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Macey Bearden

12/13/17

Mr. Garner

Language and Literature 8B

Hide and Seek

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, as Isaac Newton wisely once said. This

does not only apply with physics, but with people and their personalities. The impact of

childhood on adult life is often underestimated, and the idea of this came into play recently at

only around the end of the Victorian Era. Charles Dickens is credited with being one of the first

authors to present this idea through his writing, using his character David Copperfield. In the

bildungsroman ​novel that is about the life of David Copperfield, many experiences change him

from a ​tabula rasa​, or blank slate, into a complex character with ideas and opinions. David’s

relationship with Emily is a constant game of hide and seek which leads David to, in his adult

life, become desperate and impulsive around women that he believes that he even slightly

admires.

David has several encounters with Emily in which she rejects him. Soon after meeting

her, he falls into a “puppy dog” like love for her, and obsesses over her. He cannot control his

adoration for young Emily, and pictures her as an angel from heaven.

“Of course I was in love with little Em’ly. I am sure that I loved that baby quite as truly,

quite as tenderly, with greater purity, and more disinteredness, than can enter into the

best love of a later time of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up
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something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealised, and made a very

large angle of her. If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread a little pair of wings and flown

away before my eyes, I don’t think I should have regarded it as much more than I had

had reason to expect” (Dickens 44).

This experience with Emily is the beginning of a storm cloud that will hover over David for his

entire life, haunting him and changing the way that he interacts with women. While he is

obsessing over Emily, she constantly pushes him down. In one scene, she begins to let David

know that she does not return his feelings. She allows him to kiss her, and he becomes greedy

and desperate for her love.

“Little Em’ly consenting, allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate; informing her, I

recollect, that I never could love another, and that I was prepared to shed the blood of

anybody that should aspire to her affections.

How merry little Em’ly made herself about it! With what a demure assumption of being

immensely older and wiser than I, the fairy little woman said I was a “silly boy;” and

then laughed so charmingly that I forgot the pain of being called that disparaging name,

in the pleasure of looking at her” (Dickens 132).

Once he has been allowed by Emily to kiss her, he announces his love and becomes greedy,

saying that he is committed to her. She discourages him for but a second, but he is too smitten to

realize what she has told him. This nature is the exact one that will shadow David for the rest of

his life, and through the rest of his relationships. David springs with such eagerness into anything

that he believes that he can achieve due to Emily’s teases.

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David’s encounters with Emily would normally deter a young boy, but David continues

to love Emily and her ways. Emily is able to play David on a string like a puppet, and is able to

get him to do whatever she would like him to do. If Emily were to tell him to drown himself in

the water near her home, David is the type of character that would do it before Emily even had

the chance to think of the idea herself. Emily has an effect on David that causes him to lose all

intelligent thought around her, almost as if he were a horse wearing blinders to keep him focused

on one thing. The fact that David is obsessed with a girl that starts to run away as soon as he gets

near to officially courting her leaves an impact on him for life. Emily leaves the blinders on

David, and he is only able to focus on whichever woman that he chooses to admire after Emily.

Emily’s effect on David is lasting and when David can no longer have Emily, he instead

latches onto any woman that is relatively attractive to him. He quickly falls into a series of

crushes after Emily. Soon after Emily is no longer available to him and David is at school, he

falls in love with a young woman named Miss Shepherd. However, he is heartbroken to find that

she loves another man more than him- and that David is only cute puppy-like lover that follows

her around.

“Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme and vision of my life, how do I ever come

to break with her? I can’t conceive. And yet a coolness grows between Miss Shepherd

and myself. Whispers reach me of Miss Shepherd having said she wished I wouldn’t stare

so, and having avowed a preference for Master Jones-for Jones! a boy of no merit

whatever! The gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens. At last, one day, I meet the
 Misses Nettingalls’ establishment out walking. Miss Shepherd makes a face as she goes

by, and

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laughs to her companion. All is over. The devotion of a life-it seems a life, it is all the

same-is at an end; Miss Shepherd comes out of the morning service, and the Royal

Family know her no more” (Dickens 231).

This experience only strengthens David’s desperate and clingy nature towards women because

he feels as if women keep slipping out of his hands because of his rejections. He keeps coming

so close to developing a close and serious relationship with a woman, but he continues to fail at

his task. He is once again playing the endless game of hide and seek, although this one ends

more abruptly than his relationship with Emily. After this, he falls in love with Miss Larkins, an

older woman of around 30. He meets Miss Larkins at a gathering, and eventually finds that he

will be rejected as well by her for another man. This repetition of obsessiveness and then a

reaction of rejection leads to David feeling as if he needs to try harder, as if each time getting

rejected makes him worried that it will happen again. David cannot stand the feeling of having

failed, and is willing to try by all means possible to court a woman. The one time that he does

fall in love with someone that returns his affections, the marriage ends in a disaster. His spouse

eventually dies, which relieves David from the effort of watching after Dora. However, it leaves

him lonely and searching for love from Agnes, of who he believes that she only loves him in a

brotherly way. This effect on David’s personality leads him to be impulsive, but at the same time

shy and clingy.

 The effect of Emily on the younger David is best explained by Alfred Adler. Emily’s

effect on David deprives him of confidence, leaving him with a sense of inferiority that he can

never shake off. Alfred Alder states that “​to be a human being means to possess a feeling of

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inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest. The greater the feeling of

inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more

violent the emotional agitation”. David matches this description, as he is constantly put down by

others. There is, in a sense, a domino effect. Once he is rejected by Emily, he seeks redemption

in two other women that do not fancy him as he would wish. After this has happened, David

seeks to conquer the heart of another woman. However, the heart that he does manage to conquer

is but a simple heart without much to it. However, this experience only affects David because he

chooses to let it. Adler also covers this, saying that ​“we cannot say that if a child is badly

nourished he will become a criminal. We must see what conclusion the child has drawn.” By

saying this, he means that David is only affected by this experience with Emily because he chose

to let it dominate his life. By allowing this experience affect him, David has been turned into a

young adult desperate for attention from women that he admires.

David’s life is ruled by his experiences with Emily, a bold and beautiful young woman

who changes the blank slate that is David into someone who needs to prove himself and cling to

women. Many men portrayed in the David Copperfield novel do not obsess over courting. There

is often love displayed, and a connection, but there are also some failed relationships. The very

woman to break his heart for the first time is abandoned, Miss Betsy has to pay her husband to

leave her alone, and his own mother is abused by his stepfather. Every relationship that David
sees or is involved with happening impacts him. Many of the relationships that David has

witnessed are not the best ones to model his relationship off of, and his first failed attempt leads

to many more. Eventually all of these attempts lead to an eventual, although not very

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satisfactory, marriage. David’s impulsiveness and desperation stems from Emily, who cannot

have been more unlike David. Relationships in which people are not compatible do not typically

work out, leaving lasting scars for some. David happened to be the unlucky one left scarred by

Emily, and his scars will haunt him for life.

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. ​David Copperfield​. 1850.

“Alfred Adler Quotes.” ​BrainyQuote​, 2001.