A Child Fit For Heaven

David Copperfield begins with young Davy's birth. He is born to his recently widowed mother, raised for several years by her and their beloved nurse Pegotty, and then sent away to a London boarding school upon his mother's remarriage to the abusive and unfeeling Mr. Murdstone. He remains there long enough for his mother to conceive and give birth to a younger brother, of which David knows nothing till his next visit home.

Following her marriage to Murdstone but prior to Davy's departure for London, his mother had been discouraged - prohibited, really - from the kind of affection with which she'd hitherto expressed toward him, and the reader is constantly frustrated by scenes in which his mother longs to shower him with maternal affection but which abort under Murdstone's disapproval. When Davy returns home on holiday, only to find Murdstone out for the day, the anticipation of the affectionate reunion of Clara, "my boy, Davy", and Pegotty is delicious. The scene is moving, mostly due to the involuntary and overwhelming rise of affection that Dickens describes (in the first person of Davy). I can't help but wonder if God has given, through the pen of Dickens, a very true (though certainly not exhaustive) picture of worship and abandone, in so far as a child loves and adores his mother:

I went softly into the [parlor]. [Davy's mother] was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hadn she help against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was [correct in thinking] that she had no other companion.

I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand up to my lips.

I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.