Research Paper 1 | EssayIvy.com

Sutter,1

Benjamin Sutter

ENC 1102 (TR 9:50)

Professor Zamorano

29 November 2018

Research Paper

As we take a moment to reflect upon the life we lead; we understand that there have been

a multitude of individuals whom have influenced our lives whether it’s for the good or it’s for

the bad. The importance is understanding the impact of those individuals and evaluating how

they taught us the lessons we experienced as we grow older. In Charles Dickens’ David

Copperfield we are introduced to a plethora of secondary characters that greatly impact the

protagonist as we venture on his journey from youth to maturity.

Different people can influence our lives in different ways which determines our attitude

towards live as well as our personalities. In the case of David Copperfield., we see that the close

people in his life are the one that influenced him most. As David narrates the story, he is an

orphan and talks about how the turn of events in his life shaped his personality. “David

Copperfield, uses the book to talk about his journey from childhood to adulthood and how he

encountered different characters of people that shaped his life.

The first character in his life is his mother Clara Copperfield who was a widow but later

got married to Mr. Murdstone. The life of David changed drastically after his mother got

married. Clara had a great impact in David’s’ life as she was ever kind and treated his son with a

lot of love. However, Clara was a weak person as she got married at a very early age to David

who was very mature. Later her husband dies and she is left a widow before she remarries. Clara

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has no skills when it comes to managing of households and she gets angry easily when she is

confronted about her behavior. She raises her son with the help of her house help Peggotty

(Dickens, 36). Clara has a weak personality which makes her easy to influence which leads to

David living a miserable life after she remarries.

In the story we see that Peggotty warns her several times about getting married to Mr.

Murdstone but she is blindly in love as she even throws a paroxysm exclaiming "Was ever any

poor girl so ill-used by her servants as I am!" (2.49). her great heart and her ability to forgive and

ask for forgiveness shapes David into a peaceful man as we see when she quarreled with the

house help , she would later approach her and straighten things up.

Additionally, her poor making decision tactics leads to her death which leads to David

being left only with a step-father and lead a miserable life where he had to pass through some

hardship. She is easily distracted and spoiled. She means no harm but lacks the ability to say no

to things that does not make her happy or she is not in agreement with. Her ability not to speak

out and say no leads to David being sent away to a boarding school. Mr. Murdstone bullies Clara

into believing that David is a bad boy which leads to him being sent away to a boarding school.

Her gravest mistake is when she decides to bear a child for Mr. Murdstone which leads to her

death as her health deteriorates and the firmness, seriousness and manipulative nature of Mr.

Murdstone leads her in living a life full of anxiety and unhappiness. However, her love towards

David never ends which is evident when David is being whipped and she protest timidly asking

Mr. Murdstone if it did him any good by whipping the boy (Tredell, 44). Mr. Murdstone causes

David to pass through hardship in his youth age.

On the contrast, we have his step father Edward Murdstone who marries his mother.

Edward is mean, manipulative, and harsh and only cares for his happiness as he convinces Clara

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that David is a bad boy and that he should be sent to a boarding school which separates David

from his loving mother. He flatters Clara into marrying her then as soon as he marries her,

becomes "a tyrant to the simple Baby, and [he breaks] her heart" (14.135). When David returns

home from mid-term, he finds out that her mother died due to poor health as Mr. Murdstone did

not take care of her after giving birth. We further see that Mr. Murdstone is committed to his

pattern of behavior that as soon as Clara dies, he marries another young woman and breaks her

spirit. He also lacks sympathy as he is not sympathetic to David when his mother dies. He is

guilty of how he treated David’s mother and cannot bear to look straight to David’s eyes. He is

cruel and lacks humanity as instead of taking care of David as his step-father, he sends him to a

factory to rot in there until David decides to run away and define his destiny (Price.2017).

In the story, we also meet Miss. Betsey who is David’s great aunt. She takes David into

her home when David runs away from the factory takes him to a good school which is unlike his

mean step-father and pays for his internship at a law office in the legal district of London.

Through her generosity, David is able to finish his studies as well as meet her future wife Agnes.

Her generosity does not end with David as we also see she looks after Mr. Dick who is a

mentally ill person who has been mistreated by his brother. From the novel, we see that she is the

only woman who runs her household and even though Mr. Wickfield who was her manager

squared her wealth, she does not tarnish his reputation. Miss. Betsey is independent enough as

although she is married to an awful husband, she is able to leave him, take back her maiden name

and lives on her own which is what many women in the story are unable to do starting with

David’s mother Clara Copperfield. Through her generous actions, David is able to thrive and

take control of his life and later meet the love of his life.

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Mr. Micawber a character is the story is the contrast of his step-father. When David is

sent to the factory to rot in there and later decides to run away, he is given shelter my Mr.

Micawber. David meets Mr. Micawber in London for the first time and they both became instant

friends. To the contrast of his step-father, Mr. Micawber is friendly, kind, really fun and jovial.

However, Mr. Micawber is poor at managing his money and constantly goes to David for

financial advice. Although he cannot get his life together he is kind which is well illustrated

when he is arrested as he is unable to pay all his debts. In the prison cell, him and his fellow cell

intimates drafts an amazing letter to the house of common petitioning for a change in the law

dealing with debts. He directs his energy to something that will not benefit him directly which

makes David observe that he is “a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a creature about

everything but his own affairs as has ever existed" (11.67) (Dicken, 111). This is the contrast of

his step-father’s character who was only committed to things that benefited him and was very

mean to people even those close to him including David’s mother. We see that Mr. Micawber is

self-sacrificing as he goes against all possible profits to turn Uriah Heep to David and

Traddles. We see that in the moral system of Dicken’s novel, all the faults of Mr. Micawber are

forgivable as the only unforgivable thing is lack of sympathy for other people which are a

problem that is only experienced with his step-father Mr. Murdstone. Although Mr. Micawber

causes David a lot of trouble by leaving him alone in London after being released from prison,

by borrowing money from Traddles and later leaving David on the hook with a collection agent,

his love for other people gets him rewarded at the end. He teaches David important life lessons

which include the importance of being generous and kind to people.

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David had two marriages which also shaped his life. One was to the beautiful yet

immature Dora Spenlow. Dora is young, small and angelic. She is also cheerful but helpless. She

has a weak personality as she cannot keep a house and certainly cannot survive childbirth. On the

other hand, Agnes is wise unlike Dora who is ignorant. She is serious and wins David trust. The

two women contributed to fulfilling David needs. Dora was unable to keep up a house even with

the help of David as she could not understand simple chores. We see that one day Dora asked

David to explain to her on how to do house-keeping which David did willingly but later we see

Dora breaking down and crying as she could not comprehend anything. The attraction that David

had towards Dora was her beauty which misleads him into marrying her. Although Dora is

portrayed as a character that lacks insight, at the end of the story we see that she realizes that her

marriage to David was a mistake and her immaturity would make David lose his love towards

her as she explains that “as years went on, my dear boy would have wearied of his child- wife.

She would have been less and less a companion for him. He would have been more and more

sensible of what wanted in his home. She wouldn't have improved”. (p, 711). The death of Dora

during childbirth gave David to choose a wife more wisely. Dora makes David life hard as he is

always stepping up to take care of the house as Dora is incapable. She makes David understand

that marriage is more than a beautiful woman.

On the other hand, Agnes was a very intelligent person who was also close to David as

she was his confidant. In the book, David at times consider her as his sister as he once lived

under her roof and came to like her very much. David was attracted to Agnes personality as she

was kind and simple unlike in the case of Dora where he was attracted to her beauty but still it

takes a lot of time for David to realize Agnes was the one for him and marry her which is well

explained by his own words “I see her, with her modest, orderly, placid manner, and I hear her

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beautiful calm voice, as I write these words. The influence for all good, which she came to

exercise over me at a later time, begins already to descend upon my breast”. (Ch. 16). She offers

shelter and even helps David reach his climax in his career and life through the positive energy

and wise words. David keeps using Agnes emotional resources until he becomes a better man.

In conclusion, we see that different characters in the story play a major role in defining

David’s life. Some of the characters like Mr. Murdstone had a negative impact in his life as he

separated David from his mother by convincing his mother to send him to a boarding school and

later making him pass through some hardship before he meets the right people. However, some

characters such as Mr. Micawber, Miss. Betsey and Agnes had a positive impact in his life due to

their acts of kindness, selflessness and humanity.

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Works cited

"Moments of Truth." Charles Dickens: David Copperfield / Great Expectations, 2013, pp. 79-

101.

Dickens, Charles. "David Copperfield." The Clarendon Dickens: David Copperfield, 1850.

Dickens, Charles. David copperfield. Bur, 2007.

Needham, Gwendolyn B. "The Undisciplined Heart of David Copperfield." Nineteenth-Century

Fiction 9.2 (1954): 81-107.

Price, Leah. "David Copperfield and the Absorbent Book." Princeton University Press, 2017.

Tredell, Nicolas. "Ladies and Gentlemen." Charles Dickens: David Copperfield / Great

Expectations, 2013, pp. 32-56.

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