Though I have often thought it might be fun to be Jane or Elizabeth Bennet, or some other other of Jane Austen's heroines, after reading Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, I have decided that the one thing I would not wish to be in the nineteenth century is a young orphaned boy (though I'm not sure it would be any better to be a young orphaned girl, likely she would end as a prostitute as Little Em'ly does). Poor Davy reminds me quite a bit of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones eponymous main character (whose life I read about last term). Both are orphans, both have self-righteous people telling lies to others about their supposedly irredeemable bad qualities, and both are naively innocent to a point that makes me want to cry out to them, "No, you should NOT trust all of your hard-earned pennies to that person of an obviously suspicious nature!" Dickens, like Fielding, chooses to tell nearly the entire life story of his main character, which while interesting makes both books long to the point of soporific tediousness. The twenty-first century reader in me is always going, "Okay, get on with it. Let's have done with it already." The main difference between the two books is that Fielding's had an amazingly intricate weaving of plot and action interspersed with essays, while Dickens wrote a much more character-centric novel (told in first person) that stops to wallow in character, emotions, and thoughts much more than Fielding did.
Copperfield's eccentric Aunt Betsey is possibly my favorite character in the whole novel (his nurse/maid Peggotty is a close second). In a twist on the usual obsession with male heirs, she shows up on the eve of his birth determined that his mother should give birth to a girl that she (the aunt) will help raise. She's so disappointed upon learning Copperfield's gender that she leaves immediately and isn't seen for about 10 years or so.
I've selected one of my favorite passages about her in honor of Dicken's birthday today and since I didn't end up reading it at our "Twopenny Reading" Birthday Party at school, I will post it here:
From David Copperfield, Chapter XIII
"To this hour I don’t know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way over that patch of green; but she had settled it in her own mind that she had, and it was all the same to her. The one great outrage of her life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey over that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was engaged, however interesting to her the conversation in which she was taking part, a donkey turned the current of her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him straight. Jugs of water, and watering pots, were kept in secret places ready to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was ready.; and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all, I saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to comprehend what was the matter. These interruptions were the more ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, should would put it back in the basin, cry ‘Janet! Donkies!’ and go out to the assault."
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