What the heck are we going to talk about?
by Jim Baird
Here’s
some math about long novels: An 882-page book like David Copperfield can be
read in two months if you have a normal life, one month if you read 30 pages
every day (no weekends off), and one week if you do nothing--absolutely
nothing--else. All this reading, and the caffeine you’ve probably consumed with
it, produces a serious side effect: you’ve urgently got to talk to someone about what you’ve
read. No one can hope to process thirty hours of Dickensian England without
some help. Like the character of Agnes in David Copperfield, the Long Novel
Weekend was there to listen and offer wisdom.
We
met Saturday morning, August 17th, at Vallombrosa retreat center, a
quiet ten-acre estate in Menlo Park, just a couple of miles from Stanford
Stadium. The format was perfect for the kind of discussion we described above.
The larger group was divided into six, and we met three times, so two groups
combined for each session. Each session was two hours. How far did we get in
our six-hours of trading ideas? Thanks to good questions from the group
leaders, and equally good answers from everyone, we travelled with David
Copperfield from youth to maturity, experiencing Victorian England as
eyewitnesses. The following three paragraphs, one for each session, are taken
from this writer’s session notes. They represent one listener’s experience and
memories, and so they’re limited in scope and somewhat free-form.
Session
1: Chapters 1 to 18 (Saturday Morning)
What
does it take to give someone a good start in life? Since David is writing this
“autobiography,” we know some things about him right away: he’s survived, and
he’s become an accomplished writer. The question is, how did he get there? Who
helped him? What shaped him? So many characters appear in the novel that they
could constitute the population of a town, and they represent Victorian
society, or as much as can be seen from the middle-class boy’s point of view at
the center of the story.
Life
is full of Murdstones , Steerforths, Uriah Heeps, the people who take advantage
of us, maybe wish us harm; It’s a tribute to Dickens’ skills, especially with
dialogue, that we recognize these people in our own lives. We all can also
think of Peggoty, Betsey, Dr. Strong who provide safety and a sense of family.
The one character central to David’s success and survival: Peggoty, who fills
the place left vacant by David’s deceased parents. In fact, without the women,
David wouldn’t have made it. Family, in all its variety, is perhaps the major
theme of the book, and it’s David’s salvation. This novel is optimistic about
people. It’s also awfully funny.
Session
2: Chapters 19 to 38 (Saturday afternoon)
David
is age 17 and out of school. It’s time to become an adult. Dickens captures
perfectly the awkwardness and comedy of a post-adolescent young man trying to
figure out the adult world, and getting taken advantage of at every turn.
Steerforth is his mentor, a master raconteur and man-about-town, who gets David
to host a dinner party and alcohol-fueled trip to the theater, culminating in a
funny, classic drunk scene. It’s easy to spot Dickens’ theater training in all
this. Here also are the “fallen” women: Rosa with her scar and anger, Annie who
is falsely suspected of adultery, Martha who seeks work in London but finds
prostitution; Emily, who runs off with Steerforth—he seems to be the main
character in this section—after he learned sailing in order to be close to her;
he’s a man with some sense of his destructive character, but with no desire to
change. Then, unforgettably, we have Miss Mowcher, a dwarf who must be the
least-inhibited, most fearless character in the book. There were probably a lot
of Mowchers in Victorian England, self-propelled and unconcerned with others’
opinions, bringing life and homemade medicine (and hair restoration) to people.
Section
3: Chapter 39 to End of Book (Sunday morning)
Dickens
as theater man again: this section is like the third act of a play. It begins
with Dora, who dies a woman-child, like Clara did at the beginning. Traddles
comes into his own in this section, a schoolmate like Steerforth, but generous,
self-controlled, competent. We see in this section the idea of the “mistaken
impulse of an undisciplined heart,” a comment of Annie Strong’s that provides
an explanation for much of the mischief in the novel. The undisciplined heart,
possibly the libido (Freud was an admirer of Dickens), the inner chemistry
that, unguided, leads us astray. Dora, childish as she is, has excellent
self-knowledge. In a Victorian marriage, unsuitability is the biggest problem;
marry an unsuitable person and you’re stuck. But the Micawber’s marriage is an
example, and a lesson, in how perseverance can lead on to victory, and that
people can change. We’re not completely
the product of our environment. After all, it is Micawber, the deadbeat, who
builds the case against Heep, and then goes off to a new life in Australia. A
final note: Dickens the novelist, using David’s voice, breaks through now and
then to assure his audience that everything is going to work out. For example,
Agnes tells David at one point that she isn’t going to marry Uriah Heep. Not to
worry, she says; Dickens is telling us the same thing.
There
you have it. For those who attended the Weekend, I hope these notes add to your
memories. If you couldn’t make it this time, I think you’ll agree that such
reading, and discussing, is time very well spent. Heck, let’s do it again next
year.
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