Heroines of Fiction by W.D. Howells

In “David Copperfield” there are perhaps as many monsters as in “Dombey and Son,” but they are not so merely monsters, and there are many more personalities. The of these is David’s poor, pretty young widowed mother, who in her hapless second marriage is very tenderly and truly portrayed, and the next are David’s successive and contrasted wives, Dora Spenlow and Agnes Wickfield…

…This is not saying that these personalities are not every one overdone, and at times each are carried to the verge of monstrosity; but the autobiographical form of the novel seems to have held the author in check, and saved him in some measure from his besetting sin of excess.

View chapter from Heroines of Fiction by William D. Howells.