Professionalization and Gender in David Copperfield

ABSTRACT Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1849–1850) is a novel about the emergent profession of authorship, and its protagonist is the embodiment of Dickens’s idea of the professional novelist. The most significant qualities underlying David’s characterization relate to gender, and as a feminine male novelist, David blurs Victorian gender boundaries. Whereas many critics have illustrated the androgynous nature of the male novelist with a focus on his feminine traits, this article will show that his masculinity is crucial to his authorial identities and serves to foster his professionalization, and at the same time redefine his femininity in the context of the mid-nineteenth-century discourse on professionals. By doing so, this article will finally reveal how Victorian male novelists such as Dickens thought of their professional and gender identities, and especially their ideals and anxieties. This investigation will also shed light on the significant inter-relationship between Victorian professionalism and gender issues, especially in the world of authorship.