Chapter 1: What is the purpose of this episode 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 and welcome back. I'm so happy you're here. I'm excited to be with you. We have a long chapter today, so... I'm going to try not to talk too much here at the beginning. But I do want to just quickly remind you that one week from today, so Thursday, May 28th at 8 p.m. Eastern is tea time.
If you don't know what tea time is, it's like a voice chat, a kind of group phone call that we get to have together if you are a member of the group. the online community that we have here at Storytime for Grownups, which is called The Drawing Room.
And if you are a member of the Landed Gentry membership tier, then you are entitled to join us once a month for Tea Time, which is where we talk together. We just chat. It's a chat. I love it. It's so much fun. I love chatting with you guys. We talk about the book. We talk about where we are so far and what's been going on. And We also talk about other things. You can ask me anything.
So I answer questions during that time. Sometimes we've talked about kind of how I create the podcast or about some of the other things that I do in my working life, like my writing and my editing. Other times we just talk about other books, other things that interest us. It's a really lovely time and fun. We've had lots of people each time, so it's a really fun and lively chat.
And I would love to have you if you haven't been there yet. I love chatting with my old friends, but I also really love making new ones. So if you'd like to join us, there's still time. You can just sign up to be a member of the drawing room. Make sure you sign up to be Landed Gentry. And then you can join us on May 28th at 8 p.m. Eastern.
So click on the link in the show notes if that sounds like something that might be of interest to you. Other than that, all the usual things apply.
Please subscribe, please tap the five stars if you're enjoying the show, please leave a positive review, and please tell every single person on the face of the planet that you know about Storytime for grown-ups, or at least somebody that you think might enjoy it, because I would love to get...
even more people listening and talking about these wonderful books together because the more we talk about them the better the world is because these books are the heart and soul of what it means to be human and we need to be human in this weird world that we're living in now so please do tell a friend tell everyone and Let's keep this conversation going.
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Chapter 2: How does David's relationship with Dora evolve in this chapter?
We have all some experience of a feeling that comes over us occasionally of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before in a remote time, of our having been surrounded dim ages ago by the same faces, objects, and circumstances, of our knowing perfectly what will be said next as if we suddenly remembered it.
I never had this mysterious impression more strongly in my life than before he uttered those words. I took my leave of Mr. McCauper, for the time, charging him with my best remembrances to all at home.
As I left him, resuming his stool and his pen, and rolling his head in his stock to get it into easier writing order, I clearly perceived that there was something interposed between him and me since he had come into his new functions, which prevented our getting at each other as we used to do, and quite altered the character of our intercourse."
There was no one in the quaint old drawing-room, though it presented tokens of Mrs. Heap's whereabouts.
Chapter 3: What significant event occurs with Mr. Spenlow?
I looked into the room still belonging to Agnes, and saw her sitting by the fire at a pretty old-fashioned desk she had, writing. My darkening the light made her look up. What a pleasure to be the cause of that bright change in her attentive face, and the object of that sweet regard and welcome!' Ah, Agnes, said I when we were sitting together side by side, I have missed you so much lately.
Indeed, she replied. Again? And so soon? I shook my head. I don't know how it is, Agnes. I seem to want some faculty of mind that I ought to have. You were so much in the habit of thinking for me in the happy old days here, and I came so naturally to you for counsel and support that I really think I have missed acquiring it.
and what is it said agnes cheerfully i don't know what to call it i replied i think i am in earnest and persevering i am sure of it said agnes And patient, Agnes? I inquired, with a little hesitation. Yes, returned Agnes, laughing. Pretty well.
And yet, said I, I get so miserable and worried, and am so unsteady and irresolute in my power of assuring myself that I know I must want, shall I call it, reliance of some kind? Call it so if you will, said Agnes. Well, I returned. See here, you come to London, I rely on you, and I have an object and a course at once. I am driven out of it, I come here, and in a moment I feel an altered person.
The circumstances that distressed me are not changed, since I came into this room, but an influence comes over me in that short interval that alters me. Oh, how much for the better! What is it? What is your secret, Agnes? Her head was bent down, looking at the fire.
it's the old story said i don't laugh when i say it was always the same in little things as it is in greater ones my old troubles were nonsense and now they are serious but whenever i have gone away from my adopted sister agnes looked up with such a heavenly face and gave me her hand which i kissed
Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the beginning, I have seemed to go wild and to get into all sorts of difficulty. When I have come to you at last, as I have always done, I have come to peace and happiness. I come home now.
like a tired traveller and find such a blessed sense of rest i felt so deeply what i said it affected me so sincerely that my voice failed and i covered my face with my hand and broke into tears I write the truth.
Whatever contradictions and inconsistencies there were within me, as there are within so many of us, whatever might have been so different and so much better, whatever I had done in which I had perversely wandered away from the voice of my own heart, I knew nothing of. I only knew that I was fervently in earnest when I felt the rest and peace of having Agnes near me.
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Chapter 4: How does Miss Murdstone influence David's life and choices?
Come, fellow partner, said Uriah at last. I'll give you another one, and I humbly ask for bumpers, seeing I intend to make it the divinest of her sex. Her father had his empty glass in his hand. I saw him set it down, look at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his forehead, and shrink back in his elbow chair.
I'm an humble individual to give you her elf, proceeded Uriah, but I admire, adore her. No physical pain that her father's gray head could have borne, I think, could have been more terrible to me than the mental endurance I saw compressed now within both his hands. "'Agnes,' said Uriah, either not regarding him or not knowing what the nature of his action was.
"'Agnes Wickfield is, I am safe to say, the divinest of her sex.' May I speak out among friends? To be her father is a proud distinction, but to be her husband? Spare me from ever again hearing such a cry as that with which her father rose up from the table. What's the matter? said Uriah, turning of a deadly color. You are not gone mad, after all, Mr. Wickfield, I hope?
If I say I've an ambition to make your Agnes my Agnes, I have as good a right to it as any other man. I have a better right to it than any other man. I had my arms round Mr. Wickfield, imploring him by everything that I could think of, oftenest of all by his love for Agnes, to calm himself a little.
he was mad for the moment tearing out his hair beating his head trying to force me from him and to force himself from me not answering a word not looking at or seeing any one blindly striving for he knew not what his face all staring and distorted a frightful spectacle "'I conjured him, incoherently but in the most impassioned manner, "'not to abandon himself to this wildness, but to hear me.
"'I besought him to think of Agnes, to connect me with Agnes, "'to recollect how Agnes and I had grown up together, "'how I honored her and loved her, how she was his pride and joy. "'I tried to bring her idea before him in any form. "'I even reproached him with not having firmness "'to spare her the knowledge of such a scene as this.'
i may have effected something or his wildness may have spent itself but by degrees he struggled less and began to look at me strangely at first then with recognition in his eyes at length he said i know trotwood my darling child and you i know but look at him he pointed to uriah pale and glowering in a corner evidently very much out in his calculations and taken by surprise
Look at my torturer, he replied. Before him I have step by step abandoned name and reputation, peace and quiet, house and home. I have kept your name and reputation for you, and your peace and quiet, and your house and home too, said Uriah with a sulky, hurried, defeated air of compromise. Don't be foolish, Mr. Wickfield. I have gone a little beyond what you were prepared for.
I can go back, I suppose. There's no harm done. I looked for single motives in everyone, said Mr. Wickfield, and I was satisfied I had bound him to me by motives of interest. But see what he is! Oh, see what he is! You had better stop him, Copperfield, if you can, cried Uriah, with his long forefinger pointing towards me. He'll say something presently, mind you.
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