Dickens’ Critical Realism
in David Copperfield


ABSTRACT

Charles Dickens, as one of the representatives of critical realism in Queen Victoria, shows great sympathy with poor people and working class. In David Copperfield his critical realism outlook is clearly emerged on David Copperfield. He praises the kindness, honesty and diligence, and places good hope on them; criticizes the vices, hypocrisy and laziness, and comments on them.


摘    要

   作为维多利亚女王时期批判现实主义的典型代表，查尔斯·狄更斯表现了对贫穷人民及工人阶级的深切同情。在《大卫·科波菲尔》一书中， 他的批判现实主义观念在大卫·科波菲尔身上得到了透彻的体现。他赞扬善良、诚实、勤奋，并对他们寄以厚望；他批判邪恶、伪善、懒惰，并对他们深刻鞭挞。


Table of Contents

I. Introduction

Being one of the greatest representatives of the English critical realism in Queen Victoria, Dickens gave us a most vivid picture of everyday life, of the ordinary people of his time. In David Copperfield, he criticized the ruling class and the capitalist society.

II. Dickens’ Critical Realism in David Copperfield

1. The criticism to the miserable family life
2. The criticism to the children’s education
  A. The criticism to the family education
  B. The criticism to the school education
3. The criticism to capitalism and the capitalist society
  A. The criticism to capitalism
  B. The criticism to the capitalist society

III. Conclusion


Dickens’ Critical Realism
in David Copperfield

I. Introduction

In the long period of domination of Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens was the most popular and internationally known as an English novelist. Being the greatest representative of the English critical realism, he gave us a most vivid picture of everyday life, of the ordinary people of his time. He created a large number of life characters, well known, full of life and unforgettable. He had suffered so bitterly himself as a child and had seen so much evilness that burned with the desire to fight it to the end. While representing a truthful account of the hardships born by poor people, he believed that a hard-working and honest man could achieve his little personal business under capitalism. The success of one great novelist would rely on the carrier: his works, to support himself.
Charles Dickens wrote many a novel such as The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens used his pen to mould a typical figure of all stratum in the Victorian age: Mr. Pickwick, the benevolent gentleman; Oliver Twist, the good lucky young man; Mr. Grandgrad, the victim of his own ridiculous utilitarian philosophy and Mr. Manetle, the innocent doctor who witnessed the French Revolution. All above novels made an important role in Charles Dickens’ successful career. But David Copperfield, a novel based on his early life experiences, is Dickens’ satisfied reminiscence of his life way and literature reappearance of his personal history. Like Dickens, David works as a child, pasting labels onto bottles. David also becomes first a law clerk, then a reporter, and finally a successful novelist. Mr. Micawber is a satirical version of Dickens’s father, a likable man who can never scrape together the money he needs. Many of the secondary characters spring from Dickens’s experiences as a young man in financial distress in London. So we can see that Dickens liked this novel very much.   No wonder Dickens wrote, “of all my books I like this the best; like many fond parents I have a favorite child and his name is David Copperfield”.
David Copperfield, the strong-willed young man who relied on himself suffered a lot and at last became a successful novelist like Dickens. Through the description of David Coperfield, Charles Dickens made a fierce and harsh attack upon the bourgeois society, and at the same time shows deep sympathy with the benevolent, the poor, the depressed and the innocent. In this book the good would surpass the evil, the truth would conquer the false and all kind-hearted people would embrace the endowments of life.

II. Dickens’ Critical Realism

The critical realism of the 19th century flourished in the forties and the beginning of fifties. The realists first and foremost set themselves the task of criticizing capitalist society from a democratic viewpoint and delineated the crying characterization of bourgeois reality. As a representative of critical realism, Charles Dickens was the greatest English realist of the time. With a striking force and truth fullness, he creates pictures of bourgeois civilization, describing the misery and sufferings of common people.
The greatness of Charles Dickens lies not only in their satirical portrayal of bourgeois and in the exposure of the greed and hypocrisy of the ruling classes, but also in their profound humanism that is revealed in their sympathy for the laboring people. He creates positive characters that are quite alien to vices, the rich and who are chiefly common people. The little David, the family of Peggotty and Micawber are vivid characters and representatives of the laboring class.

1.The Criticism to the Miserable Family Life
  
As a bourgeois humanist, Charles Dickens saw the inhumanity of the capitalist society. In the novel, he criticized the moralistic and sadistic oppressiveness of Mr. and Miss Murdstone, portrayed the inhumane child-labor life, the headmaster of a school carried on by sheer cruelty.
     As a child, David learned at home. Sometimes he and his mother lived along together. At this time he had been apt enough to learn and willing enough to learn. He said,“ I seem to have been cheered by the gentleness of my mother’s voice and manners all the way.” But after the marriage of David’s mother and Mr. Murdstone, most of the time Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at present. Under the guise of teaching David and forming his character, Mr. and Miss Murdstone tortured him cruelly. He told David’s mother to be firm with the boy, not to treat him gently. But the firmness of Mr. Murdstone was a bane for David’s life. So the very sight of Mr. and Miss Murdstone had such an influence on David. He began to feel the words he had been at infinite pains to get into his head, sliding away, and going where he didn’t know. He said “I could have done well if I have been without the Murdstones; but the influence of the Murdstones upon me was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird”. So David thought that those solemn lessons were the deathblow at his peace, “and a grievous daily drudgery and misery. They were very long, very numerous, very hard”, As a result, David couldn’t finish those solemn lessons, and then Mr. Murdstone would beat him “ as if he would have beaten me to death”. The readers could image the result: “The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupefied but for one circumstance.”
As for David’s mother, she had also suffered a lot. She loved her David so much, but she could not love him as before. She had no rights to teach him lessons; she even dared not help her pitiable son, “I think my mother would show me the book if she dared, but she doesn’t dare”. For a mother, nothing was crueler than separating the son and herself. You could also know who was the ringleader. Through the description of David Copperfield’s miserable family life, Dickens vigorously criticized the vices and injustices of the capitalist society.

2. The Criticism to Children’s Education

For David Copperfield, he experienced different periods and events. Charles Dickens showed clearly the evilness in capitalist society on David Copperfield, especially for the education.

2.1 The Criticism to the Family Education
  
As a child, David received good education from his mother before Murdstone rushed into his family. He liked learning what he could learn, His closest friend, Peggotty, told him stories and much other useful experience and theories. But Mr. Murdstone, his stepfather just used his method to control and treat him cruelly until David Copperfield could become his puppet. But David Copperfield, a strong-willed young man never gave in and he would rather leave for his great-aunt. Family education became ruthless and useless under cruel-heated Mr. and Miss Murdstone. Thanks to Betsy, she gave David another family and made him feel family love. David got his real family education from his great-aunt, but not his father and stepfather.

2.2 The Criticism to the School Education

At school, David experienced the tragic treatment. He almost learnt nothing at Salem House. He also suffered a lot. He was beaten up and ill-treated instead of well-educated. For the headmaster, Mr. Creakle, had a delight in cutting at boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. He was the sternest and most serve of masters; he laid about David, right and left, every day of his life, charging in among the boys like a trooper; and slashing away, unmercifully; he knew nothing himself, but the art of slashing, being more ignorant than the lowest boy in the school. Especially Mr. Creakle couldn’t resist a chubby boy who has a fascination that made him restless in his mind until he had scored and marked the boy for the day. David was chubby himself, and certainly was treated that way. So what David could only remember at this time was the recollection of the daily strife and struggle of his life; of the frosty morning when they were run out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when they were run into bed again; of the evening schoolroom dimly lightened and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of tear-blotted copybooks, canning and rulings, etc. But Charles Dickens arranged him good education later when he criticized the evil Salem House. This description set off the evilness of school education in capitalist society.
David nearly lost the chance of learning knowledge in society. But he gradually became more and more mature in the strife against bad luck. The treason of his friend, Steerforths; the death of his wife, Dora, the bankrupt of his great-aunt, Miss Betsy, and the scheme of Heep with Murdstone took him great pain. In the meanwhile it took him the social knowledge that could not be taught at school. The evil society not only hurt the laboring people, but also created the valiant of the time. It is the combination of criticizing and idealism.
  
3. The Criticism to Capitalism and the Capitalist Society
  
Throughout David Copperfield, the powerful abuse the weak and helpless. Dickens focuses on orphans, women, and the mentally disabled to show that exploitation—not pity or compassion—is the rule in an industrial society. Dickens draws on his own experience as a child to describe the inhumanity of child labor and debtors’ prison. His characters suffer punishment at the hands of forces larger than themselves, even though they are morally good people. The arbitrary suffering of innocents makes for the most vividly affecting scenes of the novel. David starves and suffers in a wine-bottling factory as a child. As his guardian, Mr. Murdstone can exploit David as factory labor because the boy is too small and dependent on him to disobey. Likewise, the boys at Salem House have no recourse against the cruel Mr. Creakle. In both situations, children deprived of the care of their natural parents suffer at the hands of their own supposed protectors. So, through the description of the worst working conditions and the labor scenes, we can see that Dickens was always against the capitalism and the capitalist society.

3.1 The Criticism to Capitalism
  
The most persuasive influence is no more than the correlation of the two sharp classes. In David Copperfield, the most striking is the conflict between Steerforths and the Peggotties, two representatives of the opposite camps. In the eyes of Steerforths, the Peggotties are “animals and clods, and begins of another order”, Steerforths said, “Why, there is a pretty wide separation between them and us. They are not to be expected to be as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is not to be shocked, or hurt very easily. They are wonderfully virtuous, I dare say, but they have not very fine natures, and may be thankful that, like coarse skins, they are not easily wounded”. But the story of little Emily shows that such an assertion is all-false. The Peggotty family, in fact, contains by far the finest, most delicate and most sensitive natures to appear in the novel. From the touching description of the honest, simple good-hearted Peggotties we know that Dickens’s sympathy is with the working people. As for Micawber, we can also see this. He was run after and even put into prison because of his debt that would be considered as the worst debt in capitalist society. This debt has no emotions and it is cruel. It could destroy a man, even a family. But the high class used it to mutilate other poor people or working class. Charles Dickens deeply criticized the evil spirit of bourgeois. Dickens realized the nature of the two classes’ conflict. It is not a moral or an emotion conflict, but actually a class one. It was capitalism that created the conflict. So Dickens detested capitalism extremely.

3.2 The Criticism to the Capitalist Society

Now that the society produced the bourgeois class that we call inhumane bourgeois class, it also set up the lower class that served the higher and was constricted by them. Charles Dickens was a great writer who vividly portrayed child life for he had a bitter childhood. Dickens’ father was committed to the Marshalsen, a debtor’s prison. Losing financial support because of his father’s in custody, Charles Dickens had to rely on himself. With the help of a relative, he found a job pasting labels on bottles in blacking warehouse. His living condition was so tragic that he was poor clothed, ill fed, forced to lodge in the cheapest shelter, and to be mingled with the roughest and toughest companions who were from ghettos and slums. The unfortunate period lasted for three months until his fortune turned. The taste of his life in these years was so bitter and galling to the sensible boy that Charles Dickens could not forget this suffering when he was already a man of great success. In his David Copperfield composed in autobiographical form, his inhumane treatment was mirrored vividly. After David’s mother’s death, Mr. and Miss Murdstone drove David out of his house in a contemptible excuse: “You have received some considerable education already. Education was costly; and even if it were not, and I could afford it. I am of opinion that it would not be at all advantages to you to be kept at school. What is before you, is a fight with the world; and the sooner you begin it, the better”. David began his inhumane life as a man but not as a child. He worked in a crazy old warehouse that had decaying floors and staircase with his companions and squeaking gray rats. What he had to do was to reject the flawed bottles, and to rinse and wash them. When the empty bottles ran short, there were labels to be pasted on full ones, or corks to be fitted to them, seals to be put on the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks, All this work belonged to David. Other children like David in this company lived no better than David. They all belonged to the lower class like the ones in Dickens childhood. If it is said that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were cruel and inhumane, it can be concluded that the inhumane society moulds the evil people. So Dickens criticized not only Mr. and Miss Murdstone but also the capitalist society.

III. Conclusion
    
We see how David’s perception of the world deepens as he comes of age. We see David’s initial innocence in the contrast between his interpretation of events and our own understanding of them. Although David is ignorant of Steerforth’s treachery, we are aware from the moment we meet Steerforth that he doesn’t deserve the adulation David feels toward him. David doesn’t understand why he hates Uriah or why he trusts a boy with a donkey cart who steals his money and leaves him in the road, but we can sense Uriah’s devious nature and the boy’s treacherous intentions. In David’s first-person narration, Dickens conveys the wisdom of the older man implicitly, through the eyes of a child. Particularly, through the description of the process of David Copperfield’s growing up and the narration of the events that took place in it, he criticized the ruling class and the capitalist society sharply.


参考文献

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