336 Dickens, Charles
practices of the Victorian educational system, which
he regarded as abusive of children and adolescents.
David’s early years are idyllic, spent with a charming
and indulgent mother who acts more like a playmate
than a parent with him. After his mother remarries,
his childhood freedom ends when he begins formal
lessons with his cruel stepfather. Mr. Murdstone’s
ideas about the innate evil of children, based on reli-
gious dogma, and his pedagogical method of beating
knowledge into David mirrors practices of the time.
The boy finds solace from his stepfather’s tyranny in
the library left by his dead father. Here he finds ref-
uge in absorbing works of escapist fiction and magi-
cal tales from previous centuries. He also discovers
models of fantasy that educate his imagination and
will help him become a successful writer.
After David rebels against Murdstone’s abuse,
he is sent to Salem House, a bleak academy run by
Mr. Creakle, a sadistic schoolmaster with neither
the knowledge nor temperament to teach. Instead,
he applies the Murdstone philosophy and practical
approach to educating his students—that of physical
violence. David’s reminiscences about this academy
stress that fear rather than knowledge was the basis
of its instruction. He also underscores Creakle’s
hypocrisy in managing the school, whereby he toad-
ied to wealthy patrons and pupils and bullied his
underpaid teachers and more impoverished students.
Dickens had attended an institution like Salem
House, and as an influential writer he supported
social activists in Britain who sought to reform
such schools and to extend access to education
across all social classes. When David feels the
greatest despair working in Murdstone’s London
factory, he is most troubled by his lost educational
opportunities, which he needs to better his social
status. The desire to improve his situation compels
him to escape factory life and seek shelter with his
Aunt Betsey. The security he finds in his life with
her is embodied in the excellent education she pro-
vides by sending him to Dr. Strong’s model school.
David recalls it as an enlightened institution where
students feel freedom rather than fear and where
they sense their involvement in the school’s success.
Strong’s progressive academy is the antithesis of
Creakle’s outdated, prison-like institution. The con-
trast between these two schools corresponds to the
vast difference in the moral and emotional atmo-
spheres of the two periods that comprise David’s
early life—his servile, regressive existence under his
tyrannous stepfather as opposed to his free, future-
directed life with his benevolent aunt.
When David’s years of his formal education are
over, the autobiographical narrative reflects on the
life experiences that have given him self-knowledge
and taught him to discipline his heart. David’s most
important lesson in this regard is his impetuous,
failed marriage to Dora, the spoiled wife who is
unschooled in the practicalities of life. David learns
a sense of responsibility from this experience, espe-
cially after her death. The despair and guilt he suf-
fers as a consequence teach him the true value of his
constant guide in life and his model of fortitude and
understanding, Alice, who becomes his future wife.
The tragedies of those closest to him are also lessons
in the consequences of unbridled or wayward emo-
tions. His schoolfriend Steerforth, who has always
been indulged and never given moral guidance, lets
his passions destroy himself and ruin others dear to
David, such as Emily and the Peggotty family. When
Agnes’s father, Mr. Wickfield, becomes absorbed in
regrets over his past life, especially the loss of his
wife, and succumbs to alcoholism and to the machi-
nations of his evil clerk, Uriah Heep, he brings ruin
upon himself and David’s aunt. Even Heep’s villainy
is portrayed as a lust for power that stems from his
education in the system of charitable schools that
Dickens abhorred as a Victorian social evil.
David Copperf ield aligns many of Dickens’s ideas
about education and views about childhood, espe-
cially his crusade for the rights of children. In this
regard he played a pioneering role in English lit-
erature by incorporating this theme into his fiction.
Diana ChlebekmemOr y in David Copperf ield
David Copperf ield illustrates the most distinctive
features of Charles Dickens’s literary genius: his
rendering of the forms and language of memory
through its play with time, places, and persons. The
work presents a remarkable literary exploration of
issues surrounding the persistence of painful early
memories in adult life and how these can be used
constructively.