David Copperfield [Hardcover]

When I was younger, I too, wanted to complain that all of Dickens' heroines were the same, and now I realize how wrong I was. Agnes is good and beautiful and patient of course, but what about the heroine Aunt Betsey? What about Miss Mowcher, who gives David a piece of advice "from three foot nothing ... Don't confuse bodily defect with mental!" she exclaims, and this is advice we coudl still use today! What about Peggotty, who is true and good and occasionally silly? Then there are the women who are not so good: Mrs Heep, Miss Murdstone, Mrs Markleham (the Old Soldier) and Rosa Dartle?

Dickens' characters are marvelous, but what I find most wonderful is the love that brings them together. Aunt Betsey takes David in, and is rewarded by the softening of her own heart; Mr. Peggotty seeks and finds his niece; Traddles finally marries "the dearest girl" and long-suffering Mrs Micawber will never desert her husband and something at last turns up Down Under. The characters who are courageous enough to choose love over pride are almost always rewarded at the end -- assuming that they survive, of course! (I'm thinking of Ham.) Perhaps it is just a novel, and those who have courage to love are not always rewarded in real life, but the idea is wonderfully satisfying.

Such is the basic outline of David's life and it is not much to look at, is it? Nor is David a particularly compelling character--of course, Pip, in Great Expectations, isn't either but he at least is subjected to the demented machinations of Miss Havesham. No, the real strength of this novel does not lie in the narrator; it is the delicious cast of supporting characters who make this novel great. Early in life David is befriended by Peggoty and her wonderful brother Daniel, a fisherman raising his niece and nephew in a converted boat on Yarmouth Sands, and Mr. Barkis, the bachelor cab driver who asks David to inform Peggoty that: "Barkis is willing". While attending Salem House, David lives with the family of Wilkins Micawber, grandiloquent and eternally optimistic in the face of dire financial straights, he is always certain that something will turn up. David's Aunt is amusing, but even better is her friend Mr. Dick, an eccentric author who turns his voluminous masterwork into a kite.

Equally good are the villains of the piece. The stepfather and his sister, Jane Murdstone, are wicked enough for a fairy tale. David's schoolboy chum Steerforth proves to be a colossal heel. And there is no more malefic figure in literature than Uriah Heep, the scheming clerk who blackmails Agnes father, steals Betsey Trotwood's money and swears his undying enmity towards David.

Covering much of the same territory and offering up similar, but significantly different, characters, Copperfield offers a more benevolent view of life than Great Expectations. Because of this, and the general dyspepsia of literary critics and academics, it is often taken less seriously, tarred as somewhat lightweight. But it is vastly entertaining and if the ending is a little too pat, our complaint is less a function of the mechanics of the conclusion than our disappointment.... By any measure, it must be considered one of the truly great novels.

GRADE: A