ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Dickens's home-bred and sensitive men first in David Copperfield in Great Expectations. While Great Expectations might be Dickens's most explicit meditation on the Victorian gentleman, David Copperfield sets up many of the masculine dynamics that Dickens would later explore in Pip's narrative. Because of David's intimacy with the other men in the novel, in particular James Steerforth, Uriah Heep and Tom Traddles, and his privileged position as narrator, his characterizations of these figures offer striking examples of a Victorian male's mediations on marriage, homosociality and 'proper' male sexuality. Ultimately, though, Traddles's motto proves successful: at the close of the novel, he is set to become a judge and he owns a large house, much like the homes about which he and Sophy used to dream. Indeed, as Myers claims, this ending is certainly 'overly optimistic', as like David, Traddles finally realizes the middle-class dream.
