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THE ROLE OF SPACE IN CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT (CHARLES
DICKENS’S DAVID COPPERFIELD AND ION CREANGĂ’S MEMORIES
OF MY BOYHOOD)
Andreea-Victorița Chiriac (Beceanu), Adina Ciugureanu Abstract: This article aims at establishing the role of space in the development of child personalities as portrayed by Charles Dickens in David Copperfield and Ion Creangă in Memories of My Boyhood. For this purpose, it will analyse the chronotopes of the city and compare them with the chronotope of an idyllic village, both nineteenth century places. It will also explore the conditions offered by the learning establishments and the impact they had on the development of the characters. Per Gustafson’s three pole model of meanings attributed to place will be applied in the reading of the two nineteenth-century novels with a view to creating images of the interactions between the self, the environment and the others, that is, between the individual, the place and society. Schools have to promote and to encourage creative thinking and also to enable the students to acquire practical knowledge. Consequently, it is important to make an evaluation of the Romanian and English nineteenth-century schools depicted in the two novels in terms of the ability to achieve these requirements. The analysis will also focus on establishing the role of the schools in shaping the students’ personality and contributing to their evolution and transition from childhood to adulthood. Key-words: Education, nineteenth-century schools, chronotope, place, space Introduction The nineteenth century was a period of great changes in England and, to a lesser extent, in the Romanian Principalities, due to the Industrial Revolution and the scientific discoveries that brought about an unprecedented economic growth as well as social and political transformations. As a result, there were many reforms meant to improve the living conditions and the quality of life in both countries. There were also numerous reforms in education which is why many novels written in the nineteenth century focused on education as one of their themes. Although writers did not have a direct impact on things such as laws, social injustices and flaws in the education system, they attempted to change society through their literary works. The means by which they achieved their goal is by producing changes in people’s way of reasoning and increasing awareness about problematic areas in need of improvement. Both Charles Dickens and Ion
Creangă are outstanding writers of the nineteenth century that can be considered social critics who tried to use their literary works as tools for social reform. The learning establishments presented by Charles Dickens in David Copperfield and by Ion Creangă in Memories of My Boyhood will be compared and contrasted in order to reveal the attitude of the two authors towards the representation of the nineteenth-century school. Boarding schools such as Salem House Academy ( David Copperfield ) look dreadful and gloomy because of the harsh conditions they offer. The students who live there suffer from hunger, poor lodging conditions and abuse by teachers and fellow students. There are also better schools, more expensive, such as the one run by Dr. Strong ( David Copperfield ) in which boys of middle and upper middle class learn. The Romanian author, Ion Creangă offers a satirical description of the state school starting with the primary school in Humulești, where flogging is a common ritual, and continuing with the Orthodox Seminary in Fălticeni, where teachers used to skip classes. Discipline is essential in teaching because it offers students a set of principles that can guide their behaviour in school and later on in society, but the way it is instilled may interfere with the process of learning and hinder creativity. In both fictional works discipline plays a key role in the education system. Great emphasis is put on it in the schools described in detail by Charles Dickens ( David Copperfield ) and Ion Creangă ( Memories of My Boyhood ). While there is an undeniable need for discipline in the process of education, the two writers depict the verbal and physical abuses used to maintain discipline in a striking way that makes school more similar to a military facility rather than to a learning institution. Thus, they aim to draw attention to the need to encourage moderation and to discourage abuse. In order to reveal important effects that the environment had on the children’s personality development, the spatial perspective and the role of particular places is worth investigating. Spatiality and the meaning of place Space and place theories are mainly based on Bill Richardson’s Spatiality and Symbolic Expression (2015) and on Robert Tally’s Spatiality (2013). The former points out that there are “many very different dimensions of spatiality, so that in some the emphasis is on philosophical issues, in others on social dimensions, in yet more on aesthetic concerns, or on issues of belonging, or even on issues of sensory representation” (Richardson 231). The perception of space has evolved from that of mere geographic place to more complex approaches such as Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope, phenomenology - Heidegger’s concepts of “being-in-the-world” and “Dasein”, environmental psychology, and ecocrticism. In Spatiality (2013), Robert Tally refers to the “spatial turn” in cultural and literary studies which discusses matters of space, place, and mapping that become “spatial or geographical bases of cultural productions”, brought forward, in recent years, for “renewed and forceful critical attention” (12). This on-going research, revolving around the idea of space and its complex relationship with history, time, individuals and society, offers new perspectives and allows for the reinterpretation and reassessing of literary works.
place, the people and the place and the people and the individual. This model of meanings attributed to space relies on clear criteria of analysis and aims to provide a sociological perspective on the role played by space in the formation of the child characters. Fig. 1. The three-pole model of meanings attributed to place, redrawn after Per Gustafson (10)
SELF
ENVIRONMENT OTHERS
Life path, emotion, activity, self- identification Knowledge, shaping the place Friends, relatives, social relations, community Localization (^) Anonymity Recognition Opportunities (^) Meeting “others” Physical environment, distinctive features/ events, institutions, types of place, localization Perceived characteristics, traits, behaviour Citizenship (^) Tradition, organizations, associates “Atmosphere”, street life Type of inhabitant
The chronotope of the city vs. the chronotope of the village Both David Copperfield and Memories of My Boyhood belong to the bildungsroman genre, are supposedly autobiographical and attempt to describe the events in a realistic manner. The fact that they have many traits in common and are written at the same time period allows for an interesting parallel between them. A first observation related to the time-space relationship is the fact that the novels that belong to the Bildungsroman genre usually include the chronotope of the road because the main character has to overcome difficulties and go through a journey of initiation. Both Nică and David, the two protagonists, have to travel away from home and go through a process of personality shaping on their own. In Victorian Selves (A Study in the Literature of the Victorian Age) , Adina Ciugureanu draws attention to the fact that the Victorian novel is a ‘character novel’ that focuses on the “conflict between the self and the resisting environment”. This conflict is eventually resolved and the protagonist emerges as a complex and complete individual (44). Hence, the journeys of initiation that David, and Nică by comparison, go through can be considered as necessary struggles against the social environment. Another significant feature shared by these two autobiographical novels is the use of biographical time in the narrative. The concept of biographical time is explained by Roderick Beaton in “The World of Fiction and the World “Out There”: the Case of the Byzantine Novel” as time in which events have “irreversible consequences, they define the movement of a biographical subject through time, which in turn is part of the uniquely unfolding process of history” (182). Realistic novels often employ the technique of fidelity to actuality. Because they are written in the nineteenth century and this is also the time of the ‘grand’ narratives, the social issues and concerns presented are the same as well. Some of these issues are: the process of urbanisation, the need for reform in education, the existence of class division and poverty. While there are numerous similarities that can be found in the structure and as a result, in the literary interpretation of the two novels, there are also differences that are worth considering. The process of urbanisation is reflected in the English and Romanian novels by the protagonists’ journey towards manhood: they start it in the village and complete it in the city. In Atlas of the European Novel 1800- 1900 (1998), Franco Moretti mentions a different organisation of space in the European Bildungsroman that is centred around three core locations: the village, the provinces, and the city, and goes on to explain how the analysis of the characters in relation to these places generates a set of intriguing oppositions (65). The village is associated with traditions and family, whereas the city reflects the modern, the new and the unknown. The provinces and the city offer the opportunity of a future career, while the village remains a place reminiscent of childhood, but unable to provide the perspective of a bright future. Both protagonists, Nică and David, leave their native villages and embark on the journey towards maturity that leads them rather unwillingly to the universe of the city. Nică leaves his beloved village, Humulești, to study at different schools in order to fulfil his mother’s wish of seeing her son become a priest. David leaves his natal village Blunderstone as a result of his stepfather’s decision of sending him away from home, at Salem House Academy, a boarding school near London.
The dynamics behind character formation When discussing the concept of social time in “ Time and Biography” (2002), John Robb offers David Copperfield as a clear example of biography in social time (155). Thus, a sociological approach would be suitable for the study of this novel. A sociological perspective is also provided by Per Gustafson in Meanings of Place: Everyday Experience and Theoretical Conceptualizations (2001). Per Gustafson’s three pole model of meanings attributed to place can be applied in the analysis of the novels under scrutiny in order to obtain a clear image of the dynamic relations between the self, the environment and others. So as to establish the role of the school in the development of the child characters of the novels, the present study will focus on the interactions taking place in the academic environment. Therefore, in this context, the self will be represented by the main character, the environment by the learning establishments and the others by the teachers and students in those institutions. The interaction between these three dimensions inside the school will reveal the positive or negative influence of the nineteenth century schools on the formation of the individual. The first type of interaction that will be looked at is the one between the school and the students. The protagonists of the two novels attend more than one institution due to various reasons and circumstances. David attends Salem House Academy near London and Doctor Strong’s School in Canterbury. Nică attends several schools: the one in his village, Humuleşti, the school in Broşteni, the school in Târgu Neamț and two seminaries, one in Fălticeni and the other in Socola, near Iaşi. The geographical location of the schools shows that their journey to adulthood takes them further and further away from their native place. Another aspect worth- considering in the relationship between the student and the school is the opportunities which the establishments are able to offer. Nică’s entire academic trajectory is meant to secure a future career as a priest, which would ensure financial security and respect in the society. The first institution that David attends is not chosen in view of a career as his stepfather uses it as merely a means of sending him away from home. The second one is meant to provide a good education and it is carefully selected for this purpose by his aunt. The influence of the environment on the child is obvious in David Copperfield from the detailed descriptions that he provides. On the one hand, the exterior of the first school “Salem House was a square brick building with wings; of a bare and unfurnished appearance” (68) leaves the impression of a deserted building. Similarly, the interior which is described as dirty, untidy, filled with an awful smell, with ink all around and even mice on the floor, comes as a complete shock to the young and impressionable child: “I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me, as the most forlorn and desolate place I had ever seen” (68). Such a place definitely does not provide a suitable learning environment. On the other hand, the second school presented by David seems to offer far better learning conditions. Even if, at first glance, the school gives the impression of “a grave building in a courtyard, with a learned air about it” (191) the classroom is
a pretty large hall, on the quietest side of the house, confronted by the stately stare of some half-dozen of the great urns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded garden belonging to the Doctor, where the peaches were ripening on the sunny south wall. There were two great aloes, in tubs, on the turf outside the windows; the broad hard leaves of which plant (looking as if they were made of painted tin) have ever since, by association, been symbolical to me of silence and retirement. (193) The pleasant atmosphere provided by Dr. Strong’s school has the right attributes to secure study and learning. In Memories of My Boyhood , Nică does not focus on the image of the school. The only spatial references he makes are the ones about the venue of the schools and the fact that the fine room which functions as a school in Humuleşti was built next to the church’s gate following the priest’s orders. This actually shows that school and religion were very well-knitted and that one of the crucial disciplines in the school curriculum was the Bible. The lack of descriptions of the school or the classroom is indicative of the fact that they met with the protagonist’s modest expectations or they simply did not leave a positive or a negative effect on him. The only items used in the process of learning mentioned are the religious books used as didactic resources and the whip called St. Nicholas and the bench named Dapple-Grey used for punishment. The second type of interaction examined will be the one between the protagonist and the others, more precisely, the teachers and the schoolmates. In both novels the teachers put great emphasis on instilling discipline in the school. Discipline is undeniably necessary in the process of learning because it is meant to ensure a suitable environment for acquiring knowledge. So as to instil discipline teachers often rely on a set of rewards and punishments whose efficiency is determined by their degree of moderation. In both novels there are examples of physical punishments that were applied to students in different circumstances. In Memories of My Boyhood , the students often receive physical corrections and at the beginning of the novel Nică explains how each weekly assessment of the students’ progress resulted in the use of St. Nicholas and the Dapple-Grey which almost determined him to quit school. In David Copperfield , David mentions the frequent beatings with the cane or the ruler that the boys suffered and feared in Salem House. Mr. Creakle is described as an “incapable brute” that took pleasure in his physical abuses “He had a delight in cutting at the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite” (78). However, there are also teachers like Mr. Mell and Dr. Strong who do not use such cruel practices and who have a better relationship with their students and better results. The relationship between the students in the school and the main characters is generally good with only minor incidents that interfere with the harmony within the group. David manages to make two close friends at Salem House: Tommy Traddles who is goodhearted but poor and James Steerforth who is wealthy and gets better treatment because of his status. In the beginning, at Dr. Strong’s School, David is really worried about fitting in because of the experiences he has gone through and which he thinks have transformed him. His remark “in less than a fortnight I was quite at home, and happy, among my new companions” (201) shows the importance of the relationship between students, which was almost like a second family. Nică’s account of the time
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