对于大卫科波菲尔中人物的形象分析

An Analysis of Image in David Copperfield

Chapter 1 Introduction

\David Copperfield\the masterpiece of Dickens, was a semi-autobiographical work. In May 1849 to November 1850, the installment was published. In the preface, Dickens said: “It is my favorite child.”

The novel depicted David's experiences which were filled with sufferings and laughters. Dickens portrayed the colorful picture of British society, the typical image of different social classes, especially the endless struggle of David in the face of adversity which left a deep impression on us. David was unable to endure the abuse of his stepfather, biting the fingers of his stepfather, savagely beaten. As a result, he was locked in a boarding school. After his mother died, he was sent to the factory as a child by his stepfather. From then on, he lived a hard life, without enough to eat or wear and suffered all kinds of abuse and torture. However, David did not succumb to the mercy of fate, painstakingly, and finally found his aunt Betsey. The kind-hearted aunt shelter adopted him and let him go to a better school. When he knew that Aunt Betsey was bankrupted, but instead, he studied diligently with perseverance all kinds of abuse and torture. Finally, after making efforts, he became a writer and achieved success. At the same time, other characters were clear and vivid. Peggotty was a nurse who took care of David and David’s mother carefully, she was remarkably loyal. Outwardly, aunt Betsey appeared a severe woman, but she showed that she was kind by loving David and others. In addition, Ham was noble, brave and honest. Mr.Murdstones was fierce and cruel. Steerforth was selfish and arrogant. 1.1 Introduction to the Author

Dickens was the main representative of realism literature in the 19th century. The art of witty words, nuanced psychological analysis and realism were combined together closely in his works. He was particularly famous for his vivid comic characterizations and social criticism. He was the first author who had written of the poor with fidelity and sympathy. His works were famous during novels of the Victorian age and among the great classics in all fiction.

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Dickens was born in February, 1812, at Landport, Portsmouth. He was the second of eight children. His father was a clerk, hardworking but imprudent, later caricatured as Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield. In 1822, the family moved to London, where Charles had to leave school to support his impoverished family. In 1824, his father was put into prison for debt. At the age of 12, Dickens was sent to going to work at a factory. He wrapped and labeled for 6 shillings a week. After work, he wandered through the streets of London, enthralled by the sight of the dockyards, the files of convicts, and vast sections of the city inhabited by the poor. These bitter days remained in his memory and later found expression in his works.

Dickens was able to return to school because a small legacy helped release

his father from prison. He was an avid reader and spent much time in the reading room of the British Museum. Although he later returned to school for a time, these experiences left a permanent imprint on the soul of Charles Dickens. Even many years later, he had become a successful author, he could not bear to talk about it, or be reminded of his family’s ignominy.

At the age of fifteen, Dickens began working as an office boy for a law firm. He taught himself and he became a reporter for courts of Doctors’ Common in 1828. The dull routine of the legal profession never interested him, so he became a newspaper reporter for the Mirror of parliament, the True Sun, and finally for the Morning Chronicle. (John Forster, were later his closest friend and biographer, was also employed at the True Sun.) By the age of twenty, Dickens was one of the best parliamentary reporters all the England.

By this time, Dickens was enjoying the luxurious life he had dreamed of as a child. In 1850, he published the last installments of David Copperfield, a partly autobiographical novel that was his favorite. 1.2 The Introduction to the Background 1.2.1 Social background

“Like so many parents I have a favorite child in my heart,” wrote Charles Dickens. \own life experience to expose the social evils that were prevalent in Victorian England and were the miseries of child-labor, the tyranny in schools, the debtors’ prison, as well as the cruelty and immortality and the treachery. Thus the novel was not merely a personal record, but a broad picture of the society of the author’s day.

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David Copperfield was a novel written in first-person point of view. It was sometimes referred to as an apprenticeship novel because it centered on the period in which a young person grew up. The type of novels was pioneered by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) in his novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship). Dickens based the book in part on the difficult early years of his own life. The narration changed names, locales, and other details of Dickens’s life. For example, when Dickens was only a child, he had to leave school to work in a factory. In the novel, David Copperfield had to leave school to work in a warehouse washing and labeling bottles used in the wine trade. David’s initials (D.C.) were, of course, the reverse of Dickens’s (C.D.).

Dickens was a master at drawing memorable characters. Some were simple and uncomplicated, like Barkis, Creakle, Murdstone, and Clara Peggotty. Others were complex, like David Copperfield. Throughout the novel, he befriended the wealthy and charming James Steerforth, ignoring his devious and malevolent side. At the same time, he befriended the good-hearted Tommy Traddles and the humble Peggottys. These two worlds, the world of Steerforth and the world of Steerforth and his family, both attracted David, and his immaturity decided what should constitute his own world. To bring his characters to life, Dickens invested them with clearly defining virtues or vices and described the characters in a way that enabled the readers to picture them at the scenes in which they appeared. 1.2.2 Novel’s background

Of all the Dickens’ novels, David Copperfield reflected the events of Dickens own life the most. As for David, suffering in the past was adequately made up for a rich, happy marriage and a successful literary career, just like Dickens himself, and the world was still full of hope and sunshine. The plot construction was rather loose, but it also excelled in its vivid image. The narration of novel in detail was also worth mentioning, which gave the work truthfulness to the real life.

What we could add to was the way in which Dickens time and time again dealt with the progress of a male hero who, as with David in David Copperfield (1849-50) and Pip in Great Expectations (1860-1), came to terms with world as the middle-class values. At the same time, however, Dickens’ heroes often have uncomfortable doubles: David Copperfield was shadowed by Heep and Steerforth, both of whom revealed the kind of dark sexual urge that David attempted to conceal or deny in his own life. It was as if, in a new middle-class code, Dickens was equally aware of the

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precariousness or vulnerability of the new respectable social conception of the self, of the buried life that was hidden beneath the veneer of polite manners.

Due to the early success, the public not only gave Dickens an assurance that made sure increasing powers of poetic expression and narrative technique, but also the confidence to demonstrate his priorities to a point where they contradicted the social assumptions of many of his readers. All his later novels, except A Tale of Two Cities, presented a criticism of the most fundamental institutions of the Victorian England.

Although David was ignorant of Steerforth’s treachery, we were aware from the moment we met Steerforth that he didn’t deserve of praise which David felt toward him. David didn’t know why he hated Heep or why he trusted a boy with a donkey cart who stole his money and left him in the road, but it was possible for him to realize Heep’s inherent evil and the boy’s real intention. In David’s first-person narration, Dickens conveyed the wisdom of the older man implicitly, through the eyes of a child.

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Chapter 2

Literature Review of the Novel

2.1 Some Scholars’ Views on the Novel

Scholars believed that David Copperfield's careers, friendships, love and life, were most highly influenced by Dickens' experiences, as well as his time working as a child. David's involvement with the law profession and later his career as a writer mirror the experiences of Dickens. Many of David's friends were based on people who Dickens actually knew, and David's wives, Agnes Wickfield and Dora, were believed to be based upon Dickens' attachment to Mary Hogarth. Dickens keenly felt his lack of education during his time at that factory, and according to the Forster biography, it was from these times that he drew David's working period.

British writer Somerset Maugham regarded the book as \a masterpiece of literary works\

One of American literature connoisseurs recommended the novel as one hundreds of the 20th century, distinguishing English novel.

The famous Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, said that the book was the best one among all the English novels and it could help people to build a perfect personality. “David Copperfield was filled with characters of the most astonishing variety, vividness, and originality,” noted Somerset Maugham. “They are not realistic and yet they abound with life. There never were such people as the Micawbers, Peggotty and Barkis, Traddles, Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep and his mother.” The story was told almost entirely from the point view of the first person narrator, David Copperfield himself, and was the first Dickens novel to do so. Dickens based the book in part on the difficult early years of his own life. 2.2 Main Views of Dickens’ Idea

Influenced by Carlyle, Dickens learned to direct his novel to a questioning of social priorities and inequalities, to a distrust of institutions, particularly defunct or malfunctioning ones, and to a pressure for action and earnestness He was prone to take up issues, and to campaign against what he saw as injustice or desuetude, using fiction in his novel. He was not alone in his own time, but his name continued to be

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