Reading as “Fancy and Consolation” in David Copperfield

The first chapter considers the infamous depiction of school in David Copperfield as indicative of the ways in which objectives and methods of education align with those of the bildungsroman: both track the progress of a young person over the course of their maturation and seek to instill certain formative intellectual and moral values through specific modes of learning. In David Copperfield, the novel's capacity to teach, to form, and to influence emerges in the many scenes of reading and learning that mark out David’s path toward a “disciplined heart.” As Dickens organizes David’s maturation around scenes of education through reading, the reader experiences virtual versions of the same; indeed, Woolf contends that David Copperfield “make(s) creators of us and not merely readers and spectators.” Building on Woolf’s comment, this chapter demonstrates that the developmental narrative of the title character envelops the reader into a collaborative, formational relationship. David Copperfield, which self-reflexively constructs serial events into narrative artifice and narrative into identity, models these maneuvers for the reader and encourages her to shape her sense of herself and the world in similar ways.