Characterization and Social Criticism in Fielding and Dickens

Introduction: Naming and the Hero's Identity

The naming of the protagonists of David Copperfield and Joseph Andrews is important, as these two characters are, to use Dickens's phrase, the heroes of their own lives. David's birth is filled with portents: the caul around his neck, and his weak mother — who foreshadows, in her wax-doll-like attitude and form, her son's eventual marriage to the silly Dora. The younger David becomes a kind of replacement father to his mother, taking the name and place of his ghostly, elderly father, who barely functions as a personality in the book. Even the name of the Copperfield home, "Rookery," originates in the elder Mr. David Copperfield's fantasy of imagining birds swarming around the rooftops, rather than in any observable reality.

His sister Betsy Trotwood remarks that it is "Mr. David Copperfield all over" to engage in such fantasy — fixating not on practicality, as a name like "Cookery" would suggest, but only on the old, empty nests of departed birds. Perhaps the most telling aspect of the departed Mr. David Copperfield's character, however, is the woman he leaves behind: barely more than a child herself, though he was almost twice her age and in frail health. It seems cruel for an elderly man to marry so young a woman, particularly when poor health made it likely he could not provide for her after his death. This demonstrates, once again, the lack of practicality, the optimism in the face of evident mortality (symbolized by those empty bird nests), and the unwillingness to plan for the foreseeable future that is characteristic of the man.

Characterization of the Elder David Copperfield

Thus, the elder David Copperfield emerges — despite his complete absence as a physical presence in the novel — as a fully realized character. Charles Dickens prefers to "show" rather than to tell about his characters; in other words, he uses telling details rather than authoritative statements to characterize his figures, whether present or, as in the case of David Copperfield senior, absent. This characterization of David's father as impractical, set against the practical Betsy, is consistent with the practical-versus-impractical dichotomy that runs throughout the novel — not only between Betsy and her brother, but later between Dora and David as well.

Fielding Versus Dickens: Telling Versus Showing

Henry Fielding, by contrast, tells the reader directly what to think about the various characters in Joseph Andrews. Rather than dwelling on the interior character of the hero's progenitors, Fielding provides a genealogy of the man's family, emphasizing how family history led up to the main character's birth and circumstances. Physical events, rather than internal character, are at the forefront of the narration, and little ambiguity or interpretive space is left to the reader — unlike in Dickens's David Copperfield. Because of this static, "told" quality, the characterization in Joseph Andrews is less vivid and conveys a weaker sense of lived reality. Joseph's namesake ancestor is also less typical of the novel overall, whose most fascinating characters tend to belong to the lower rather than the upper classes of society.

Conclusion: Compassion Over Political Change

Ultimately, what Dickens wants to see changed is the middle-class ideal of family, and the proper division of male and female domestic roles, as achieved by Agnes and David at the novel's close — he wishes this model to become the accepted social ideal, supplanting the showier, less stable arrangements embraced by David's foolish mother at the novel's opening. Dickens does not want his readers to feel outrage at the oppression they witness and then go out and enact political change. Rather, he wants them to emerge from the created world of the novel with more compassionate hearts — hearts that do not, however, wish to fundamentally rearrange the structure of society.