Charles Dickens and the Art of Being Good Enough

"I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything". - Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

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Loving classic books can be an insufferable trait, but I feel most pretentious when I recommend three writers - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Dickens.

Dickens was a quintessential Victorian. His characterizations are masterful and his moral insight is second to none, but his prose can be ponderous. This is why I sometimes feel silly recommending his work. People roll their eyes at the enormous tome that is David Copperfield and say things like, “Dickens? They tried to make me read his books in school. It was horrible.”

I haven’t finished all of Dickens’s books, but my favorite so far is David Copperfield (I still need to read A Tale of Two Cities and The Pickwick Papers). Great Expectations is a close second. Both stories spill over with life - Dickens can fashion blackhearted villains like no other writer, and he has a knack for making even the most wretched circumstances funny. David Copperfield, for instance, is an orphan slash child laborer slash young widower whose story is nonetheless hilarious. Dickens apparently based David’s life on his own,¹ and David Copperfield is distinctly Victorian in its depictions of poverty and abject mistreatment. Poor David becomes an orphan at nine and is forced into child labor by his malevolent stepfather, which is just a taste of the misfortunes that befall him later. Yet his story is endearing and even lighthearted.

Part of the reason why David Copperfield is hilarious is thanks to two of David’s guardians, Betsy Trotwood and Wilkins Micawber. Betsy Trotwood is a committed man-hater who becomes David’s unlikely protector. Wilkins Micawber is an honest man who is in and out of debtor’s prison due to a combination of laziness and misplaced optimism, but he too becomes a hero, at least to David.

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Betsey Trotwood appears in the first few pages of Copperfield. Trotwood is David’s great-aunt on his father’s side. Trotwood made an unfortunate marriage in her youth, paid off her abusive husband, and “immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible retirement.”²

David’s mother is widowed during her pregnancy and Trotwood arrives to assist her shortly before David is born. Trotwood is convinced the child will be a girl and declares, “From the moment of this girl’s birth, child, I intend to be her friend. I intend to be her godmother, and I beg you’ll call her Betsey Trotwood Copperfield. There must be no mistakes in life with THIS Betsey Trotwood.”³

When David is born a boy, Betsy departs in a rage: “My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the manner of a sling, aimed a blow at [the servant’s] head with it, put it on bent, walked out, and never came back.”⁴

It is several years before David encounters Betsy Trotwood again. In the meantime, his mother remarries to a superficially charming but evil man named Mr. Murdstone. Mr. Murdstone beats David and sends him away to school, and then when David is nine his mother dies and he becomes a child laborer at a factory. It’s during this time that David rents a room from Mr. Micawber in London.

David says of his first day with the Micawbers:⁵

“Arrived at this house in Windsor Terrace (which I noticed was shabby like [Mr. Micawber], but also, like himself, made all the show it could), he presented me to Mrs. Micawber, a thin and faded lady, not at all young, who was sitting in the parlour (the first floor was altogether unfurnished, and the blinds were kept down to delude the neighbours), with a baby at her breast. This baby was one of twins; and I may remark here that I hardly ever, in all my experience of the family, saw both the twins detached from Mrs. Micawber at the same time."

Mr. Micawber is, we discover, beset by creditors, including at least one who lurks in his home to demand repayment. Micawber ends up in debtor’s prison for a time. David recounts this period as follows:⁶

At last Mr. Micawber’s difficulties came to a crisis, and he was arrested early one morning, and carried over to the King’s Bench Prison in the Borough. He told me, as he went out of the house, that the God of day had now gone down upon him—and I really thought his heart was broken and mine too. But I heard, afterwards, that he was seen to play a lively game at skittles, before noon.

Later, David visits Mr. Micawber in prison, where Micawber imparts a famous pearl of wisdom:⁷

He solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter, gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for the amount, and put away his pocket-handkerchief, and cheered up.

While Mr. Micawber is a foolish and pathetic man, it’s impossible to dislike him. Even when he is dragged to debtor’s prison, he is cheerful. David does not live with Mr. Micawber for long, but he encounters Micawber again years later, when the older man saves David by vanquishing the evil Uriah Heep.

To return to Betsey Trotwood, David goes in search of her after Mr. Micawber flees his creditors and David cannot live with his family anymore.

When David manages to find his Aunt, she does not recognize him and greets him thus:

“Go away!’ said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and making a distant chop in the air with her knife. ‘Go along! No boys here!”⁸

Luckily for David, he is pursued by the evil Mr. Murdstone and his equally horrible sister, who want to force him into child labor again. Trotwood remembers David and takes pity on him. She dispatches the Murdstones with this memorable threat:

“Let me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, I’ll knock your bonnet off, and tread upon it!”⁹

From then on, she becomes the steadfast friend and protector she vowed to be when David’s mother was pregnant, and David’s life takes a dramatic turn for the better.

Why am I telling you about these estimable characters, aside from my own enjoyment? I think they can teach us something valuable. All of us are flawed, maybe even more flawed than Betsy Trotwood and Wilkins Micawber. We all have our prejudices, like Trotwood, and each of us has given into vice like Micawber. Even so, we can be good, and we can do good for others. Trotwood’s fierce personality and independence, honed by her experience of an abusive marriage, gives her the sharp tongue needed to dispatch the Murdstones. Micawber’s fundamental honesty endures despite his terrible habits, and he therefore defeats a malicious man, saves David, and eventually begins a new and better life for his family.

This is Dickens’s message - that there is hope for all of us. Everyone needs to hear this. No matter what we have done, we can still be a hero to somebody. So I’ll keep recommending Dickens, even if David Copperfield is a doorstopper. The risk of letting a friend miss out on Betsey Trotwood and Wilkins Micawber is too great to do otherwise.

1. See Charles Dickens Info, “David Copperfield by Charles Dickens,” https://www.charlesdickensinfo.com/novels/david-copperfield (“David Copperfield contains many biographical elements.”)

2. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 1.

3. Id.

4. Id.

5. Id. at Chapter 11.

6. Id.

7. Id.; see also Crain’s Detroit Business, “The Micawber Principle,” https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20120320/BLOG097/120329998/the-micawber-principle.

8. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 13.

9. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 14.