The Strange Persistence of David Copperfield's Inheritance

Résumé 0

In David Copperfield, the theme of David’s inheritance has received little critical attention, compared with the theme of his development and self-fashioning as a man (the Bildungsroman) and as an artist (the Künstlerroman). Yet this article tries to show that the two are closely linked and that David’s Bildung depends largely on the strange persistence of his inheritance. Apparently, after the death of his father, he is left with a dubious inheritance, which is rather a handicap in the struggle for life. After another crisis, the death of his mother and his ordeal in the firm of Murdstone and Grinby’s, he turns to his Aunt Betsey, who adopts him and proves to be the provider of his real inheritance. However, even as he is enjoying it, he gradually discovers that his father has left him with an invaluable legacy, the small collection of books which are now lost, but live on and persist in his memory, thus forming the basis of his growth as a novelist. If we take the word inheritance in its Biblical sense, we may read the novel not simply as a Bildungsroman, or a Künstlerroman, but as a novel of conversion. Thus, the notion of inheritance bears within it the persistence of an ideal within legal and familial transmission.