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Foucault, Dickens, and David Copperfield

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Gareth Cordery
Gareth Cordery
Affiliation:
University of Canterbury
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Extract

Margaret atwood's narrator in Bodily Harm, reminiscing about her childhood, says: “I learned to listen for what wasn't being said, because it was usually more important than what was” (55). Making a similar point, in The History of Sexuality Foucault writes that “There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses” (1: 27). If we read David Copperfield in this way — listening to the silences, as well as attending closely to what is being said — the narrative which emerges from the surface bildungsroman is very different from the traditional story of David who learns that “there can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose,” and that his marriage to Dora was “the first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart” (ch. 45; 733). In this surface narrative David, suitably chastened, is released to marry the boring Agnes by the fortuitous death of the unfortunate Dora. Many critics have commented wisely on David's emotional and psychological development. What I want to suggest is that, while the surface story traces the disciplining of David's emotions, there is another narrative which tells of a different kind of disciplining, one that subjects David to a variety of social norms, rules, and regulations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 71 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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