Dickens’ David Copperfield: A brief analysis of rooms.

Rooms are places of deep psycholgical unrest in Dickens. People feel trapped in spaces where age old drama are played out again and again. Repetition signifies deadly stasis and sterility. Think of Great Expectations and Little Dorrit!

Would you feel alarmed by such companions in your bedroom? The very idea of a portrait gazing down upon me whilst I slept is rather sinister. This is probably because however benign the face or the gaze, it does not move and cannot move, yet shadows and night time fears may engineeer tricks of  mobility and malign threat.

David is also naive here. His adoration of his school friend Steerforth, prevents his identification of the  unhealthy relationship between Mrs Steerforth and her adored son: an Oediphal drama which will culminate in disaster for more than just the Steerforth family.

 By contrast,  Rosa Dartle’s gaze is admonished for its judgmental aspect. Yet the novel proves her right and David idealistic and wrong, love blinding him even here to the deadly, unhealthily permissive  contract between parent and child.

Steerforth’s room was next to mine, and I went in to look at it. It was a picture of comfort, full of easy-chairs, cushions, and footstools, worked by his mother’s hand, and with no sort of thing omitted that could help to render it complete. Finally, her handsome features looked down on her darling from a portrait on the wall, as if it were even something to her than her likeness should watch him while he slept.

I found the fire burning clear enough in my room by this time, and the curtains drawn before the windows and round the bed, giving it a very snug appearance. I sat down in a great chair upon the hearth to meditate on my happiness, and had enjoyed the contemplation of it for some time, when I found a likeness of Miss Dartle looking eagerly at me from above the chimney-piece.

It was a startling likeness, and necessarily had a startling look. . . . . I wondered peevishly why they couldn’t put her anywhere else instead of quartering her on me.

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