After this, I have just one more month to go on David Copperfield. Strangely, after all the excitement of last month, this month's installment was a bit of a letdown. It was still entertaining and even quite dramatic at times, but Dickens also seems to be wrapping things up at this pointThere is much here about the Micawbers getting ready to make their departure to Australia, along with Mr. Peggotty and Emily. However, both their storylines seem to have ended last month, and it feels like Dickens is just looking for a way to keep them in the book for a few more chapters.
However, he does resolve the storylines of both Ham and Steerforth in a thrilling and sad manner. Never to shy away from hyperbole, Dickens begins Chapter 55 this way:
I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so bound by an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it, in these pages, that, from the beginning of my narrative, I have seen it growing larger and larger as I advanced, like a great tower in a plain, and throwing its forecast shadow even on the incidents of my childish days.
Well, then, I figured this ought to be good. And it was an exciting chapter, but these characters don't seem quite important enough to warrant such a buildup. The events were awful and somewhat indelible, but not quite bound by an infinite variety of ties.... Sorry.
I think I may just be grumpy because the book is ending soon. I've compared Copperfield to a long-running television show before, and I think there is a similar disappointment now that one of my favorite books is ending. A lot of the enjoyment of these characters is just to have them there; I don't necessarily want to see a concluding story arc for each one.
As with television shows, I wonder if there were readers at the time who said things like, "Yeah, I used to read Copperfield all the time, but it's really gone downhill since Chapter 33." Was there a moment when David Copperfield jumped the shark? We'll probably never know.
Leave a comment