Chapter 1: What is the format of the Storytime for Grownups podcast?
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!
Hi, welcome back. I'm so glad you're here. I feel like we have so much to talk about today. I'm really excited about this intro. I really have a lot to share with you and your questions are great. Your comments are great. So I'm just thrilled to be here. I hope you are too. Thanks for joining me.
Before we get started, I want to let you know that I have scheduled our next tea time over in our online community, The Drawing Room. It's going to be Thursday again. So it's going to be Thursday, May 28th. at 8 p.m. Eastern.
And of course, I'll remind you as we get closer, but I just wanted to let you know for those of you who like to mark your calendars, I know there are some of you and I am very grateful for that. So if you don't know what I am talking about, Tea Time is a monthly voice chat that we have over in our online community.
As I say, it's called The Drawing Room, not because we like to do a lot of drawing over there, but because it is the withdrawing room. Every old Victorian house would have had a withdrawing room where you would withdraw after dinner with your guests or with your family to read or talk, play games, play music, and we have one of those. It's just online.
The podcast itself is the main room of our lovely old Victorian mansion, and the drawing room is our drawing room. And if you're not yet a member, it's easy to do. You just scroll into the show notes. There's a link that's there. Click on it. We have a couple of different membership tiers. In order to join Tea Time, you have to be landed gentry.
But if you'd like to just join a community of other people who are listening to these books along with you and talking about it, it's very active over there. You'll always find people making comments about the latest episode and also about the other books that we've read and things.
So if you'd like to do that, you can be a house guest and you won't do Tea Time, but you can be part of the community. So I hope that you'll click that link if you haven't already. If you'd like to join us for Tea Time and you're a house guest, you can absolutely change your membership and become Landed Gentry. So again, it's going to be Thursday, May 28th. at 8 p.m.
Eastern, and I hope that you will join us. And again, I'll remind you as we get closer, but put that on your calendar if that is of interest to you. Other than that, all the usual things apply. Please make sure that you're subscribed to the show. Please tap the five stars if you're enjoying the show, and if you have a couple of extra seconds, please leave a positive review.
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Chapter 2: How does David Copperfield's financial situation affect his relationship with Dora?
Okay. So again, there is something about Agnes that he doesn't see now, but according to adult David, he will eventually see, but apparently not for a long time. So I wanted to lay all of that out because I do think it's there in the chapter. I do think it's meant to be part of our emotional experience of reading this book.
And I got so many letters about it as well that I felt it made sense to discuss. But I want to end by just coming back around to Miss Betsy and her money troubles. Because last time we talked a bit about what this might mean for her and for David. But we didn't have the full story yet of what actually happened. And now we know a lot more. So I want to just talk a bit about that as well.
So Anne brings up the mysterious man that has been hounding Miss Betsy for money. And a lot of you wrote, in after chapter 34 to say that you thought her money problems had to do with this mysterious guy. And that was a totally valid guess because we know that there is this mysterious person who keeps showing up and asking for money, which she gives him.
So it makes sense to wonder if perhaps this man showed up and forced her to give over far more money than normal or something, and now she doesn't have any left. But that's not what she says happens. She says that she took her finances into her own hands after taking them out of Mr. Wickfield's hands.
Because Mr. Wickfield, as we saw in this chapter, he's kind of a shell of himself now that Uriah has taken control of things and his alcoholism is clearly pretty out of control. But when she took her money herself, she made a series of bad investments and now it's all gone. That's what she says.
But I do think that Anne and the rest of you who wrote in, I don't think you're totally off base to be a little suspicious of this explanation. It doesn't totally sound like Miss Betsy to make a bunch of weird investments, does it? I mean, yes, she is weird. That's true. And she does go off on weird fancies and things like the donkeys and the fire and whatnot.
But she's very practical in a lot of other matters, so I'm on board with being a little skeptical here about all of this. The mysterious man is still in the background, but there is also something else that I just want to point out because it was a little bit subtle, but it was in there.
And that is that Agnes is clearly very anxious about the possibility that it was Mr. Wickfield that somehow lost all of Miss Betsy's money. When Miss Betsy begins to talk about what happened to her money, David says, I observed Agnes turn pale and she looked very attentively at my aunt. My aunt, patting her cat, looked very attentively at Agnes.
So Agnes is clearly worried about what Miss Betsy is going to say. And Miss Betsy clearly knows that Agnes is worried about it.
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Chapter 3: What role does Agnes play in David's life during Chapter 36?
humble person in your life. Because Uriah more and more is turning out to be a pretty bad guy. He's moved into Mr. Rickfield's house and tellingly he has taken David's old bedroom, right? So he's moved in there. He's moved his mother into the house and Agnes has to keep her company now. He's taking over the law firm. He's like grasping and clawing his way up the social ladder.
And we know what he wants next, right? He told us he wants Agnes. Which after this chapter, which was totally glorifying Agnes, it feels even more horrific, I think, to think about that. So that is bad. And of course, now David's whole situation has changed as well because of Miss Betsy's financial problems.
This middle class life that he craved so much and finally got, it is potentially vanishing before his eyes. And on the one hand, this is actually really, as we might say in like modern parlance, we might say this is very triggering for David because he knows what it is to be poor. He knows what it is to be destitute and he never wants that again.
but also he's thinking about his persona as chivalric knight, right? And he says he's thinking about, this is a quote, coming down to have no money in my pocket and to wear a shabby coat and to be able to carry Dora no little presents and to ride no gallant greys and to show myself in no agreeable light. So he's not really thinking about his days of homelessness, actually.
He's thinking about his sort of foppish lifestyle and how he's going to have to potentially give that up. But he isn't being entirely silly here because he is thinking practically. He does go and try to get his money back from Mr. Spenlow. And Anne's point about Mr. Spenlow's name is brilliant.
I mean, it's Spen-low, not Spend-low, but still, he's clearly the one, not Mr. Jorkins, who we met in the last chapter. It's clearly Mr. Spenlow who is not willing to spend any more than he has to spend or to give any money back or anything. It's not Jorkins. So David tried to get his money back and he tried to get out of his unpaid job so that he could get a paid one. That didn't work.
But then Agnes, like the angel that she is, she sort of drops the solution into David's lap, which is that he can work for Dr. Strong in his free time, helping him with his dictionary because now he's retired and he's just working on the dictionary. And in that way, he can earn a living. So that is where we left him. Miss Betsy is now living in London with him. Mr. Dick is nearby.
David is going to try to make some money in the hopes that he'll one day be able to marry Dora. And it's in a sense, I guess it's another one of these new beginnings, the end of this totally carefree middle class life and the beginning of a still middle class life, but financially a more uncertain life in which he has to make his own way. He has to go out into the world and work and survive.
make something of himself. So let's see if he can do that, right? Let us keep reading and find out. I have talked for a very long time, but we had a lot to say, but let's stop now and get to the chapter. But of course, don't forget to write to me. It's faithkmore.com. Click on contact, or you can scroll into the show notes and click the link that's there. I absolutely love to hear from you.
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Chapter 4: How does Miss Betsy's financial trouble impact the characters?
"'Dear me,' said the doctor innocently, "'to think that so little should go for so much. "'Dear, dear, and when you can do better, you will? "'On your word now?' said the doctor, "'which he had always made a very grave appeal to the honour of us boys. "'On my word, sir,' I returned, answering in our old-school manner.
"'Then be it so,' said the doctor, clapping me on the shoulder "'and still keeping his hand there as we still walked up and down.' and i shall be twenty times happier sir said i with a little i hope innocent flattery if my employment is to be on the dictionary
The doctor stopped, smilingly clapped me on the shoulder again, and exclaimed, with a triumph most delightful to behold, as if I had penetrated to the profoundest depths of moral sagacity, My dear young friend, you have hit it. It is the dictionary. How could it be anything else? His pockets were as full of it as his head. It was sticking out of him in all directions.
He told me that since his retirement from scholastic life, He had been advancing with it wonderfully, and that nothing could suit him better than the proposed arrangements for morning and evening work, as it was his custom to walk about in the daytime with his considering cap on.
His papers were in a little confusion in consequence of Mr. Jack Malden having lately proffered his occasional services as an amanuensis. An amanuensis is a person who takes dictation and helps prepare manuscripts. and not being accustomed to that occupation. But we should soon put right what was amiss, and go on swimmingly.
Afterwards, when we were fairly at our work, I found Mr. Jack Malden's efforts more troublesome to me than I had expected, as he had not confined himself to making numerous mistakes, but had sketched so many soldiers' and ladies' heads over the doctor's manuscript that I often became involved in labyrinths of obscurity.
The doctor was quite happy in the prospect of our going to work together on that wonderful performance, and we settled to begin next morning at seven o'clock. We were to work two hours every morning and two or three hours every night except on Saturdays when I was to rest. On Sundays, of course, I was to rest also, and I considered these very easy terms.
our plans being thus arranged to our mutual satisfaction the doctor took me into the house to present me to mrs strong whom we found in the doctor's new study dusting his books a freedom which he never permitted anybody else to take with those sacred favourites They had postponed their breakfast on my account, and we sat down to table together.
We had not been seated long when I saw an approaching arrival in Mrs. Strong's face before I heard any sound of it. A gentleman on horseback came to the gate, and leading his horse into the little court with the bridle over his arm, as if he were quite at home, tied him to a ring in the empty coach-house wall, and came into the breakfast-parlor, whip in hand.'
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Chapter 5: What are the contrasting qualities of Dora and Agnes as perceived by David?
Under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities, contracted with a view to their immediate liquidation, but remaining unliquidated through a combination of circumstances, I have been under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my natural instincts recoil. I allude to spectacles.
And possessing myself of a cognomen, to which I can establish no legitimate pretensionsā meaning he's had to disguise himself and his name because of his financial problemsā All I have to say on that score is that the cloud has passed from the dreary scene, and the god of day is once more high upon the mountaintops.
On Monday next, on the arrival of the four o'clock afternoon coach at Canterbury, my foot will be on my native heath. My name, Macawber. Mr. Macawber resumed his seat on the close of these remarks and drank two glasses of punch in grave succession. He then said, with much solemnity, One thing more I have to do before this separation is complete, and that is to perform an act of justice.
My friend Mr. Thomas Traddles has, on two several occasions, put his name, if I may use a common expression, to the bills of exchange for my accommodation. On the first occasion, Mr. Thomas Traddles was left, let me say in short, in the lurch. the fulfillment of the second has not yet arrived. The amount of the first obligation, here Mr. McCauber carefully referred to papers,
was, I believe, 23, 4, 9, and a half. Of the second, according to my entry of that transaction, 18, 6, 2. These sums united make a total, if my calculation is correct, amounting to 41, 10, 11, and a half. My friend Copperfield will perhaps do me the favor to check that total.
i did so and found it correct to leave this metropolis said mr micawber and my friend mr thomas traddles without acquitting myself of the pecuniary part of this obligation would weigh upon my mind to an insupportable extent I have, therefore, prepared for my friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles, and I now hold in my hand a document which accomplishes the desired object.
I beg to hand to my friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles, my I.O.U. for 41.10.11.5, and I am happy to recover my moral dignity and to know that I can once more walk erect before my fellow man.
with this introduction which greatly affected him mr micawber placed his i o u in the hands of traddles and said he wished him well in every relation of life i am persuaded not only that this was quite the same to mr micawber as paying the money but that traddles himself hardly knew the difference until he had had time to think about it
meaning mr micawber is probably never going to pay back the i o u mr micawber walked so erect before his fellow-man on the strength of this virtuous action that his chest looked half as broad again when he lighted us downstairs we parted with great heartiness on both sides and when i had seen traddles to his own door and was going home alone i thought among the other odd and contradictory things i mused upon
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