David Copperfield: some thoughts on characters (with mention of Tolstoy)

1/ Now that I’ve finished reading David Copperfield after about 6 weeks (though I did take a break and spent a few days reading The Sorrows of Young Werther) and so far mostly written about Dickens’s writing style, I should jot down some thoughts on the characters. 

The greatest character in David Copperfield is, without doubt, Uriah Heep. Repulsive Heep! Fawning, obsequious Heep! Scheming, villainous Heep! From his physical attributes to his voice, to his personality, to his evil—this is one of the most memorable villains in fiction.

After that, the most brilliant characters in the book are Betsey Trotwood, Miss Mowcher, and Rosa Dartle. The Murdstones and the Micawbers and Mr Dick are also very good—only Dickens could create such characters and give them so much life, so much presence—but I especially love these three. All those detractors who sneeringly say Dickens only creates caricatures, that he cannot write characters with depth—have they not seen Betsey Trotwood? And Miss Mowcher? As we often see in Dickens, Betsey Trotwood first appears as a caricature and gradually becomes a complex, multifaceted character: when we first see her, she’s an eccentric woman, an intimidating woman who terrifies everyone and keeps yelling “Donkeys!”, fighting donkeys off the little piece of green before her house; but she changes, she grows, she develops; the intimidating woman turns out to be a generous great aunt, a pitiful wife, a wonderful woman, and she is especially lovable in her gentleness towards Dora. 

Dickens does something similar with Miss Mowcher, except that it’s more extraordinary: Betsey Trotwood has lots of space to develop throughout the novel, whereas Miss Mowcher is a minor character who has about two big scenes. When we first see her, she’s a dwarf hairdresser and a friend of James Steerforth—she’s witty, she’s talking nonstop, she’s captivating David’s attention and also ours. 

“… ‘No,’ said Steerforth, before I could reply. ‘Nothing of the sort. On the contrary, Mr Copperfield used—or I am much mistaken—to have a great admiration for her.’

‘Why, hasn’t he now?’ returned Miss Mowcher. ‘Is he fickle? Oh, for shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his passion requited?—Is her name Polly?’

The Elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me with this question, and a searching look, quite disconcerted me for a moment.

‘No, Miss Mowcher,’ I replied. ‘Her name is Emily.’

‘Aha?’ she cried exactly as before. ‘Umph? What a rattle I am! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’

[…] ‘Very well: very well! Quite a long story. Ought to end “and they lived happy ever afterwards”; oughtn’t it? Ah! What’s that game at forfeits? I love my love with an E, because she’s enticing; I hate her with an E, because she’s engaged. I took her to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement, her name’s Emily, and she lives in the east? Ha! ha! ha! Mr Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’” (ch.22) 

She has such a vivid existence that I would be happy even if she stayed the same. But later, Dickens removes the layer and lets us see the real Miss Mowcher: 

“Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.

‘Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,’ she said, ‘that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can throw bubbles back. If I don’t brood over all I want, it is the better for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you giants, be gentle with me.’” (ch.32) 

A magnificent scene, an unforgettable character. 

But even with the characters called caricatures, the ones who don’t have another side and don’t change, Dickens makes them so individual and gives them such a vivid existence that they cease to be mere types. Just look at them. Mr Murdstone is not just a cold, hard man who breaks his wives and reduces them to a state of imbecility. Mr Micawber is not just a poor man who keeps getting into financial troubles. Dickens gives them all individual voices and phrases, and thickens his characterisation with such details, such “unnecessary” details that they feel full of life within the world of his book. 

Among those characters who don’t change, who don’t have another side is Rosa Dartle. Throughout the novel, she remains the same as a haughty, snobbish, and bitter woman who loves James Steerforth and has burning hatred in her heart for everyone else, especially for Emily but also for Steerforth. But she suffers, and that pain gives life to the character. 

Later in Little Dorrit, Dickens goes further as he creates several characters—mostly women—who nurse a grievance and destroy their own lives because of it, such as Miss Wade, Fanny Dorrit, Harriet Beadle, Mrs Clennam, and so on. They’re in a prison of their own making. 

2/ I have called Dora Spenlow insufferable, and she is, but she is redeemed in her last moments—she gains awareness at last, and it’s a moving scene.

In an earlier blog post, I wrote that the second half of the book was less enjoyable. I still think that way, despite Uriah Heep. There’s a magical quality, a fairytale-like quality to the childhood section of the book that is absent in the adulthood section. More importantly, I think the adulthood section suffers because of Dora and because of David Copperfield. 

Let’s compare Dickens and Tolstoy. Levin is Tolstoy’s self-insert in Anna Karenina—I know some readers don’t like Levin, but this is not a flattering portrayal of himself—Levin sometimes gets silenced in debates and cannot argue his points, he recoils at his brother’s suffering and becomes helpless, he’s hot-tempered, he keeps questioning everything and continues to question even after his conversion at the end of the book, he has many flaws… 

If Pierre, as some people say, is Tolstoy’s self-insert in War and Peace, that is also not a flattering portrait—Pierre may be a good man, a lovable man, but he initially engages in all sorts of debauchery; he is weak-willed, naïve, idealistic, and impressionable; he jumps from one idea to another… I think it’s better to say that Tolstoy puts himself into Pierre, Andrei, and Nikolai, and all these characters are flawed and full of weaknesses—Andrei can even be quite cold and cruel. 

I’d go even further: I’d say that there’s something of Tolstoy himself in the main character of The Kreutzer Sonata. Many people hate this novella because they see the similarities in some ideas between the two, because they see Tolstoy as a misogynist. But Tolstoy is obviously not Pozdnyshev: he’s not a (wife) murderer, and Pozdnyshev would never be able to write Anna Karenina. What Tolstoy does in The Kreutzer Sonata is that he examines his own ideas about love, sex, men and women, and pushes his own ideas to the extreme—to use Ibsen’s phrase, he sits in judgement on himself—and he is utterly brutal about it. 

Now if we go back to Dickens, David Copperfield is a semi-biography and I think we would all agree that David is a nice, tame, whitewashed version of Dickens. The adult David is so dull because he’s too good. Yes, he has some small flaws, he’s a helpless husband just as Dora’s a helpless wife, but it’s tame. The real Dickens was awful to his wife. 

I’m of course not dismissing David Copperfield because of Dickens’s personal life—it’s in many ways a wonderful novel—I’m also not wishing David Copperfield had been a different book, truer to life—I’m merely pointing out what I saw as a difference between Dickens and Tolstoy.