David Copperfield: “Sometimes brighter visions rise before me”

Perhaps I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I can’t help thinking that chapter 18 of David Copperfield stands out as rather unusual. 

The first 17 chapters are a standard first-person narrative—chronological, in past tense, told in scenes and sequences—like Jane Eyre for instance. Then Dickens does something different in chapter 18. 

“The earthy smell, the sunless air, the sensation of the world being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the black and white arched galleries and aisles, are wings that take me back, and hold me hovering above those days, in a half-sleeping and half-waking dream.” 

Proustian?

A break from the narrative. David isn’t narrating his schooldays in a coherent, traditional way—he is in the world of memories and dreams, jumping from one image to another. 

“But who is this that breaks upon me? This is Miss Shepherd, whom I love.” 

From one image to another. From one memory to another. 

“The shade of a young butcher rises, like the apparition of an armed head in Macbeth. Who is this young butcher? He is the terror of the youth of Canterbury.” 

Then another jump. 

“Time has stolen on unobserved, for Adams is not the head-boy in the days that are come now, nor has he been this many and many a day. Adams has left the school so long, that when he comes back, on a visit to Doctor Strong, there are not many there, besides myself, who know him.” 

A chapter of memories. A chapter of images and impressions. 

I love this passage: 

“A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history march on in stately hosts that seem to have no end—and what comes next! I am the head-boy, now! I look down on the line of boys below me, with a condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was myself, when I first came there. That little fellow seems to be no part of me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life—as something I have passed, rather than have actually been—and almost think of him as of someone else.” 

And so it goes on—Miss Shepherd, Agnes, Miss Larkins, a waltz—David reminisces about the girls he adored in his schooldays, the girls who were the pervading themes and visions of his youth. A figure appears, then vanishes, replaced by another memory. 

Chapter 18 is unlike anything that comes before. This is wonderful.