I feel like the only Evamy in the world now
If you're an Evamy, can you please post reasons why to like him? And just show yourself in general so I won't feel like a single Evamy in a sea of Amians?
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Somebody please help me! I think I'm starting to like Evan... and I'm starting to hate Ian more and more... criticism is not welcome, it'll make me feel more like a failure, if you have any suggestions for why and how I became LIKE THIS please post!
I feel like the only Evamy in the world now If you're an Evamy, can you please post reasons why to like him? And just show yourself in general so I won't feel like a single Evamy in a sea of Amians?
I feel like the only Evamy in the world now
If you're an Evamy, can you please post reasons why to like him? And just show yourself in general so I won't feel like a single Evamy in a sea of Amians?
Dreams CAN take you anywhere, MY dreams WILL take ME there...
"POTATO!"-- Niall Horan
Posted at: 11:29 pm on March 24, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Ah.
*Silence*
I think NamSa already infilterated the new one.
*More Silence*
But I won't if you don't want me to.
*Silence*
I think NamSa already infilterated the new one.
*More Silence*
But I won't if you don't want me to.
~*Sierra
~*Hunter, Reader, Montanan
~*Great Reads: /39475 by Leo,/42076 by Ariel, /39119 by Azure
~*/39226 is My Story
~*Lucian Assassin!
Posted at: 10:57 am on May 20, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
I like him 'cause he's quite good looking and cool
"Greeks don't fight like heroes, heroes fight like Greeks" (Churchill) I am PROUD to be Greek.
Posted at: 6:46 am on May 21, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
I was going to post but the amount of Amians on here just made me.. uncomfortable? I mean I feel like I cant express my opinion without getting into an argument with an Amian. And I feel really mea because I JUST WANT TTHE AMIANS TO GETS THEIR KEYBOARDS OFF THIS POST AND POST ON A DIFFERENT PAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! JUST STOP POSTING!! (see how mean that is) I feel so mean. But its getting me so frustrated... im going to post my opinion in invisi-ink for all the Evamys, (im a 10000000000% EMAVY)
invisi-ink:: I like Evan because: Hes nice, caring, and intelligent. He actually CARES and likes Saladin. And Amy seems to like him back! I mean Ian just.. doesnt suit her! Please dont hate on me for saying what i said about Amians on her PLEASE I just got really frustrated. Please dont be mad
. Btw: When are you posting on youre Truth or Dare because you are getting demands.
Sasha♥
“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.”- Coco Chanel
Ravenclaw
♥girly girl♥
Posted at: 7:42 pm on May 27, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
I also have an Evamy post!!!!!! It's in this link:
http://www.the39clues.com/messageboard/show/21036
I HATE Ian!!!!!! Love Evan.
- Melissa
http://www.the39clues.com/messageboard/show/21036
I HATE Ian!!!!!! Love Evan.
- Melissa
Melissa
50% JANUS
15% Tomas
15% Lucian
20% Ekat
Madrigal CIC!!!
Ginger
Proud Christian
http://www.the39clues.com/messageboard/show/22362/
I love mental giraffes!!!!!
Posted at: 12:23 pm on May 28, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
But I was having a friendly arguement with the author of this thread! Just ask her! We were having fun!
~*Sierra
~*Hunter, Reader, Montanan
~*Great Reads: /39475 by Leo,/42076 by Ariel, /39119 by Azure
~*/39226 is My Story
~*Lucian Assassin!
Posted at: 5:02 pm on May 28, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Sorry guys, I just wanted to have as Sierra said, I FRIENDLY argument, but if you all ARE feeling...intimidated, then I'll quit. But I mean, if it's a good cause, then isn't it worth arguing? And I don't mind if you Evamies all gang up on why I like Ian. Seriously, do it!
~Nami, who hopes everyone gets she isn't really being mean on the posts and hopes that everybody doesn't hate her.
~Nami, who hopes everyone gets she isn't really being mean on the posts and hopes that everybody doesn't hate her.
Annabeth is not part of the prophecy~ Me, Nami!
Jesus Freak
A REASONABLE Amian. :)
Homeschooled! (sniffs, pushes up glasses) ;)
( )_( )
(='.'=)
(")__(")
Posted at: 10:20 pm on May 28, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
To be honest... I am not a Amian fan, Evamy fan or jamy fan. I believe that Ian will find someone totally new (maybe not a Cahill) and Amy will either stay with Evan or also find someone new. But, I don't really trust Evan... niether do I trust Ian soooo it's a hard question. :|
Love and loyalty run deeper than blood...
Posted at: 5:51 am on May 29, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Seriously I feel for you Evamy's, sure I dislike the 39 clues (predictable, boring, bad characters, don't yell at me). But I know what it feels like to in the minority in the shipping department.
Have you ever read David Copperfield (best book ever!!!!!!!!)
Well anyways there's this girl in it, her names Agnes, and she's absolutely perfect, never makes a mistake and is absolutely brilliant. And there's this girl named Dora who has the brain of the a 9 year old (she's 15-17) and that kiddo can throw a tempertantrum, but is earnest, playful, and loving. They both love the same guy, David Copperfeild. So he boarded at Agnes's house when he was about ten and they're like best freinds and when he turns 17 he gets apprenticed to this lawyer, and wippdeedoo falls right in love with his bosses daughter (dora). So they end up getting married, and she's expecting, then she misscarriages, and gets very very sick. Then she dies, David mourns for a bit, then he marries Agnes, and never thinks about Dora again. Like everybody i know likes Agnes better, but I adore dora. Wow, that was long!
Here's aa poem i wrote:
Why Me
When I look around I see
Something that cofounds me.
Why’d he ever pick me?
I’m not as clever, that I can see.
She’s so much better than me.
And I know my only merit is that I’m pretty
But till now I’ve never felt jealousy.
And it makes me feel so broken.
Doady why’d you ever pick me?
Why’d you ever love me?
Doady why can’t you see that she’d be better?
And I love you more than anything
And that I hope you see.
But I’d give you up to see you smile, and I don’t want to drag you down
And I know that if you married her you’d never frown.
So forget about me and have your happily ever after
Note, dora calls him doady
Have you ever read David Copperfield (best book ever!!!!!!!!)
Well anyways there's this girl in it, her names Agnes, and she's absolutely perfect, never makes a mistake and is absolutely brilliant. And there's this girl named Dora who has the brain of the a 9 year old (she's 15-17) and that kiddo can throw a tempertantrum, but is earnest, playful, and loving. They both love the same guy, David Copperfeild. So he boarded at Agnes's house when he was about ten and they're like best freinds and when he turns 17 he gets apprenticed to this lawyer, and wippdeedoo falls right in love with his bosses daughter (dora). So they end up getting married, and she's expecting, then she misscarriages, and gets very very sick. Then she dies, David mourns for a bit, then he marries Agnes, and never thinks about Dora again. Like everybody i know likes Agnes better, but I adore dora. Wow, that was long!Here's aa poem i wrote:
Why Me
When I look around I see
Something that cofounds me.
Why’d he ever pick me?
I’m not as clever, that I can see.
She’s so much better than me.
And I know my only merit is that I’m pretty
But till now I’ve never felt jealousy.
And it makes me feel so broken.
Doady why’d you ever pick me?
Why’d you ever love me?
Doady why can’t you see that she’d be better?
And I love you more than anything
And that I hope you see.
But I’d give you up to see you smile, and I don’t want to drag you down
And I know that if you married her you’d never frown.
So forget about me and have your happily ever after
Note, dora calls him doady
Olive
Never in nature does a creature born to be a Dove turn into an Osprey. It is only amongst men.
-Les Miserables
Posted at: 6:05 am on May 29, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
How can you not like the 39 Clues?!?! You're posting on their MB?
P.S. I'm not yelling at you, I'm just asking.
P.S. I'm not yelling at you, I'm just asking.
~*Sierra
~*Hunter, Reader, Montanan
~*Great Reads: /39475 by Leo,/42076 by Ariel, /39119 by Azure
~*/39226 is My Story
~*Lucian Assassin!
Posted at: 12:14 am on May 30, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Well I go on here because only 2/3 of this stuff is actually about the 39clues, on some pages, even less.
Olive
Never in nature does a creature born to be a Dove turn into an Osprey. It is only amongst men.
-Les Miserables
Posted at: 7:44 am on May 30, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Do you like Harry Potter? Scholastic also has a MB for those people. You might like it better (or maybe you wouldn't, I don't know).
~*Sierra
~*Hunter, Reader, Montanan
~*Great Reads: /39475 by Leo,/42076 by Ariel, /39119 by Azure
~*/39226 is My Story
~*Lucian Assassin!
Posted at: 10:56 am on May 30, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Its ok! I dont mean you guys. Some people on other posts like this get all touchy about it and I hate that! You can still post on here!
Sasha♥
“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.”- Coco Chanel
Ravenclaw
♥girly girl♥
Posted at: 11:05 am on May 30, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Thanks AdorableKitten51!!! And I kinda liked Agnes, but I thought Dora was awesome too. I'm a HUGE David Copperfield fan. At first I honestly felt sorry for Agnes because David never thought of her in THAT way. So I kinda DIDN'T like Dora. But when she called Agnes up to her room. I knew she was just playful, and she knew herself and her husband. She cared for David so much, she actually found a replacement wife in Agnes. She was a real self sacrificing, very loving woman. How do you think she felt when she knew Agnes had it bad for her HUSBAND!!! Really. Though I don't see how you don't like the clues. But then, the characters are A LITTLE bit predictable, but I'll bet EVEN you didn't know the Madrigals were good. Every book has a plotline and every book is a little predictable. So yeah. GO DORA FANS (from David copperfield, not Dora the Explorer :)
~Nami!!!
~Nami!!!
Annabeth is not part of the prophecy~ Me, Nami!
Jesus Freak
A REASONABLE Amian. :)
Homeschooled! (sniffs, pushes up glasses) ;)
( )_( )
(='.'=)
(")__(")
Posted at: 1:07 pm on May 31, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Yes! I have found another Dora fan!And actually, I did predict a lot about the series, my freind and i figured that Amy and Dan weren't in one of the Cahill branches and were probably in a new branch. And my freind said that she was 99% certain the madrigals were started by someone named Madeline, and that they probably weren't half as bad as they seemed. And back on Dora, I do beleive that she was not half as unintelligent as dickens paints her out to be, and that must of been painful, knowing about Agnes. That's what I tried to epress in my poem.
This message has been modified by the moderator Jun 1, 2012
Olive
Never in nature does a creature born to be a Dove turn into an Osprey. It is only amongst men.
-Les Miserables
Posted at: 10:20 am on June 1, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Oh, and It's physically impossible not to like Agnes a little bit, because it's impossible not to like truly perfect things. She was Dickens wish-fullfillment.
Olive
Never in nature does a creature born to be a Dove turn into an Osprey. It is only amongst men.
-Les Miserables
Posted at: 10:22 am on June 1, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Random thing: you know those little love tester things where you type in you name and your crushes name, well i entered David and Dora and got a 100% with David and Agnes it was only 45%.
Olive
Never in nature does a creature born to be a Dove turn into an Osprey. It is only amongst men.
-Les Miserables
Posted at: 11:07 am on June 1, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
I have posted way to much about Dora, but here's more
Literary Rant: In Defense of Dora Spenlow (SPOILERS for David Copperfield)
Great Expectations is my favorite Charles Dickens novel, and probably also one of my favorite books, period. Yet strangely enough, its David Copperfield I find myself thinking of the most, and coming back to time and again–and really, that one is not my favorite, because for some reason I find it lacks the excitement and immediacy I felt while reading Expectations. We finicky nerds, am I right?
So, if I don't think David Copperfield is in the same class as Great Expectations, why did I sign up for an account over at The David Copperfield Site at Dickens On-line Resources to shoot my mouth/fingers off about the thing?
The answer wasn't difficult for me to uncover. It's because of Dora Spenlow. Modern readers hate her. She's called an anachronistic mess, a throwback to the sort of helpless girls detrimental to any momentum to the women's rights movement in London at the time. She's clingy, dependent, and woos the titular character away from the steady and discreet Agnes Wickfield, marrying him and then letting their house fall apart. She's childish, whiny, and prone to hysterics. She's a disgrace to strong female characters everywhere. She's popularly believed to be the original source for the term "Dumb Dora."
She's one of my favorite characters in anything ever.
Because she's also wacky, funny, playful, none too bright, but earnest and loving. She's ecstatically devoted to her dog. She's basically everything I value in a heroine.
Some of–okay, a great deal of what they say above is true. She starts out as the archetypal spoiled princess, daughter to the affluent and slightly crooked businessman, Mr. Spenlow. He in turn is boss of the young, strapping David Copperfield. The young Copperfield falls hopelessly, consumingly in love with Dora at first sight. They marry, but he soon finds out that not only is Dora incapable of looking after the house or the accounts, but that she'd rather sit around playing with her dog and singing along to her guitar all day.
But what is so terribly wrong with that?
Now, I know, I know. Dora's behavior is far from good. As I conceded to someone on the IMDb boards of the 1935 movie (I'm everywhere I'm everywhere auuuugh!), no one should have to coddle his spouse the way David does Dora. And BOY, does that girl fly off the handle and whine herself up a storm when she wants to.
But before we cast Dora as anti-feminist, let's reverse the gendered role, here.
Let's say the man is the one who'd rather play guitar, sing, and hang out with the dog than work for the man and keep house. Would he be labeled as a disgrace to his sex, or would he be touted as a charmingly eccentric free spirit? Hey, look at Micawber, the lazy con-artist who befriends David--he's just as helpless and idiotic as Dora, but he's rewarded with an intensely devoted wife and, ultimately, riches in Australia. True, he stood up to Uriah Heep, but he had plenty of help there, and I didn't notice it stem his dependency any. So, what, when you're Micawber it's all right to dependently ooze your way through life and work, as long as you have the proverbial heart of gold? But Dora, who also has a good heart (a great heart), is still a failure of a woman? Because she can't keep house? Yeesh everybody!
A lot of the book's fan girls (yes, even Dickens books have fan girls, thank you) despise Dora for serving as angelic Agnes's inadvertent romantic rival. I, too, like many fan girls, tend to sympathize with misty-eyed girls deeply in unrequited love, but not so much here. This might be the pot calling the kettle black, since I'm dissing everybody who disses Dora, but I'm not that wild about Agnes, or at least not wild about the way she's portrayed and the way people react to her. Here's what I say about her on the David Copperfield site: I, have a problem with Agnes, not really Agnes herself, but the way that Dickens so shamelessly gushes over her. It came to a point where I felt such dread whenever she came into events, because I knew a conversation between her and David couldn't occur without David prefacing every comment with something like, "My dear good angel without whom I can't make a single decision, I so cherish the sight of your soft seraphic eyes, o sister of my boyhood...." Bleh! Many people consider Dora insipid, but I'm afraid Agnes is more so in my eyes. I tend to enjoy characters with a bit more...I don't know...personality? Character flaws? Temper tantrums? I guess it comes down to "round vs. flat" characters. I know some people argue that Agnes's one big redeeming flaw is supposed to be having hidden her love for David, but even this seems more like just another long-suffering, saintly virtue of hers, waiting patiently in the wings for her true love. It's all too saccharine for me. I realize preferring Dora to Agnes, or vice-versa, is the result of sheer personal taste. Really, judging by my previous posts, who do you think I'm going to dig more?
Agnes isn't real to me. She's everything men are supposed to want: beautiful, wise, motherly, great housekeeper, angelic, and endlessly patient. Pfft, who's like that, really? Dora, for all her many many faults, is at least real and understandable in her imperfections. I truly don't want this post to turn into a diatribe against Agnes, since my secret effort is to get people to stop doing so with Dora. After all, the two girls themselves adore each other. But I just want to point out that if you're going to label Dora as anti-feminist, you can't dis-include Agnes from that label, either. She's the man's idealized woman; she has little function throughout the novel save for serving as David and her father's silent support system.
But to return solely to Dora: she really does have a good heart, and wants what's best for David. She tries to learn how to master the demanding art of being the good little Victorian wife. She really does. But it's just not in her personality's makeup to learn all the ropes involved in housemakerdom. Is she supposed to be permanently barred from marital happiness because of this? We all have our flaws; as I point out in another thread on that site, better for David to marry someone like Dora than a cruel, heartless dictator like Miss Murdstone. It would be one thing if Dora never made the effort, but she did and only made things worse. She feels terrible about it. Yet she still tries: she wants to hold David's pens while he writes. 'Will you mind it, if I say something very, very silly? - more than usual?' inquired Dora, peeping over my shoulder into my face. 'What wonderful thing is that?' said I.
'Please let me hold the pens,' said Dora. 'I want to have something to do with all those many hours when you are so industrious. May I hold the pens?'
The remembrance of her pretty joy when I said yes, brings tears into my eyes. The next time I sat down to write, and regularly afterwards, she sat in her old place, with a spare bundle of pens at her side. Her triumph in this connexion with my work, and her delight when I wanted a new pen - which I very often feigned to do - suggested to me a new way of pleasing my child-wife. I occasionally made a pretense of wanting a page or two of manuscript copied. Then Dora was in her glory. The preparations she made for this great work, the aprons she put on, the bibs she borrowed from the kitchen to keep off the ink, the time she took, the innumerable stoppages she made to have a laugh with Jip as if he understood it all, her conviction that her work was incomplete unless she signed her name at the end, and the way in which she would bring it to me, like a school-copy, and then, when I praised it, clasp me round the neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear to other men.
That and her endless, unwavering love for David are what she offers him.
Let's ignore, for the moment, the "correct post-modern reading" of this excerpt-–that David humoring Dora is little more than a condescending ruse, sappy and insulting. I know their dynamic is not exactly what you'd call absolutely healthy. But let's focus instead on what most readers refuse to acknowledge these days: the two truly, purely love one another. Dora keeps trying, in her own way, to help her husband. And he tries to make her happy.
And then Dickens kills her off. The understood belief is that she died from complications delivering a stillborn babe, a death rife with sexist symbolism: she failed the ultimate test of a woman's worth, motherhood. To soften the blow, Dickens has her give Agnes her final blessing, and la la la David goes onto wedded bliss with kids and a homey hearth where he can write as Agnes distracts the kids with stories. Wee, bully for him!
Of course David deserves happiness after Dora. But it's all just too neat and tidy for me. What would have happened had she lived? Most assume he would have stopped loving her entirely, that her quirky charms would have worn thin as she aged and lost her youthful beauty (as it apparently did with Dickens's real-life Dora, Maria Beadnell).
But because I love Dora's ding-a-ling sweetness, I like to think they would have ended up as a law-abiding version of the Micawbers, genders reversed. A perfectly healthy relationship? No. But I'm sorry, no romance is perfectly healthy. And those depicted in fiction are dull and lifeless. I'd much rather read about David and Dora's good-natured bickering in their declining years, coupled with them still occasionally playing the love-sick, soppy teenagers, than contemplate a wise, harmonious couple quietly holding hands before a roaring fire.
Then again, that's just me.
Literary Rant: In Defense of Dora Spenlow (SPOILERS for David Copperfield)
Great Expectations is my favorite Charles Dickens novel, and probably also one of my favorite books, period. Yet strangely enough, its David Copperfield I find myself thinking of the most, and coming back to time and again–and really, that one is not my favorite, because for some reason I find it lacks the excitement and immediacy I felt while reading Expectations. We finicky nerds, am I right?So, if I don't think David Copperfield is in the same class as Great Expectations, why did I sign up for an account over at The David Copperfield Site at Dickens On-line Resources to shoot my mouth/fingers off about the thing?
The answer wasn't difficult for me to uncover. It's because of Dora Spenlow. Modern readers hate her. She's called an anachronistic mess, a throwback to the sort of helpless girls detrimental to any momentum to the women's rights movement in London at the time. She's clingy, dependent, and woos the titular character away from the steady and discreet Agnes Wickfield, marrying him and then letting their house fall apart. She's childish, whiny, and prone to hysterics. She's a disgrace to strong female characters everywhere. She's popularly believed to be the original source for the term "Dumb Dora."
She's one of my favorite characters in anything ever.
Because she's also wacky, funny, playful, none too bright, but earnest and loving. She's ecstatically devoted to her dog. She's basically everything I value in a heroine.
Some of–okay, a great deal of what they say above is true. She starts out as the archetypal spoiled princess, daughter to the affluent and slightly crooked businessman, Mr. Spenlow. He in turn is boss of the young, strapping David Copperfield. The young Copperfield falls hopelessly, consumingly in love with Dora at first sight. They marry, but he soon finds out that not only is Dora incapable of looking after the house or the accounts, but that she'd rather sit around playing with her dog and singing along to her guitar all day.
But what is so terribly wrong with that?
Now, I know, I know. Dora's behavior is far from good. As I conceded to someone on the IMDb boards of the 1935 movie (I'm everywhere I'm everywhere auuuugh!), no one should have to coddle his spouse the way David does Dora. And BOY, does that girl fly off the handle and whine herself up a storm when she wants to.
But before we cast Dora as anti-feminist, let's reverse the gendered role, here.
Let's say the man is the one who'd rather play guitar, sing, and hang out with the dog than work for the man and keep house. Would he be labeled as a disgrace to his sex, or would he be touted as a charmingly eccentric free spirit? Hey, look at Micawber, the lazy con-artist who befriends David--he's just as helpless and idiotic as Dora, but he's rewarded with an intensely devoted wife and, ultimately, riches in Australia. True, he stood up to Uriah Heep, but he had plenty of help there, and I didn't notice it stem his dependency any. So, what, when you're Micawber it's all right to dependently ooze your way through life and work, as long as you have the proverbial heart of gold? But Dora, who also has a good heart (a great heart), is still a failure of a woman? Because she can't keep house? Yeesh everybody!
A lot of the book's fan girls (yes, even Dickens books have fan girls, thank you) despise Dora for serving as angelic Agnes's inadvertent romantic rival. I, too, like many fan girls, tend to sympathize with misty-eyed girls deeply in unrequited love, but not so much here. This might be the pot calling the kettle black, since I'm dissing everybody who disses Dora, but I'm not that wild about Agnes, or at least not wild about the way she's portrayed and the way people react to her. Here's what I say about her on the David Copperfield site: I, have a problem with Agnes, not really Agnes herself, but the way that Dickens so shamelessly gushes over her. It came to a point where I felt such dread whenever she came into events, because I knew a conversation between her and David couldn't occur without David prefacing every comment with something like, "My dear good angel without whom I can't make a single decision, I so cherish the sight of your soft seraphic eyes, o sister of my boyhood...." Bleh! Many people consider Dora insipid, but I'm afraid Agnes is more so in my eyes. I tend to enjoy characters with a bit more...I don't know...personality? Character flaws? Temper tantrums? I guess it comes down to "round vs. flat" characters. I know some people argue that Agnes's one big redeeming flaw is supposed to be having hidden her love for David, but even this seems more like just another long-suffering, saintly virtue of hers, waiting patiently in the wings for her true love. It's all too saccharine for me. I realize preferring Dora to Agnes, or vice-versa, is the result of sheer personal taste. Really, judging by my previous posts, who do you think I'm going to dig more?
Agnes isn't real to me. She's everything men are supposed to want: beautiful, wise, motherly, great housekeeper, angelic, and endlessly patient. Pfft, who's like that, really? Dora, for all her many many faults, is at least real and understandable in her imperfections. I truly don't want this post to turn into a diatribe against Agnes, since my secret effort is to get people to stop doing so with Dora. After all, the two girls themselves adore each other. But I just want to point out that if you're going to label Dora as anti-feminist, you can't dis-include Agnes from that label, either. She's the man's idealized woman; she has little function throughout the novel save for serving as David and her father's silent support system.
But to return solely to Dora: she really does have a good heart, and wants what's best for David. She tries to learn how to master the demanding art of being the good little Victorian wife. She really does. But it's just not in her personality's makeup to learn all the ropes involved in housemakerdom. Is she supposed to be permanently barred from marital happiness because of this? We all have our flaws; as I point out in another thread on that site, better for David to marry someone like Dora than a cruel, heartless dictator like Miss Murdstone. It would be one thing if Dora never made the effort, but she did and only made things worse. She feels terrible about it. Yet she still tries: she wants to hold David's pens while he writes. 'Will you mind it, if I say something very, very silly? - more than usual?' inquired Dora, peeping over my shoulder into my face. 'What wonderful thing is that?' said I.
'Please let me hold the pens,' said Dora. 'I want to have something to do with all those many hours when you are so industrious. May I hold the pens?'
The remembrance of her pretty joy when I said yes, brings tears into my eyes. The next time I sat down to write, and regularly afterwards, she sat in her old place, with a spare bundle of pens at her side. Her triumph in this connexion with my work, and her delight when I wanted a new pen - which I very often feigned to do - suggested to me a new way of pleasing my child-wife. I occasionally made a pretense of wanting a page or two of manuscript copied. Then Dora was in her glory. The preparations she made for this great work, the aprons she put on, the bibs she borrowed from the kitchen to keep off the ink, the time she took, the innumerable stoppages she made to have a laugh with Jip as if he understood it all, her conviction that her work was incomplete unless she signed her name at the end, and the way in which she would bring it to me, like a school-copy, and then, when I praised it, clasp me round the neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear to other men.
That and her endless, unwavering love for David are what she offers him.
Let's ignore, for the moment, the "correct post-modern reading" of this excerpt-–that David humoring Dora is little more than a condescending ruse, sappy and insulting. I know their dynamic is not exactly what you'd call absolutely healthy. But let's focus instead on what most readers refuse to acknowledge these days: the two truly, purely love one another. Dora keeps trying, in her own way, to help her husband. And he tries to make her happy.
And then Dickens kills her off. The understood belief is that she died from complications delivering a stillborn babe, a death rife with sexist symbolism: she failed the ultimate test of a woman's worth, motherhood. To soften the blow, Dickens has her give Agnes her final blessing, and la la la David goes onto wedded bliss with kids and a homey hearth where he can write as Agnes distracts the kids with stories. Wee, bully for him!
Of course David deserves happiness after Dora. But it's all just too neat and tidy for me. What would have happened had she lived? Most assume he would have stopped loving her entirely, that her quirky charms would have worn thin as she aged and lost her youthful beauty (as it apparently did with Dickens's real-life Dora, Maria Beadnell).
But because I love Dora's ding-a-ling sweetness, I like to think they would have ended up as a law-abiding version of the Micawbers, genders reversed. A perfectly healthy relationship? No. But I'm sorry, no romance is perfectly healthy. And those depicted in fiction are dull and lifeless. I'd much rather read about David and Dora's good-natured bickering in their declining years, coupled with them still occasionally playing the love-sick, soppy teenagers, than contemplate a wise, harmonious couple quietly holding hands before a roaring fire.
Then again, that's just me.
Olive
Never in nature does a creature born to be a Dove turn into an Osprey. It is only amongst men.
-Les Miserables
Posted at: 11:09 am on June 1, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Wow! You must seriously like David Copperfield! My fingers hurt just looking at all your typing. In fact, you seem so obcsessed, I think I will check it out at the library!
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Posted at: 11:01 am on June 4, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
Yes I do obsessably love David Copperfield, and it think you should read it.
Just a warning though, it's over 1000 pages long.
Olive
Never in nature does a creature born to be a Dove turn into an Osprey. It is only amongst men.
-Les Miserables
Posted at: 1:43 pm on June 4, 2012
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HELP! Why am I starting to like Evan?
If you want to be an EvAmy, visit here to an EvAmy place. http://www.the39clues.com/messageboard/show/21036. No, I'm not an EvAmy. I'm a Jamy! Just wanting to be thoughtful though. Even though Ian can be a jerk, he has changed and is way better than he was 2 years ago! No, I am not an AmIan. Just listing facts.
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Posted at: 3:47 pm on June 4, 2012
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