David Copperfield-A Novel Of Restlessness

David Copperfield, the favorite of Charles Dickens, was regarded as a novel with great serenity and optimism. In response to such an argument, the thesis argues that joyous though the ending is, the novel is imbued with restlessness, both in content and form. Aided mainly by reader-centered rhetorical approach and text-centered stylistics but not confined to them, the thesis attempts to analyze the novel from a new perspective and tries to prove that restlessness, the conspicuous feature that is conveyed to the reader, provides a key to the significance of the novel. The first chapter deals with the three aspects of restlessness manifested in the story, which are physical, mental and social. The constant meandering of characters, especially that of the protagonist in his course of life strikes the reader with restlessness; the mental agitation which results from fear, hate and guilt reveals the indetermination and inner turmoil of characters; the social mobility, upward or downward, mirrors the social desires and anxieties. The second chapter attends to the question of how restlessness is felt in the novel. Viewing both in a macro and micro way, the chapter analyzes how the narrative and stylistic choices entail the sense of restlessness in a reader. The animating power of language and textual oscillations between modes and forms bring forth the sense of fitfulness. The violation of conversational maxims and the intrusion of analepsis and prolepsis blur the boundary of past and present, the interior and the exterior, consciousness and unconsciousness. The employment of the limited perception, sudden reorientation of feeling, temptation and surprise, knowledge and refraining from action demonstrate the vacillation between sympathy and antipathy. All these techniques, veiled or plain, are combined to bring forth the sense of instability and agitation by affecting the reader's judgment. The last chapter goes deeper and copes with the root causes of the existence of restlessness. In part, it results from the process of reading, in which the reader's responses towards the contrasting worlds in Dickens are never stable. Moreover, the main concern of the novel - the tumultuous and inextricable memory- also leads a reader to restlessness. The conflicts between many selves are well presented in the novel, and inevitably generate the sense of agitation. Finally, the incompatibility of self and society is another contributing factor to restlessness. The coexistence of the individual's desire to defend and defy the existing social norms and values produces an inharmonious discord.