Chapter 1: What is the premise of Season 5 of Storytime for Grownups?
Hello and welcome to Storytime for Grownups. I'm Faith Moore and this season we're reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.
Each episode I'll read a few chapters from the book, pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along. It's like an audiobook with built-in notes. So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair, and settle in. It's Storytime! Hello, welcome back. Okay, boy, that was quite a cliffhanger, I guess, last time, right? Never more to be friends with Steerforth ever again.
I know that many of you are like, good, we don't want him to be friends with Steerforth anymore, but what is going to happen? And I got so many great letters this time of people saying, what is gonna happen? I can't wait, I want to read ahead, and we're gonna talk about all of it. But first... Just a couple of reminders.
The first is that Tea Time, our monthly voice chat over in our online community, The Drawing Room, is coming up on April 30th. That's a Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern. If you'd like to join us, but you're not yet a member of The Drawing Room, you should scroll into the show notes and click on the link that's there. to learn more about the drawing room and hopefully sign up.
You have to be a member of the Landed Gentry membership tier in order to participate in that. I hope that you will join us. I'll keep reminding you as we get closer, but it's April 30th at 8 p.m. Eastern. Other than that, all the usual reminders. Please subscribe to this show. Please tap the five stars in your podcast player if you are enjoying the show.
If you have a couple of extra seconds, please leave a positive review. All of those things participate in some sort of magical algorithm altogether that caused the show to start showing up in people's podcast players just randomly and magically. And I really don't know how it works. I think...
Maybe fairies and fairy godmothers are involved, but please do do those things if you can and you're able. And hopefully that will make more people show up magically to listen to the show. And the more the merrier, really. And speaking of the more the merrier, the other thing that you can do is just tell people, tell your friends, tell your colleagues everything.
Tell your family members, tell random people, call a random number that you make up and just tell them about Storytime for Grownups. No, don't do that. But tell anyone that you can think of that might like this show about the show, because I really do think that the more of us there are reading these great books, keeping them alive, talking about them together, the better the world will be.
Okay, enough of all of that. Let's get into this episode. So last time we read chapter 29. Today we're going to be reading chapter 30. How exciting, 30. We're not quite halfway yet. I will let you know when we are. I think we have two more chapters or so before we're halfway, but we're getting there.
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Chapter 2: What cliffhanger did we leave behind in Chapter 29?
So we are well into this episode. very, very long book now. And thank you as always for sticking around for this journey. I, I'm so glad that you're here and it's so much fun to be this far into the book, but to have so much more to go. So anyway, we read chapter 29 last time. So let's remind ourselves of what happened and then we'll talk for a bit. So here is the recap. Okay.
So where we left off, David goes to visit Steerforth at his mother's house and Miss Dartle is there as usual, but seems to be watching both David and Steerforth very carefully. Eventually, she takes David aside and asks what they've been up to and why they've been away so long. But David says he hasn't been with Steerforth all this time, which surprises Miss Dartle.
Miss Dartle clearly still suspects Steerforth is up to something, and our narrator, the older version of David, seems to be implying that Steerforth is about to do something that he shouldn't. But they all spend the evening together, and Miss Dartle makes more references to Steerforth about doing something bad, and then she gets angry with him and rushes off.
Steerforth and David say goodnight, and they also say goodbye, because David is going to be leaving in the morning to visit Peggedy at Yarmouth.
Steerforth asks David to always remember him the best possible way that he can, and David doesn't see how he could see him in any other way, but our narrator David, adult David, seems to be telling us that from now on he won't be able to see him positively at all. All right, I'm going to read three comments today. The first one comes from Deli. She says, what an ominous way to end the chapter.
At the same time, there's a relief in knowing that the band-aid will finally be ripped off and David will soon stop idolizing Steerforth. I wonder whether the change comes from what Steerforth has already been doing in Yarmouth or something he is going to do. I'm afraid for little Emily's sake. I'm curious about Steerforth's behavior toward Miss Dartle, too.
I'm not sure if he's trying to tame her purely for the sport of it, if he's trying to control her so she doesn't tattle to his mother, or if he has a romantic interest in her. He seems capable of anything. This next one comes from Sarah Nall. She says, to wait for the next episode and savor the moment all the more.
It was good to remember because this chapter of all the other chapters has made me want to read ahead and find out what will happen. I have lots of guesses about what this terrible event will be, but I will hold those in my heart until next time. And the last one comes from Jennifer Schudel. She says, So, we're finally here. This was the last scene with Steerforth as a friend.
From here on out, it will never be the same between them. i think that steerforth's final request for davy to think well of him no matter what and his desire to delay davy's travel for one last day of camaraderie are because he knows davy will find out something bad about him in yarmouth steerforth knows that davy is a moral good man and will not approve I'm eager to find out what happens next.
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Chapter 3: How does David feel about his friendship with Steerforth?
So Jennifer's thought that perhaps Miss Dartle is in love with Steerforth, it's not completely out of the question and it would explain why she cares so much what he's been up to. Remember, one of the things that she asks David about is whether Steerforth has been away visiting a lover or
So it's possible that Miss Dartle is in love with Steerforth and that Steerforth has given her some indication, maybe just by flirting with her, that he might eventually marry her or something. I mean, we do get this scene of Steerforth kind of buttering Miss Dartle up, asking her to play the harp and putting his arm around her and everything.
And we know that he's incredibly charming and that people are always falling in love with him, so... if they've been living together since children, it's possible that she thought that they would one day marry, which was a common practice at the time.
Remember, if you were with us when we read Frankenstein, or if you've read it yourself, Victor was betrothed to Elizabeth since childhood when his parents took her in as an orphan. So that's possible, and it's possible that now Miss Dartle is worried he's going after someone else.
Remember, when he puts his arm around her, she kind of shoves him off and runs away, which is sort of the behavior, perhaps, of a jilted lover. We don't know, but she's certainly acting strangely, and she certainly suspects Steerforth of being up to no good.
And, of course, we suspect him of that, too, and that's largely because adult David, our narrator, adult David, is really kind of all over this chapter. I mean, the David who is living through the events of this chapter isn't really thinking that this is the last time he's ever going to regard Steerforth as a friend or whatever. He's weirded out by Miss Dartle's behavior.
But other than that, he doesn't really suspect anything. But adult David wants to be very clear with us that something is going to happen. One example of this is when he says, here's a quote, So the fact that the past is going to be irremediable is something David could only know after the fact. So that's one thing.
Adult David shows up again when Steerforth is trying to sort of butter up Miss Dartle, like we were just talking about. David says... that she should struggle against the fascinating influence of his delightful art, delightful nature, I thought it then, did not surprise me either, for I knew that she was sometimes jaundiced and perverse.
Okay, so art here implies that it's put on, that it's an act or a show. So he's saying that at the time, he just thought that this charm and this way of his making everyone warm to him was just Steerforth's nature. He's just a charming and good-natured guy. But adult David is saying, no, it was his art or his artifice.
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Chapter 4: What role does Miss Dartle play in David's visit to Steerforth?
And the last thing he says to David is, Which implies that he knows he's going to do something bad and that it's going to change his relationship with David forever because he understands that David has good morals and he's the sort of person who wouldn't be able to forgive whatever Steerforth is about to do. I mean, interestingly, it implies...
some level of guilt or regret on Steerforth's part, but not enough guilt or regret not to do the thing that he's going to do, whatever it may be. So yeah, a big change is coming. So will Dickens tell us what it is in the next chapter, or is he going to keep us waiting a little while longer? There is only one way to find out, and that is to keep reading.
But of course, please don't forget to write to me. It's faithkmoore.com. Click on contact or scroll into the show notes and and click the link that's there. Get in touch, tell me all of your questions, all of your thoughts, whatever the chapter brings up for you, I would like to know about it. So please do write in.
All right, let's get started with chapter 30 of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. It's story time.
Chapter 30, A Loss. I got down to Yarmouth in the evening and went to the inn.
I knew that Peggedy's spare room, my room, was likely to have occupation enough in a little while if that great visitor before whose presence all the living must give place were not already in the house. So I betook myself to the inn and dined there and engaged my bed.
So he's saying that when Mr. Barkis dies, if he hasn't died already, they will lay out his body in the spare room, which is the room that Peggedy always keeps for Davy. So he's taking a room at the inn so as not to mess with those arrangements. It was ten o'clock when I went out. Many of the shops were shut, and the town was dull.
When I came to Omer and Joram's, I found the shutters up, but the shop door standing open. As I could obtain a prospective view of Mr. Omer inside, smoking his pipe by the parlor door, I entered and asked him how he was. "'Why, bless my life and soul,' said Mr. Omer. "'How do you find yourself? Take a seat. Smoke not disagreeable, I hope?' By no means, said I. I like it. In somebody else's pipe.
What, not your own, eh? Mr. Omer returned, laughing. All the better, sir. Bad habit for a young man. Take a seat. I smoke myself for the asthma. So people back then thought that smoking helped with lung ailments. Mr. Omer had made room for me and placed a chair.
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