His most pleasant childhood years were spent in Chatham, and re-creations of these scenes appear in a disguised form in many of his novels. Micawber in David Copperfield , was constantly in debt.
In , John Dickens was transferred to London, but debts continued to pile up, and the family was forced to sell household items in order to pay some of the creditors.
Young Charles made frequent trips to the pawnshop, but eventually his father was arrested and sent to debtors' prison, and at the age of twelve, he was sent to work in a blacking warehouse, where he pasted labels on bottles for six shillings a week.
This experience was degrading for the young boy, and Dickens later 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. Even after his father was released from prison and the family inherited some money, his mother wanted him to continue with his job. Later, for two and a half years, Dickens attended school at Wellington House Academy, and then in , at the age of fifteen, he began work as a clerk in a law office and taught himself shorthand so he could report court debates.
At the same time, he was learning about life in London and frequently attended the theater, even taking acting lessons for a short time. Meanwhile, Dickens had fallen in love with Maria Beadnell, a frivolous young girl whose father objected to his daughter's being courted by a young reporter from a lower middle-class background.
Nothing came of this relationship, but it probably intensified Dickens' efforts to make something of himself. Dickens died in Kent on June 9, , at the age of fifty-eight. David Copperfield is set in early Victorian England against a backdrop of great social change.
The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had transformed the social landscape and enabled capitalists and manufacturers to amass huge fortunes. Although the Industrial Revolution increased social mobility, the gap between rich and poor remained wide.
More and more people moved from the country to the city in search of the opportunities that technological innovation promised. But this migration overpopulated the already crowded cities, and poverty, disease, hazardous factory conditions, and ramshackle housing became widespread. Dickens acutely observed these phenomena of the Industrial Revolution and used them as the canvas on which he painted David Copperfield and his other urban novels.
Although Peggotty assumes heroic stature in the novel, do you find anything obsessive, or even sinister, in his reclamation of Emily? Recalling Mr. What about urban life? When musing on Steerforth, there are times the narrator reaches a state of rapture. How does the prison function as a metaphor in David Copperfield? Examine the role of the various key holders who possess or attempt to possess control of others — e.
Murdstone, Heep, Steerforth. What does his, at times extreme, hatred of Heep reveal about Copperfield? Blunderstone and Murdstone are two examples of names pregnant with meaning.
Discuss the thematic significance of other names in the novel, especially those given to Copperfield throughout the book — Daisy, Trotwood, Doady. Dick, King Charles I, and the initials reversed of Copperfield? From the caul with which Copperfield is born believed to protect one from drowning to the shipwreck scene at the end, David Copperfield contains countless allusions to and images of the sea. How do these elements function in the novel?
Do they indicate a deliberate use of symbolism? What might they symbolize? The narrator relates several important dreams in the novel, particularly the dream he has after seeing Julius Caesar and the cannonading dream that prefigures the death of Steerforth. Learn More About David Copperfield print.
Related Books and Guides. Wives and Daughters. Elizabeth Gaskell. The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens, through the voice of David Copperfield, shares with us some of the values that he believed lead to his success in life:. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.
I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness.
Fanny Dickens around Maria Beadnell. John Dickens, the father of Charles Dickens. David Copperfield and Dora Spenlow. This list of characters from David Copperfield is presented in alphabetical order.
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