Editing David Copperfield (section)

==== 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=}}