334 Dickens, Charles
and beer. Talking to the ghost, Scrooge admits he
has been very bad with his poor clerk, Bob Cratchit.
The most touching example of this Christmas
tradition is Bob Cratchit and his family, poor but
very happy to share what they have and to stay
together even if their goose or their pudding is too
small, even if their dresses are twice-turned and
renewed with cheap ribbons. After dinner, they all
draw around the fire and wish themselves a Merry
Christmas. Dickens works to create the real tradi-
tions of Christmas time: all the children running
along the streets into the snow to greet their married
sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, people going
to church and chapel, and people carrying their din-
ners to the baker’s shop (because the houses of the
poor were equipped with open fireplaces but not
with ovens). The shops’ windows are radiant and full
of things in their “Christmas dress.”
The modern tradition of Christmas, its symbols
and characteristics, were “invented” in the 19th
century, so in reading Dickens’s descriptions, we can
feel the real and universal Christmas atmosphere. At
the end of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge achieves his
redemption and makes this promise: “I will honour
Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the
year”—so that nobody knew better than Scrooge
how to keep Christmas well.
Raffaella Cavalieri
DICKENS, CHARLES David
Copperf ield (1849–1850)
David Copperf ield can be considered the central
work of Charles Dickens’s career as a novelist in sev-
eral ways. It was written at the midpoint of his life as
an author, and it soon became one of the best-loved
texts of his repertoire and of Victorian culture. Into
this semiautobiographical novel, Dickens incorpo-
rated many of the memories of his own unhappy
boyhood. The story of David Copperfield’s passage
from youth to maturity is narrated by the middle-
aged David, who is a professional writer.
The book opens with details of David’s very
early years with his widowed mother, who creates
for him an idyllic childhood that is soon spoiled by
her unfortunate second marriage to Mr. Murdstone.
The boy is abused by his stepfather, who first sends
him to a school run by a sadistic master, Creakle, and
then employs him as a child laborer in his London
factory, an incident that reflects the major trauma of
Dickens’s own childhood. Escaping London, David
takes refuge at Dover with his Aunt Betsey, who
gives him a stable upbringing and a good educa-
tion. After a brief legal career in the employ of Mr.
Wickfield, his aunt’s lawyer, David becomes a novel-
ist. The novel largely focuses on David’s memories
and reflections about traumas and deeply felt expe-
riences in his life that teach him how to discipline
his heart. Two tragedies that affect him deeply are
his failed marriage to his first wife, Dora Spenlow,
and the criminal behavior of his school chum, James
Steerforth, who elopes with Emily, the niece of Mr.
Peggotty, brother to David’s beloved nurse. David
is also enlightened by triumphs in his life, such as
the defeat of the villainous Uriah Heep. He finally
achieves happiness with his second marriage to
Agnes Wickfield, whose wisdom and goodness have
inspired him since childhood.
David Copperf ield is groundbreaking both as
fictional autobiography and as one of the first novels
to trace in psychological detail the development of
the child into an adult. It is a seminal work in the
canon of 19th-century British and world literature.
Diana ChlebekcHildHOOd in David Copperf ield
The portrayal of childhood that Charles Dickens
presents in David Copperf ield is striking for the
accuracy and sympathy with which it renders the
thoughts and emotions of a young boy as he grows
into maturity. The work is one of the first in En-
glish literature in which a child’s perspective of his
infancy and very early years of life is recaptured in
autobiographical form, albeit through the retrospec-
tive narrative of his adult self. The book’s opening
chapters are remarkable for the way they depict
David’s child’s-eye view of his immediate environ-
ment, especially through the eccentricities of a
toddler’s thought processes. The adult narrator also
vividly recalls the emotional abandon that his child-
self shares with his young mother, who assumes the
role of a delightful playmate rather than that of a
dependable parent. Although David’s early years
appear idyllic, the narrator emphasizes the insecure