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David Copperfield

David Copperfield


The novel David Copperfield, written by Charles Dickens, deals with the
life and times of David Copperfield. About a century ago in a small town in
England, David was born on a Friday at the stroke of midnight, which is
considered a sign of bad luck. David's father has already died and his aunt
comes to stay with him and his mother as this novel gets off to a very slow
start. Soon David becomes aware that his mother has relations with another man
and asks one of his servants, "if you marry a person, and the person dies, why
then you may marry another person, mayn't you?" David is immediately angered
that his mother has betrayed his father and goes off to live with his aunt. A
while later, David goes back home but quickly gets into trouble and is sent off
to school.
Dickens uses excellent description in his telling of this story and the
reader can easily relate to the characters. The setting of a small town in
England is standard in all of his novels, including Great Expectations. The
reason for this Dickens' setting is because he was born in the town of
Portsmouth, England in 1812. Although as a young child he moved to Chatham
where he experienced a pleasant childhood in which many scenes from his
childhood are intertwined throughout his novels. Dickens father was constantly
in debt and was eventually sent to jail. This memory was agonizing for young
Charles as years later he wrote: "No words can express the secret agony of my
soul. I felt my early hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man,
crushed in my breast." This directly relates to Dickens discussion of David in
a wine house later in the novel. A couple of years later, Dickens attends
school at the Wellington House Academy where he fell in love with Maria Beadnell
but her father opposed the marriage and nothing became of it. David Copperfield
is more of a biography of Dickens life made into fiction than of just a regular
story about a boy. Dickens...