Books, pens and pencils: the trials of a Victorian youth

Chantal Cornut-Gentille D'Arcy

doi:10.14198/raei.1989.2.03

Abstract

In this survey, we have focussed our attention on the first part of the novel David Copperfield and analyzed how the child hero's natural dispositions are crushed by faulty training. Through his early schooling and youthful experiences, David gains a knowledge of the wretchedness children may suffer in the rigidly practical Victorian society which tended to regard little ones as small-scale adults. By means of the story, Dickens is clearly denouncing the excessive eagerness of utilitarians for efficiency and productiveness in education, and his protests are directed against educators, educational establishments and institutions which ignored the child's need to develop at a natural pace in an atmosphere of affectionate encouragement and happiness.

Highlights

Referring to "these autobigraphical times of ours," Thomas Carlyle had his character, Professor Teufelsdrockh say: It is maintained by Helvetius and his set that an infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly favourable influences accompany him through life, especially through childhood, and expand him, while others lie closefolded and continué dunce
We are all conscious of the fact that David Copperfield is not Charles Dickens, it is common knowledge that Dickens used significant documentary material as the basis of his fiction
Trevor Blount quite accurately divides the novel into three sections: the hero's childhood, his youth and early manhood and his period of maturity we find that the hero's progress in life is more

Summary

Introduction

Referring to "these autobigraphical times of ours," Thomas Carlyle had his character, Professor Teufelsdrockh say: It is maintained by Helvetius and his set that an infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly favourable influences accompany him through life, especially through childhood, and expand him, while others lie closefolded and continué dunce. In the first chapter of the novel, Dickens presents David as a very little boy and portrays the world around him from the child's perspective.

Results

Conclusion