Chapter 48 - Summary, David Copperfield | David Copperfield - Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

Domestic

• David is working hard at a book.
• He doesn't plan to make many references to his fictional works; they speak for themselves.
• David has been married for about a year and a half (which would make him about twenty-two and half now), and they have given up their housekeeping lessons.
• Instead, they have an extremely awful page.
• David is worried that they'll never get rid of the boy.
• Fortunately, he gives them a way out: the boy steals Dora's watch and pawns it.
• The page keeps confessing, bit by bit, all of the things he has stolen.
• David feels completely embarrassed by what a victim he has become: he really can't keep order in his own house.
• Meanwhile, Dora goes to visit the boy in prison.
• But she's so freaked out by being in jail that she faints.
• David uses this as an opportunity to note that their poor household management has gotten so out of hand that it's now messing up other people.
• Dora scolds David for being cross.
• David tells her to put Jip down.
• He tells Dora sternly that they are wasting money by not being careful, and they're also spoiling all of their servants by giving them opportunities to turn bad.
• Dora thinks David is accusing her of stealing gold watches.
• David didn't mean this at all, but Dora sobs that David is comparing her to the thieving page boy.
• David asks Dora to be reasonable.
• But she can't: she wonders why David didn't send her to India (where Miss Mills went) instead of marrying her.
• David thinks the only thing there is left to do is to educate Dora's mind.
• So, when Dora is being childish, David turns serious.
• He tries to read Shakespeare to her, which makes her tired.
• Whenever Traddles comes by the house, David starts instructing him in practical wisdom in the hopes that it will trickle down to Dora by proxy – which it doesn't.
• Eventually, after several months, David notices that he's having no effect. It looks like Dora's mind is set.
• David decides that he's going to be satisfied with her from now on out, and he buys her some presents.
• Dora is very pleased with the gifts.
• David apologizes that they haven't been good company lately.
• Dora knows that David has been trying to make her wise.
• She tells David it's no use – she's his child-wife. Sometimes she thinks it would have been better if —
• But Dora doesn't finish her sentence and won't explain.
• David tells Dora that he loves her as she is, and won't try to change her anymore.
• Dora is delighted and kisses David.
• This was David's last effort to try and change Dora.
• David feels a general unhappiness, which he can't pinpoint: he loves Dora, but something is missing.
• What David wants is a real life partner – something that he knows he could have had.
• David knows that Dora is truly proud and fond of him.
• But he also knows that, if his heart had been careful when he first met Dora, he would never have fallen for her.
• David is all too aware that he and Dora have wildly different minds and goals.
• Eventually, David comes to terms with the fact that he has to adapt himself to Dora, to make her life as good as he can.
• But he notices that Dora seems weaker in that second year of marriage than she was in the first.
• She becomes pregnant, but the baby does not live.
• After the pregnancy, Dora can't walk or run.
• Dora tells Miss Betsey that she wants to make Jip race: he is getting slow and lazy.
• Miss Betsey breaks the news to Dora that Jip is growing old.
• Dora starts to worry over Jip; even worse, she grows afraid of the future.
• She grows happy and cheerful again, but she still can't walk or run.
• David carries her downstairs in the morning and upstairs at night.
• Miss Betsey nurses Dora.
• Mr. Dick carries the candles up and down the stairs after her.
• But David starts to feel a kind of dread at how light Dora is getting in his arms.