Finding Form in David Copperfield: The Architectural Installment

Abstract

Almost every formal study of the serial installments of Victorian novels has emphasized their textual condition, linking the installment's formal aspects to the circumstances of its publication and the experience of its readers. This essay takes a different approach, arguing that many Victorian novels use their serial structure to express and shape their meanings in an architectural sense, irrespective of the experience of reading or the mediations of print culture. Considering the example of David Copperfield, the essay shows that the shape of the numbers has a significant bearing on issues central to the novel, including the failures of patriarchy, David's erotic development, the politics of homelessness, and the equivocal character of Daniel Peggotty's rescue efforts. Indeed, the numbers of Copperfield stage intricate formal operations that are not revealed, and are in some way obscured, by a focus on the book's number plans, its publication history, or the temporalities of serial reading. The essay therefore proposes that we approach the serial installment with the same double-vision we train on other narrative forms, viewing the numbers as both registering their textual condition and expressing a self-contained narrative logic.