![]() The second half of David Copperfield displays Dickens at his magnificent, and often uneven, best. But here, he focuses on the interior life of his hero, as if saving the plot for later. His own early novels ( Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and so on) are largely comic picaresques. Dickens is one of the first to acknowledge the inspiration of the emerging English canon: Robinson Crusoe, The Adventures of Roderick Random and Tom Jones, the books he finds in his father's library. In the first half, before Dickens's irrepressible storytelling kicks in and the motor of the novel starts to hum with incident, we find him almost meditating on his literary beginnings. The story – so appealing to Freud – is of a boy making his way in the world, and finding himself as a man and as a writer. I love David Copperfield because it is, in some ways, so un-Dickensian. Why not Pickwick Papers? Or, better still, Great Expectations? Or Bleak House? Or Little Dorrit? And why not, here in the holiday season, that festive evergreen A Christmas Carol? Or the granite brilliance of Hard Times? Yes, in different ways, all masterpieces. ![]() Some Dickens aficionados will be dismayed. At the outset, I'm going to anticipate your howls of rage. Dora suggests on her deathbed that it would have been better if she and David had "loved each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it.Freud's choice – and Dickens's own opinion that David Copperfield was "of all my books" the one he liked "the best" – helps clarify an impossible selection midway through the 19th century. Nevertheless, Dora remains conscious of the fact that she has been a disappointment to her husband, and this knowledge perhaps contributes to her decline and death. These efforts only distress Dora, however, and David eventually reconciles himself to accepting his wife for who she is. David initially finds this frustrating and attempts to reshape Dora's character to be more serious and mature. Dora thus loves music, dancing, and teaching her dog, Jip, tricks, but she lacks the ability to run her husband's household or even fully empathize with his interests and pursuits. These tendencies are exacerbated by Victorian gender norms, which, for women of Dora's social standing, tended to stress the acquisition of ornamental skills over practical or intellectual ones. Much to David's dismay, she has never learned to budget money or keep accounts. As a result, she is somewhat spoiled and frivolous. Spenlow ultimately proves to have exaggerated his fortune, it is true that Dora lived an extremely easy and luxurious life growing up as her father's only child. Spenlow, who objects to the match, has died. She and David develop a youthful infatuation with one another and eventually marry, though not until after Mr. Spenlow is a proctor for whom David is working when he and Dora first meet. Dora Spenlow is David's first wife and Mr.
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