Themes, Motifs & Symbols Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary

work. The Plight of the Weak Throughout David Copperfield, the powerful abuse the weak and helpless. Dickens focuses on orphans, women, and the mentally disabled to show that exploitationnot pity or compassionis the rule in an industrial society. Dickens draws on his own experience as a child to describe the inhumanity of child labor and debtors prison. His characters suffer punishment at the hands of forces larger than themselves, even though they are morally good people. The arbitrary suffering of innocents makes for the most vividly affecting scenes of the novel. David starves and suffers in a wine-bottling factory as a child. As his guardian, Mr. Murdstone can exploit David as factory labor because the boy is too small and dependent on him to disobey. Likewise, the boys at Salem House have no recourse against the cruel Mr. Creakle. In both situations, children deprived of the care of their natural parents suffer at the hands of their own supposed protectors. The weak inDavid Copperfieldnever escape the domination of the powerful by challenging the powerful directly. Instead, the weak must ally themselves with equally powerful characters. David, for example, doesnt stand up to Mr. Murdstone and challenge his authority. Instead, he flees to the wealthy Miss Betsey, whose financial stability affords her the power to shelter David from Mr. Murdstone. Davids escape proves neither self-reliance nor his own inner virtue, but rather the significance of family ties and family money in human relationships. Equality in Marriage In the world of the novel, marriages succeed to the extent that husband and wife attain equality in their relationship. Dickens holds up the Strongs marriage as an example to show that marriages can only be happy if neither spouse is subjugated to the other. Indeed, neither of the Strongs views the other as inferior. Conversely, Dickens criticizes characters who attempt to invoke a sense of superiority over their spouses. Mr. Murdstones attempts to improve Davids mothers character, for example, only crush her spirit. Mr. Murdstone forces Clara into submission in the name of improving her, which leaves her meek and voiceless. In contrast, although Doctor Strong does attempt to improve Annies character, he does so not out of a desire to show his moral superiority but rather out of love and respect for Annie. Doctor Strong is gentle and soothing with his wife, rather than abrasive and imperious like Mr. Murdstone. Though Doctor Strongs marriage is based at least partially on an ideal of equality, he still assumes that his wife, as a woman, depends upon him and needs him for moral guidance. Dickens, we see, does not challenge his societys constrictive views about the roles of women. However, by depicting a marriage in which a man and wife share some balance of power, Dickens does point toward an age of empowered women. Wealth and Class Throughout the novel, Dickens criticizes his societys view of wealth and class as measures of a persons value. Dickens uses Steerforth, who is wealthy, powerful, and noble, to show that these traits are more likely to corrupt than improve a persons character. Steerforth is treacherous and self-absorbed. On the other hand, Mr. Peggotty and Ham, both poor, are generous, sympathetic characters. Many people in Dickenss time believed that poverty was a symptom of moral degeneracy and that people who were poor deserved to suffer because of inherent deficiencies. Dickens, on the other hand, sympathizes with the poor and implies that their woes result from societys unfairness, not their own failings.

Dickens does not go so far as to suggest that all poor people are absolutely noble and that all rich people are utterly evil. Poor people frequently swindle David when he is young, even though he too is poor and helpless. Doctor Strong and Agnes, both wealthy, middle-class citizens, nonetheless are morally upstanding. Dickens does not paint a black-and-white moral picture but shows that wealth and class are are unreliable indicators of character and morality. Dickens invites us to judge his characters based on their individual deeds and qualities, not on the hand that the cruel world deals them. Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the texts major themes. Mothers and Mother Figures Mothers and mother figures have an essential influence on the identity of the characters in David Copperfield. Almost invariably, good mother figures produce good children while bad mothers yield sinister offspring. This moral connection between mothers and children indicates Dickenss belief that mothers have an all-important role in shaping their childrens characters and destinies.

The success of mother figures in the novel hinges on their ability to care for their children without coddling them. Miss Betsey, the aunt who raises David, clearly adores him but does not dote on him. She encourages him to be strong in everything he does and to be fair at all times. She corrects him when she thinks he is making a mistake, as with his marriage to Dora, and her ability to see faults in him helps him to mature into a balanced adult. Although Miss Betsey raises David to deal with the difficulties of the world, she does not block those hardships. Instead, she forces David to confront them himself. In contrast, Uriahs mother, Mrs. Heep, dotes on her son and allows him to dominate her. As a result, Uriah develops a vain, inflated self-regard that breeds cruel behavior. On the whole, Dickenss treatment of mother-child relationships in the novel is intended to teach a lesson. He warns mothers to love their children only in moderation and to correct their faults while they can still be fixed. Accented Speech Dickens gives his characters different accents to indicate their social class. Uriah Heep and Mr. Peggotty are two notable examples of such characters whose speech indicates their social standing. Uriah, in an attempt to appear poor and of good character, consistently drops the h in humble every time a group of Mr. Wickfields friends confront him. Uriah drops this accent as soon as his fraud is revealed: he is not the urchin-child he portrays himself to be, who grew up hard and fell into his current character because of the cruelty of the world. Rather, Uriah is a conniving, double-crossing social climber who views himself as superior to the wealthy and who exploits everyone he can. Mr. Peggottys lower-class accent, on the other hand, indicates genuine humility and poverty. Dickens uses accent in both cases to advance his assertion that class and personal integrity are unrelated and that it is misleading to make any connection between the two. Physical Beauty In David Copperfield, physical beauty corresponds to moral good. Those who are physically beautiful, like Davids mother, are good and noble, while those who are ugly, like Uriah Heep, Mr. Creakle, and Mr. Murdstone, are evil, violent, and ill-tempered. Dickens suggests that internal characteristics, much like physical appearance, cannot be disguised permanently. Rather, circumstances will eventually reveal the moral value of characters whose good goes unrecognized or whose evil goes unpunished. In David Copperfield, even the most carefully buried characteristics eventually come to light and expose elusive individuals for what they really are. Although Steerforth, for example, initially appears harmless but

annoying, he cannot hide his true treachery for years. In this manner, for almost all the characters in the novel, physical beauty corresponds to personal worth. Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. The Sea The sea represents an unknown and powerful force in the lives of the characters in David Copperfield, and it is almost always connected with death. The sea took Little Emlys father in an unfortunate accident over which she had no control. Likewise, the sea takes both Ham and Steerforth. The sea washes Steerforth up on the shorea moment that symbolizes Steerforths moral emptiness, as the sea treats him like flotsam and jetsam. The storm in the concluding chapters of the novel alerts us to the danger of ignoring the seas power and indicates that the novels conflicts have reached an uncontrollable level. Like death, the force of the sea is beyond human control. Humans must try to live in harmony with the seas mystical power and take precautions to avoid untimely death. Flowers Flowers represent simplicity and innocence in David Copperfield. For example, Steerforth nicknames David Daisy because David is nave. David brings Dora flowers on her birthday. Dora forever paints flowers on her little canvas. When David returns to the Wickfields house and the Heeps leave, he discovers that the old flowers are in the room, which indicates that the room has been returned to its previous state of simplicity and innocence. In each of these cases, flowers stand as images of rebirth and healtha significance that points to a springlike quality in characters associated with their blossoms. Flowers indicate fresh perspective and thought and often recall moments of frivolity and release. Mr. Dicks Kite Mr. Dicks enormous kite represents his separation from society. Just as the kite soars above the other characters, Mr. Dick, whom the characters believe to be insane, stands apart from the rest of society. Because Mr. Dick is not a part of the social hierarchies that bind the rest of the characters, he is able to mend the disagreement between Doctor and Mrs. Strong, which none of the other characters can fix. The kites carefree simplicity mirrors Mr. Dicks own childish innocence, and the pleasure the kite offers resembles the honest, unpretentious joy Mr. Dick brings to those around him.

Character Profiles

Agnes Wickfield Agnes is the daughter of Mr. Wickfield and David's second wife. She is the closest thing to a perfect person in the novel. She loves her father and David and is an unfailing support to both men. Even when David marries Dora, Agnes selflessly puts her own love for him aside and never gives way to jealousy or melancholy. She remains a loyal friend to him, always willing to offer wise advice and affection, and also befriends Dora. Dora Spenlow Dora is David's first wife. She is childish, frivolous and silly. More importantly, she is

unsuited to being David's wife, in that her mind is no match for David's and she is utterly incapable of the most basic housekeeping tasks. On the other hand, she is a joyous, playful, and beautiful woman who adores David and inspires all who know her to love and protect her - including David. Her friend Julia Mills, while warning David that his attempts to educate her in housekeeping will almost certainly fail, calls Dora "a thing of light, and airiness, and joy." Though David attempts to "form" Dora's mind after they are married, he only makes her miserable and soon abandons the project. Dora is never strong, and falls ill after becoming pregnant and losing the baby, either through miscarriage or stillbirth. On her deathbed, Dora tells David she believes that she married too young. Then, she tells Agnes that she 'bequeaths' David to her. David is grief-stricken by Dora's death, but it frees him to give way to the quieter, more mature love he shares with Agnes. Betsey Trotwood Betsey is David's aunt. She turns up at David's mother's house on the day David is born, but marches off in disgust when she finds out that the baby is a boy. David does not see her again until he runs away from the factory job that his stepfather, Mr. Murdstone, forced him into. He goes to Betsey, as his only known relative, and she adopts him and becomes a second mother to him. Betsey is an irascible but kindly woman who mistrusts the male sex, having been betrayed by a husband she loved. Her eccentricities include a fastidious dislike of donkeys trampling on her lawn; an absolute confidence in the remarkable qualities of the simple-minded Mr. Dick, another of her adoptees; and a concern that people should not make unwise matches, as she did. When David falls in love with Dora, she comments in exasperation, "blind, blind, blind!"/span> Though Betsey at first expresses contempt for silly, immature and incapable women such as Clara Copperfield and Dora, she becomes very fond of Dora. This shows that in spite of Betsey's abrupt manner and tendency not to suffer fools gladly, her heart is warm. Clara Peggotty Peggotty is David's nurse when he is a child. She loves David and cares for him her whole life. After Mr. Murdstone marries Clara Copperfield, Peggotty is David's - and his mother's - main source of motherly love and support. After Clara Copperfield's death, Peggotty and Betsey become surrogate mothers to David. Peggotty marries Mr. Barkis.

Little Em'ly Little Em'ly is Peggotty's niece. She was taken in and brought up by Mr. Peggotty when her father drowned at sea. As a boy, David falls in love with Little Em'ly. She is vain, and has a strong desire to be a lady, which proves her downfall. Though she is engaged to Ham, she is enchanted by Steerforth's wealth and charm, and allows him to seduce her and take her away from her family. When he abandons her, she is a disgraced woman. Eventually, she is found by Mr. Peggotty, who takes her with him to Australia to escape her ruined reputation and make a fresh start. There, she refuses all marriage proposals and devotes herself to hard work on the family farm and acts of kindness and

charity to her neighbors. With Mrs. Gummidge, Little Em'ly is the character who most transforms herself through suffering.

Mrs. Gummidge Mrs. Gummidge is a sailor's widow who was taken in and looked after by Mr. Peggotty when her husband was drowned at sea. She complains constantly of being a poor "lone and lorn" creature since her husband died. After Little Em'ly runs away with Steerforth, Mrs. Gummidge, who had been devoted to the girl, undergoes a transformation. She stops complaining, supports Mr. Peggotty, and keeps his house while he is away looking for Little Em'ly. After Little Em'ly is found, Mrs. Gummidge goes with her and Mr. Peggotty to live in Australia, where she works hard on the family farm and even receives a proposal of marriage.

Clara Copperfield Clara Copperfield is David's mother. Like Dora, she is beautiful, gentle, and loving, but also like Dora, she is childlike and impractical. Her second husband, Mr. Murdstone, and his sister, Miss Murdstone, are cruel to her, crushing her joyful spirit and eventually making her fatally ill. Betsey nicknames her "poor baby," conveying her immaturity and helplessness in the face of the Murdstones. Mr. Edward Murdstone and Miss Jane Murdstone Mr. Murdstone is Clara Copperfield's second husband, and Miss Murdstone is his sister. Mr. Murdstone is a strict and cruel man whose motive in marrying Clara appears to be to crush her spirit and control her, under the pretence of improving her mind and "firmness" of character. In this, he is aided by his sister, Miss Murdstone, who is a female version of him. The Murdstones treat David with equal brutality, and make it clear from the beginning that they want him out of the way. After Clara's death, Mr. Murdstone takes David out of school and sends him away to work in a factory; David never returns to his household. By the end of the novel, Mr. Murdstone has married again and is reported to be destroying his new wife as surely as he did Clara. For a short period, Miss Murdstone becomes a paid companion to Dora, whom she bosses about just as she did Clara. Dr. Strong and Annie Strong Dr. Strong is the elderly headmaster of the school in which Betsey enrolls David to complete his broken education. A kind and generous man, Dr. Strong has married a much younger and very beautiful woman, Annie. Annie comes from a poor family and her relatives, particularly her mother, use her name to extort money from Dr. Strong. Annie is ashamed of their behavior, not least because it gives rise to a popular suspicion that she only married Dr. Strong for his money. Some of the people who believe that Annie has ulterior motives in her marriage also believe that she is having an affair with her cousin, Jack Maldon. Uriah Heep exploits both these suspicions, and tells Dr. Strong that Annie and Jack are lovers, upsetting Dr. Strong and driving a wedge between him and his wife. In fact, both suspicions are false. Annie is faithful to her husband, whom she loves deeply, and mercenary considerations played no part in her

decision to marry him. Mr. Dick encourages Annie to speak out her true feelings to Dr. Strong; this clears the air, and they are reconciled. The Strongs are an example of true compatibility in marriage. Though they are very different from each other in superficial measures like age and attractiveness, in Annie's words, they are alike in "mind and purpose."

Mrs. Micawber Mrs. Micawber is Mr. Micawber's wife. She is from a socially superior family to her husband's, and her relatives all disapprove of him because of his financial problems. Nevertheless, she is devoted to her husband, standing by him in his difficulties and never losing faith in his abilities. Her favorite expression is, "I never will desert Mr. Micawber." Students of the psychoanalytical theory of the unconscious may wonder if this is because the possibility of deserting Mr. Micawber is ever-present at the back of her mind, however unacceptable it may be to her conscious awareness. Mrs. Steerforth Mrs. Steerforth is James Steerforth's wealthy mother. A proud and arrogant woman, she dotes on her son to such an extent that she has spoiled him. Mrs. Steerforth treats David contemptuously when he is not occupying his role of admirer of Steerforth. When Steerforth takes away Little Em'ly, Mrs. Steerforth blames Little Em'ly for bringing disgrace upon the Steerforth family. Mrs. Steerforth never recovers from Steerforth's death, remaining bitter and quarreling with Rosa about who loved him best. Rosa Dartle Rosa Dartle is a distant relative of the Steerforths, an orphan, and a ward of Mrs. Steerforth's. She has a deep scar on her face, made by Steerforth as a boy when he threw a hammer at her because she exasperated him. The wound is symbolic of the inner hurt that she nurses as a result of years of unrequited and suppressed love for Steerforth. She has become bitter and sarcastic. She mercilessly picks apart Steerforth's assumptions with seemingly innocent but pointed questions which she poses under the pretence of trying to educate herself. Like Mrs. Steerforth, Rosa fails to move on from Steerforth's death, and the two continue to quarrel about which of them loved him best.

Miss Mowcher Miss Mowcher is a dwarf who is a professional hairdresser. She cuts Steerforth's hair and then carries a letter from him to Little Em'ly which leads Little Em'ly to run away with him. Miss Mowcher is willing to carry this letter because she has been falsely led to think that it warns Little Em'ly against the predatory intentions of David. When Miss Mowcher learns of Steerforth's betrayal, she is full of sorrow at the part she unwittingly played in Little Em'ly's downfall. Miss Mowcher redeems herself by carrying out a citizens?' arrest of Littimer and holding him until the police arrive to arrest him. Miss Mowcher acts as a mouthpiece for Dickens in proclaiming the rights of people who are disabled or different to treated with respect.

Martha Martha is a young woman whom Little Em'ly befriends when they both work at Mr. Omer's. Martha subsequently falls into disgrace; it is implied, though not explicitly said, that she works as a prostitute. Martha is redeemed when she devotes herself to the search for Little Em'ly, finds her, and restores her to Mr. Peggotty. She is rewarded by being taken to Australia by Mr. Peggotty, where she marries.

Essay Q&A 1. How does Dickens use pairs of characters in David Copperfield? Dickens frequently uses pairs of characters, or characters in parallel situations, to draw out contrasts between the two. Where characters are paired, they have some similarities, but it is in the differences that Dickens makes his point. For example, Uriah Heep is from a similar poor background to David's, and both boys and their mothers had to struggle to achieve success. Both train in law, and both desire Agnes. But there, the similarity ends. David maintains his loving heart and integrity and achieves success through hard work and the occasional helping hand from friends such as Betsey and Agnes. Uriah, in contrast, becomes bitter, conniving and corrupt, and resorts to underhand behavior and fraud to achieve his ends. It is true that Uriah lacks a Betsey to finance his schooling and training, and an Agnes to point him towards a job as Dr. Strong's secretary, but David's good nature will always attract loving friends, whereas Uriah repulses honest people. When Uriah accuses David of always going against him, David counters, "it is you who have always been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world." In his role as David's friend, Steerforth is paired with Agnes and Traddles. But whereas Agnes and Traddles are true friends, being loyal and always ready to help David and his friends and loved ones, Steerforth is a false friend. He belittles David and exploits his closeness to Mr. Peggotty by seducing Little Em'ly. Where Agnes and Traddles are selfless, Steerforth is selfish. Another character pair is formed by the authority figures who look after David as a boy. David's loving, gentle mother and nurse, Clara Copperfield and Clara Peggotty, are contrasted with the cruel and brutal Mr. and Miss Murdstone. David's wives are also contrasted: the frivolous, childlike Dora is set against the mature, wise Agnes. Dickens's point in creating these pairs of characters and parallel situations is to show that people have a choice as to how they behave and what they are. A poverty-stricken child can choose to become a David or a Uriah Heep. A parent or guardian of a child can choose to be a gentle Clara Copperfield or a cruel Mr. Murdstone. A friend can be true, like Agnes and Traddles, or false, like Steerforth. While Dora cannot change her nature and become an Agnes, David is certainly free to exercise good judgment in his choice of wife; this he fails to do with his first marriage, but succeeds with the second.

2. In telling the story of her marriage, Annie Strong says that she is grateful to her husband for saving her from "the first mistaken impulse of my undisciplined heart." How does this phrase apply to the novel as a whole? David Copperfield is a bildungsroman, the dictionary definition of which is "a novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a usually youthful main character. As such, its major theme is the disciplining of David's emotions and morals. He learns not to trust "the first mistaken impulse of [the] undisciplined heart." This theme is extended to many characters and relationships in the novel. The characters fall into three groups: those who have always had disciplined hearts, those who lack them, and those who develop them over the course of the novel. Characters in the first group include Agnes, who is always selfless, mature, and loving; Mr. Peggotty, who never fails in his love and devotion to Little Em'ly; and Traddles, who is a loyal friend to David and uses wise judgment in choosing his wife, to whom he remains constant during a frustratingly long engagement. Characters in the second group include Uriah Heep, whose downfall is his greed; the vain and selfish Steerforth, who ruins the happiness of an entire family while gratifying a whimsical desire for Little Em'ly; and Mrs. Steerforth and Rosa Dartle, who spoil Steerforth with an indiscriminate adulation and who remain forever embittered by his loss. Characters in the third group include David. He first marries the unsuitable Dora, and must learn through an unsatisfactory and unequal marriage to make wiser choices in future. Once he acquires a disciplined heart, he is able to appreciate the more settled love between himself and Agnes, and marries her. Another character who learns discipline is Little Em'ly, who, after her undisciplined escapade with Steerforth, repents. In her new life in Australia, she devotes herself to hard work and acts of charity, refusing offers of marriage. A third character in this group is Betsey, who made an unwise marriage when she was young and paid for it long afterwards. Thereafter, she is concerned that other characters should not make the same mistakes as she did, and has reservations about David's marrying Dora. Betsey also learns greater tolerance and compassion as the novel progresses: at the start, she expresses contempt and impatience for weak-minded women like Clara Copperfield and Dora, but later, she grows to love Dora. 3. In what ways does David Copperfield operate as social comment? Several social problems are highlighted in the novel, on many of which Dickens actively campaigned for reform. These include the plight of women who have fallen into prostitution - like Martha. Prostitution in cities was one of the effects of the Industrial Revolution, which involved thousands of people moving from the country into urban areas. The fate of these people rose and fell with the state of the manufacturing economy and levels of wages at any one time, and in Dickens's time, extreme poverty and poor housing conditions (such as he portrays when David goes to Martha's house) was widespread. Dickens shows the poverty, shame, and desperation that many of these women must have felt, and presents the dirty, overcrowded and rundown areas of town where they lived and worked. The story of Martha acts as a foreshadowing of what may have been Little Em'ly's story, too, had not the kind

foreigners and Mr. Peggotty rescued her. Dickens was concerned about the plight of prostitutes, took care to paint an accurate picture of the problem in David Copperfield, and in his life, worked actively to help such women into safer and more socially acceptable occupations. Nevertheless, he shares something of the shame that was felt about prostitution by the society of his time. When David and Mr. Peggotty resolve to question Martha about Little Em'ly, they take great care not to approach her in a place where people can see them, instead following her to an isolated spot. This can hardly be to protect Martha, since being approached by men in public is a part of her job; it is to protect David and Mr. Peggotty from public disapproval. Dickens's shame also comes over in the story of Little Em'ly after she is returned to Mr. Peggotty. Though Little Em'ly does not have to resort to prostitution, there is a strong sense of her being permanently sullied by her sexual relationship with Steerforth. Neither Ham nor David ever speak directly to her again, and David only sees her through a doorway and amongst the crowd on a ship. Other social problems portrayed in the novel include the injustice of the debtors' prison; poverty and society's attitudes to the poor; the question of how the insane should be treated (Mr. Dick's brother wanted to put him in an asylum for life, which would have been a loss to society); the injustice of child labor; prison reform; the plight of the homeless (portrayed in David's punishing journey from London to Betsey's house in Dover after his escape from the factory); and the abuse of children in schools. 4. Discuss the role of memory in David Copperfield. David Copperfield has been called first and foremost a novel about memory. It is David's autobiography, which he constructs from memory. The process links the past to the present, and brings continuity to his life, in that it shows how a series of past incidents build on each other and help to create the David of the present. Memory can reawaken a blissful experience from the past, as in Chapter XLIII, when David describes the day of his wedding to Dora. The chapter stands out because it is written in the present tense, as if David has re-entered that moment of the past and is re-living it as he tells it to the reader. This sense of immediacy is reinforced by the usually vivid descriptions of tiny details of the sort that people only tend to recall if they are accompanied by extreme joy or extreme horror. For example, David describes the new marital home: "Such a beautiful little house as it is, with everything so bright and new; with the flowers on the carpets looking as if freshly gathered, and the green leaves on the paper as if they had just come out...and Dora's garden hat with the blue ribbon ." Equally, memory can be a source of suffering. In Chapter X, David introduces his time working at the factory with the words: "I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the remembrance of, while I remember anything; and the recollection of which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and haunted happier times." The act of remembering makes him re-live the trauma. In Chapter LVIII, in contrast, the act of writing about recent traumatic events - the deaths of Dora and Steerforth and the emigration of the Micawbers, Mr. Peggotty and Little Em'ly - is therapeutic and cathartic for David. It rouses his depressed energies

and marks the end of his need to live abroad. When he has finished, he makes plans to return to England. Though memory usually provides continuity for David, on some occasions it brings the shock of cutting him off from his past. In Chapter XXII, David returns to his childhood home to find that it is lived in by a lunatic and his carers. As he looks up at the window of his old room, the lunatic gazes back, as David were looking in a mirror. On one hand, the lunatic is shockingly different from David, but on the other hand, David sees him as a distorted version of himself, and wonders if the lunatic has the same thoughts as he did when he looked out of that window. As Jeremy Tambling points out in his Introduction to the Penguin edition of David Copperfield(2004), the lunatic is also reminiscent of Mr. Dick, who, like David, is engaged in writing his autobiography. Mr. Dick is hampered in his work by overwhelming thoughts of King Charles's head, which Betsey describes as "his allegorical way of expressing" disturbing memories. Thus, as Tambling says, "Memory, which for David Copperfield seems accessible, for Mr. Dick is blocked by other memories, historical and traumatic." That memory which translates into long-standing tradition is one of the elements that, in David's view, makes England in general, and the law in particular, "an arduous place to rise in." (Chapter LIX). One practical solution to this problem of stifling tradition in the nineteenth century was emigration. The Micawbers, Mr. Peggotty, Little Em'ly and Martha are able to take advantage of this solution. In doing so, they escape the societal memory of their past disgraces and failures in England. They are free to start again with a clean slate. 5. How does Dickens present the idea of redemption through different characters? In David Copperfield, some characters are redeemed, while others are not. The difference lies in whether or not they have a conscience and are driven by it to repent. Little Em'ly is so ashamed of her elopement with Steerforth that she cannot bear to return home and face her uncle. She is rewarded for her penitence with a new life in Australia, where no one knows about her past. However, Dickens does not allow her to be totally forgiven. Ham and David do not speak to her between her rescue and her leaving England, and the reader only sees her clinging to her uncle with her head hanging low, suggesting that she is still partially in disgrace. This continues in Australia, where she is shown refusing all offers of marriage and absorbing herself in hard work on the land and acts of charity - a penitential, though no doubt rewarding, existence. Martha also repents of her life as a prostitute, though, unlike Little Em'ly, she is allowed to describe the shame she feels. Her penitence is devoting herself to the search for Little Em'ly for no pay. She is rewarded by Mr. Peggotty when he takes her to Australia with him and Little Em'ly. Unlike Little Em'ly, Martha is allowed to marry, perhaps because, as a minor character of whom the reader knows very little before she became a prostitute, the reader has no image of her in her purity. Thus her fall into disgrace is less shocking than Little Em'ly's, and the sense of innocence defiled less striking. In the cases of both Little Em'ly and Martha, the purifying value of hard work on the

land is emphasized. There is an echo of Adam and Eve, who, after they disobeyed God and fell from grace, were sentenced to do everlasting penance by tilling the soil to glean a living. Dickens shared the notion prevalent in Victorian England that honest hard work was improving to the soul. The adult David reflects that he has always achieved his goals due to his "steady, plain, hard-working qualities." These qualities are notably lacking in a character who is not redeemed, Steerforth. Steerforth's life is frivolous, and David finds himself wishing that he had something useful to do. More importantly, however, Steerforth does not repent. He does have a conscience, as is revealed by his comment in Chapter XXI that David is a good person, to which he adds, "I wish we all were!" and his request to David in Chapter XXIX that David remember him at his best. He knows what is right and what is wrong, but he still persists in doing what is wrong, in taking Little Em'ly away and then abandoning her. He even seems arrogant in the manner of his death, clinging to his boat's mast when the other men have drowned, and waving his red cap at the onlookers. Thus there is no redemption for Steerforth, and it is fitting that he is not rewarded, but is swallowed by the sea. Uriah and Littimer are even less redeemable than Steerforth, since they have no conscience at all. Uriah preserves a shocking sense of self-righteousness even in prison. Though he claims to repent of his "follies," he has resumed his old fraudulent act of being "umble." At the same time, he shows he is far from humble by making a point of forgiving David for striking him in the face: a truly humble person would not assume enough superiority over David to forgive him for a relatively small misdemeanor when he himself had committed major frauds. Littimer too is unrepentant, and in similar vein, says that he forgives Little Em'ly - a woman whose forgiveness he should beg. David recognizes that both Uriah and Littimer are what they always were: "hypocritical knaves." Unredeemed, they live to perpetuate their frauds and lies on deluded prison reformers like Mr. Creakle.