderstandings of Dr Strong and his wife Annie.<ref name=Davis1999p91 />

As often in Dickens where a satellite of the main character reproduces the course in parallel, the story of the Strong couple develops in counterpoint that of David and Dora. While Dora is in agony, David, himself obsessed with his role as a husband, observes the Strongs who are busy unraveling their marital distress. Two statements made by Annie Strong impressed him: in the first, she told him why she rejected Jack Maldon and thanked her husband for saving her "from the first impulse of an undisciplined heart".<ref name=Dickens1999p535>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=535}}</ref> The second was like a flash of revelation: "There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose".<ref name=Dickens1999p535 /> At the end of chapter 45, almost entirely devoted to the epilogue of this affair, David meditates on these words which he repeats several times and whose relevance, applied to his own case, is imposed on him. He concludes that in all things, discipline tempered by kindness and kindness is necessary for the equilibrium of a successful life. Mr Murdstone preached firmness; in that, he was not wrong. Where he cruelly failed was that he matched it with selfish brutality instead of making it effective by the love of others.<ref name=Davis1999p92 />

==== The happiness of maturity with Agnes ====
[[File:Agnes Wickfield from David Copperfield art by Frank Reynolds.jpg|thumb|right| upright|Agnes Wickfield, David's second wife, by Frank Reynolds]]
It is because David has taken stock of his values and accepted the painful memories of Dora's death, that he is finally ready to go beyond his emotional blindness and recognize his love for Agnes Wickfield, the one he already has called the "true heroine" of the novel to which he gives his name. Paul Davis writes that Agnes is surrounded by an aura of sanctity worthy of a stained glass window, that she is more a consciousness or an ideal than a person, that, certainly, she brings the loving discipline and responsibility of which the hero needs, but lacks the charm and human qualities that made Dora so attractive.<ref name=Davis1999p92 /> Adrienne E Gavin, nuancing the point, writes that she is neither more nor less [[caricature]] than other young women in the hero's life: if Emily is a [[stereotype]] of the "[[Fallen woman|lost woman]]" and Dora of "woman-child", Agnes is that of "[[The Angel in the House|ideal Victorian woman]]", which necessarily limits, for her as for the others, the possibilities of evolution, the only change available from a loving and devoted daughter to a loving and devoted wife.<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=XIV}}</ref>

That said, the writer David, now David Copperfield, realised the vow expressed to Agnes (when he was newly in love with Dora, in Chapter 35. Depression): "If I had a conjurer's cap, there is no one I should have wished but for you".<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=411}}</ref> At the end of his story, he realises that the conjurer's cap is on his head, that he can draw his attention to the people he loves and trusts. Thus, ''David Copperfield'' is the story of a journey through life and through oneself, but also, by the grace of the writer, the recreation of the tenuous thread uniting the child and the adult, the past and the present, in what Georges Gusdorf calls "fidelity to the person".<ref>{{cite book |first=George |last=Gusdorf |title=Mémoire et personne |trans-title=Memory and person |location=Paris |publisher=University Press France |volume=2 |year=1951 |page=542 |language=fr}}</ref> or, as Robert Ferrieux said,<ref name=Ferrieux2001p129>{{harvnb|Ferrieux|2001|p=129}}</ref> {{Verse translation|lang=fr|italicsoff=no|rtl1=|le corps chaud de l'être personnel|the warm body of the personal being|attr1=|attr2=}}