There is the desire to finish with each one, with forced exclamations and ecstatic observations, scrolling through the lives of those who are frozen in time: Dick with his "Memorial" and his kite, Dr Strong and his dictionary, and as a bonus, the news of David's "least child", which implies that there have been other children between him and eldest child Agnes of whom the reader has never heard by name | However, despite their families' forgiveness, they remain "tainted" and their expulsion from England is symbolic of their status: it is only at the other end of the world that these "social outcasts" can be reinstated |
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She emigrates with the Peggotty family to Australia | His descriptions of people and places is extrordinary and you can easily dream back to his time |
In their 1970 publication Dickens the Novelist, F R and Q D Leavis called Dickens "one of the greatest of creative writers", and F R Leavis had changed his mind about Dickens since his 1948 work, no longer finding the popularity of the novels with readers as a barrier to their seriousness or profundity.
Charles Dickens, "A Bundle of Emigrants", Letters, Household Words, 30 March 1850• According to Andrew Sanders, David Copperfield reflects both types of response, which give this novel the privileged position of representing the hinge of the century | Reader's insight [ ] The Wanderer, Mr Peggotty talks to David as Martha overhears, by |
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Initial reception [ ] Although Dickens became a Victorian celebrity his readership was mainly the middle classes, including the so-called skilled workers, according to the French critic Fabrice Bensimon, because ordinary people could not afford it | Until Forster published his biography of Dickens in 1872—1874, no one knew that Dickens had worked in a factory as a child, not even his wife, until Dickens wrote it down and gave the papers to Forster in 1847 |
Steerforth is not mistaken, when from the outset he calls Copperfield "Daisy"—a flower of spring, symbol of innocent youth.
14The cry of Martha at the edge of the river belongs to the purest Victorian , as does the confrontation between Mr Peggotty and Mrs Steerforth, in chapter 32: I justify nothing, I make no counter-accusations | So he is predisposed to succumb, by what he calls in chapter 7 an "inborn power of attraction", to the charm instinctively lent to beautiful people, about which David said "a kind of enchantment |
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This sense of guilt leads him to drink | She is described as being thin and displays a visible scar on her lip caused by Steerforth in one of his violent rages as a child |
The changes involve David leaving past selves behind on the way to maturity.
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