David nearly lost the chance of learning knowledge in society. But he gradually became more and more mature in the strife against bad luck. The treason of his friend, Steerforths; the death of his wife, Dora, the bankrupt of his great-aunt, Miss Betsy, and the scheme of Heep with Murdstone took him great pain. In the meanwhile it took him the social knowledge that could not be taught at school. The evil society not only hurt the laboring people, but also created the valiant of the time. It is the combination of criticizing and idealism.
3. The Criticism to Capitalism and the Capitalist Society
Throughout David Copperfield, the powerful abuse the weak and helpless. Dickens focuses on orphans, women, and the mentally disabled to show that exploitation—not pity or compassion—is 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. So, through the description of the worst working conditions and the labor scenes, we can see that Dickens was always against the capitalism and the capitalist society.
3.1 The Criticism to Capitalism
The most persuasive influence is no more than the correlation of the two sharp classes. In David Copperfield, the most striking is the conflict between Steerforths and the Peggotties, two representatives of the opposite camps. In the eyes of Steerforths, the Peggotties are “animals and clods, and begins of another order”, Steerforths said, “Why, there is a pretty wide separation between them and us. They are not to be expected to be as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is not to be shocked, or hurt very easily. They are wonderfully virtuous, I dare say, but they have not very fine natures, and may be thankful that, like coarse skins, they are not easily wounded”. But the story of little Emily shows that such an assertion is all-false. The Peggotty family, in fact, contains by far the finest, most delicate and most sensitive natures to appear in the novel. From the touching description of the honest, simple good-hearted Peggotties we know that Dickens’s sympathy is with the working people. As for Micawber, we can also see this. He was run after and even put into prison because of his debt that would be considered as the worst debt in capitalist society. This debt has no emotions and it is cruel. It could destroy a man, even a family. But the high class used it to mutilate other poor people or working class. Charles Dickens deeply criticized the evil spirit of bourgeois. Dickens realized the nature of the two classes’ conflict. It is not a moral or an emotion conflict, but actually a class one. It was capitalism that created the conflict. So Dickens detested capitalism extremely.
3.2 The Criticism to the Capitalist Society
Now that the society produced the bourgeois class that we call inhumane bourgeois class, it also set up the lower class that served the higher and was constricted by them. Charles Dickens was a great writer who vividly portrayed child life for he had a bitter childhood. Dickens’ father was committed to the Marshalsen, a debtor’s prison. Losing financial support because of his father’s in custody, Charles Dickens had to rely on himself. With the help of a relative, he found a job pasting labels on bottles in blacking warehouse. His living condition was so tragic that he was poor clothed, ill fed, forced to lodge in the cheapest shelter, and to be mingled with the roughest and toughest companions who were from ghettos and slums. The unfortunate period lasted for three months until his fortune turned. The taste of his life in these years was so bitter and galling to the sensible boy that Charles Dickens could not forget this suffering when he was already a man of great success. In his David Copperfield composed in autobiographical form, his inhumane treatment was mirrored vividly. After David’s mother’s death, Mr. and Miss Murdstone drove David out of his house in a contemptible excuse: “You have received some considerable education already. Education was costly; and even if it were not, and I could afford it. I am of opinion that it would not be at all advantages to you to be kept at school. What is before you, is a fight with the world; and the sooner you begin it, the better”. David began his inhumane life as a man but not as a child. He worked in a crazy old warehouse that had decaying floors and staircase with his companions and squeaking gray rats. What he had to do was to reject the flawed bottles, and to rinse and wash them. When the empty bottles ran short, there were labels to be pasted on full ones, or corks to be fitted to them, seals to be put on the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks, All this work belonged to David. Other children like David in this company lived no better than David. They all belonged to the lower class like the ones in Dickens childhood. If it is said that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were cruel and inhumane, it can be concluded that the inhumane society moulds the evil people. So Dickens criticized not only Mr. and Miss Murdstone but also the capitalist society.
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