英国文学大卫科波菲尔.doc

学士学位论文
Shandong University Bachelor’s Thesis

论文题目：The Analysis of David Copperfield’s Characters

作 者 姓 名： 黄立煜
学 号： 20040701025
专 业： 英语专业
指导教师姓名： 纪云霞
专业技术职务: 教授

2008年 6 月 5 日

15

Contents

Abstract i
摘要 ii
Introduction 1
I. Brief Introduction to Charles Dickens 2
1.1 Charles Dickens’ Miserable Childhood 2
1.2 Charles Dickens’ Adulthood 3
II．General Characteristics of David Copperfield 3
2.1 Weakness and Immaturity of Child David Copperfield 4
2.1.1 Weakness of David Copperfield 4
2.1.2 Immaturity of David Copperfield 5
2.2 Kindness of David Copperfield 5
2.3 Stability and Maturity of Adult David Copperfield 6
III. Several Main Characters’ impact on David Copperfield 7
3.1 Murdstone and Steerforth 8
3.2 Miss Betsey Trotwood and Peggotty 9
3.3 Dora and Agnes 10
Conclusion 12
Bibliography 13
Acknowledgements 14

Abstract

David Copperfield, an autobiographical novel, is well known as the representative work of Charles Dickens, the greatest novelist in the Victorian period. Written in the first person, the novel depicts a broad picture of the society of Dickens’ times with his uncommon life experience. David Copperfield is also Dickens’ own favorite work. In writing, Dickens throws into this novel his thought, deep feelings and much of his own experience in his childhood. Meanwhile, Dickens in some way retrospects and draws a conclusion to his life and expresses his life attitude and moral ideal. Furthermore, his novel also discloses the faulty mask of capitalist society and its strong desire and greed for money. It is safe to say that David Copperfield is one of the most excellent characters created by Dickens. The paper first briefly introduces the author Dickens, and then undertakes a detailed study of the characteristics of David Copperfield through the analysis of the influence of the people on him. The paper intends to make a preliminary explanation of it. The paper bases its outline on the development of David Copperfield, i.e. from his childhood to his adulthood. The analysis of the characteristics of David Copperfield will provide us a chance to see the features of the capitalist society and give us some inspiration about life.

Key words: David Copperfield; characteristics; life experience

摘要

《大卫•科波菲尔》是英国维多利亚时期最杰出的批判现实主义作家查尔斯•狄更斯的自传体小说。小说中主人公大卫•科波菲尔以第一人称讲述了他不平凡的生活经历，为读者描绘了一幅当时社会的广阔画卷。这部小说是狄更斯自己最钟爱的一部作品，小说中作者投入了大量的亲身经历、体会以及个人情感，使之成为了作者“最溺爱的孩子”。同时，作者从某些方面回顾了自己的人生道路，表达了自己的生活态度、道德理想, 并且深度揭示了当时社会的真正面貌及人们对于金钱的强烈欲望与贪婪。完全可以说，大卫•科波菲尔是狄更斯创造的最为出色的一个人物形象之一。本文首先简单介绍了作者狄更斯与其所创作人物大卫•科波菲尔之间的微妙关系，同时对大卫•科波菲尔的周围人物对其性格的影响进行了分析，并对大卫•科波菲尔的性格做了初步的阐述，并从童年、青年直到成年时期的大卫•科波菲尔的变化中发现其成长历程中的特点。对大卫•科波菲尔性格的分析，为我们了解资本主义的特征提供了机会，同时也给了我们人生的启迪。

关键词： 大卫•科波菲尔；性格； 生活经历

Introduction

Charles Dickens（1812—1870）is the most popular and famous English novelist. Being the greatest representative of the English critical realism, he gives us a vivid picture of the everyday life of ordinary people in David Copperfield. David, the leading character of the novel, is a person who, from a poor orphan, grows up to be a famous writer after a series of hardships, disappointment, trial and affliction, and at last becomes a man of property, a man of grace and a man of independence. Coincidently, Charles Dickens was also such a man, a man with a successful life. So we could say that the novel, David Copperfield, is Dickens’ satisfied reminiscence of his life style and literature reappearance of his personal experience.
This thesis gives a brief introduction to the author Charles Dickens in Chapter one; and Chapter two analyses the general characteristics of David Copperfield, the hero of this novel, and others’ influences ON his life are explored in Chapter three. The conclusion is the last part.

I. Brief Introduction to Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens is one of the most famous English writers in the 19th century, and all his life and works keep pace with the development of his times. On the whole, his novels are mainly written in a realistic way, disclosing the hypocrisy, greed, meanness and cruelty of the upper-class and capitalist society. As well he always tries to awaken the general public to struggle against the oppression with a great sympathy and serious attitude. In addition, he praises in his works the good qualities of human beings, such as truth, kindness and beauty.

1.1 Charles Dickens’ Miserable Childhood
Charles Dickens was born on February 7th, 1812. His father was a clerk, who was “irresponsible and extravagant with the money he earned, and cast the family into debt and financial crisis time and again, until he eventually ended up in Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison” (Champion, 2005: 11). Because of this he was not sent to the school and had to work to support his family. The work at Warren’s Blacking Factory was a job demeaning and stultifying to his talents. Forster ever said this miserable experience was the secret agony of his soul and the misery to the young heart. The miserable time of young Dickens and the mistreatment to children and child-labor were common subjects recurring frequently in his novels. In David Copperfield, he also expressed this kind of experience in another way. “Murdstone & Co. dealt chiefly in cheap wines, so it warehouse was full of empty bottles. It was to be my job to wash them…How I hated to work in such a dirty and rotten place” (Champion, 2005: 60). This period of David’s life has many similarities to that of Dickens when he works at Warren’s Blacking Factory.
The painful experience of Dickens in his childhood anneals his will. Through this, he is not afraid of hardships in life in the future, and gets more positive and optimistic when facing the setbacks and difficulties. And all the experience in his life and difficulties he comes across influence him a lot in his literature creating.

1.2 Charles Dickens’ Adulthood
After the miserable childhood, Dickens’ life changed dramatically. He started to work in Ellis and Blackmore as a lawyer, so this post appeared in his works time and time again. After that, Dickens engaged himself into literature and then became an outstanding critical realistic writer in English in the 19th century. His works involved every field in the society, which expressed his empathy to the lower-class who were oppressed and exploited. “Dickens captured the spirit of his age in both a profound and entertaining way. He wrote with wit and humor, but he also wrote about the everyday tragedies of life he saw around him. He put these all into the context of Victorian society” (Champion, 2005: 2).
So, the majority of characters in his works are ordinary person in daily life. Charles Dickens usually creates a specific person with unique character by describing his behaviors, gestures and words. And in his works, he often introduces us a good many heroes, vital and lifelike. David Copperfield is an autobiographical novel of Charles Dickens. The author expresses his own attitude towards life and his desire. “David Copperfield, as well as being strongly based on events in Dickens’ own life, is held as a novel that makes a further shift in his writing” (Champion, 2005: 92). Readers are moved by the hero who is kind-hearted, up-right and dauntless.
“Dickens used many of the thousands of experiences and encounters from his real life in his works of fiction, altering the names of people and places, and sometimes exaggerating situations to make them more funny and tragic”(Champion, 2005: 4). Orphans in Dickens’ works are unforgettable to its readers. In Dickens’ works, he shows several kinds of different orphans’ fates aiming at advocating the empathy, care and concern of the public. He describes their situation and suffering in the purpose of meeting their urgent demanding and requirement. Advocating social attention to those children’s growing is just the realistic significance of Dickens’ works. Dickens also reveals the ugly of his society in his works and presents the evil-class by ironic writing style.

II．General Characteristics of David Copperfield

Destiny of an orphan in Dickens’ novel usually connects with his family and the whole society. A family’s disintegration influences a child’s fate directly. In Dickens’ inner thought, a perfect family consists of a up-right father who supports this whole family, a loving mother doing all of the housework and bringing her child up, and a healthy, honest and lovely child. If there is one part missing, that family will not be a perfect one.
David Copperfield was published in 1849 and 1850. “Of all my books,” wrote Dickens, “I like this the best.” The story is told in the first person through the mouth of its hero, David Copperfield. In David Copperfield, Dickens has made good use of his own life experience to expose the social evils of the day, such as the miseries of child-labor, the tyranny in school, the debtors’ prison, as well as the cruelty, the immorality and the treachery which are prevalent in the English capitalist society. So the novel is not merely a personal record, but a broad picture of the society of the author’s day.

2.1 Weakness and Immaturity of Child David Copperfield
David Copperfield was a posthumous child. His mother and Mr. Murdstone who was both stingy and cruel recomposed their family. From that time on, their family lost its original calm and their share of harmony and happiness. Soon, his mother also died of depression after giving birth to a daughter. Peggotty who had taken good care of David was fired by his stepfather, Mr. Murdstone. David spent most of his days in misery alone. When David was ten years old, he was evicted out from his home and moved towards the future of the vast world, London, working in the warehouse as a coolie. He could not endure in the circumstances, and then escaped to his unique relative, Miss Betsey.
David suffers a lot from a child, but he also gets many loves from his mother and the servant, Peggotty. That he appears a specific person, weak and immature, but very kind and aggressive.

2.1.1 Weakness of David Copperfield
David’s mother was a woman similar to Dora who even did not know how to do housework. But her fate was different from Dora. When she came across Murdstone who treated her badly, her weakness appeared. David got this character from his poor mother being a child. When he first met Steerforth, he was such a little and poor boy and David never went against him. “It certainly had not occurred to me before, but I said, Yes” (Dickens, 1981: 78) to him. Facing the graceful and intelligent Steerforth, David was so nervous in their small party with Steerforth and his friends. “Being a little embarrassed at first, and feeling much too young to preside, I made Steerforth take the head of the table when dinner was announced” (Dickens, 1981: 331).
As he is no more than a child, he really does not have that power or capability to change what he suffers from Mr. and Miss Murdstone, two gloomy devils in David’s world. It can be imagined what a difficult situation little David is in. It is natural for him to show weakness and timidity when facing the cruel world.

2.1.2 Immaturity of David Copperfield
David fell in love with Little Emily when they companied each other in the days in Yarmouth. David “loved that baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly with great purity than can enter into the best love of a later time of life, high and ennobling as it is” (Dickens, 1981: 34). Then becoming a young man, David engaged himself in pursuit of Dora, a beautiful and lovely girl, without thinking of their future life after they got married. Then, problems turned up. Dora could not do the simple housework and she even did not know why David worked for several hours a day and never spared some time with her. This kind of wife was not what David need, and choosing such a “child wife” was due to young David’s immaturity and impulsion. When he talked about Steerforth with Mr. Peggotty, he said that Steerforth “knows a task if he only looks at it. He is the beat cricketer you ever saw” (Dickens, 1981: 131). This unreasonable and blind admiration to Steerforth shows David’s immaturity.
All of these facts give the best explanation to David’s immaturity.

2.2 Kindness of David Copperfield
Although David meets in his life so many bad persons like Mr. and Miss. Murdestone, Mr. Creakle and Uriah Heep, he also has a lot of sincere friends and helpers who make David still a kind-hearted one. That is to say, though he has known some bad qualities of the people, David remains what he used to be.
Peggotty was the servant in David’s family, and she helped David and his weak mother a lot when they were oppressed and exploited by Mr. Murdstone. When David was sent away from home, Peggotty wrote letters to encourage him. David appreciated her so much, so he permitted the carrier Barkis to marry her, considering Peggotty’s happiness. Agnes was David’s good friend, just like an older sister in his deep heart. Everything happened to her would make David anxious. When he knew Uriah Heep’s evil thought, he even could not sleep well. “I never shall forgot how I turned and tumbled; how I wearied myself with thinking about Agnes and this creature; how I considered what could I do, and what ought I to do” (Dickens, 1981: 352). This kindness of him also showed in his connection with Steerforth. Agnes reminded David to be away from Steerforth. But, after that, David got “so much compunction for having ever wronged him even by a shapeless thought” (Dickens, 1981: 401).
That is also David’s kindness. To David Copperfield, kindness is rooted in his mind even from his birth.

2.3 Stability and Maturity of Adult David Copperfield
Through so much difficulties and troubles, David became steady in his adulthood. In his profession, his love and his friendship, David all found his best answers. He lived with stability and maturity in his mind. Regarding his career, David went on along a right road. He took to the literature and had fun in what he did. David became more and more confident with the success in his career. David knew that his dream came true by his years’ hard work.
And after his “child wife” died, David decided to give his most sincere love to Agnes, his “good angel”. However, he was hesitant before Agnes. He did not dare to tell her “I love you”. Because he knew what the three words meant, he did not want to hurt Agnes. He held the thought that “it was for me to guard this sisterly affection with religious care” (Dickens, 1981: 457). And for David, Agnes was no doubt his best choice. Agnes was the light shined on his way. She was the source of every worthy aspiration, the center of his life and the right person he founded his love on a rock. For all the efforts David had