Dickens in David Copperfield is not as concerned as he usually is with "the condition of England question," Thomas Carlyle's term for Dickens' concern with the problems of contemporary English society. The overall tone of David Copperfield, and of Great Expectations, differs very much from Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and Dombey and Son, which all preceded David Copperfield and from Bleak House and Little Dorrit, which came after it. The bildungsroman shows Dickens exploring his personality, tracing its origin and development. Social concerns do enter into the novel however. Salem House Academy is a school as brutal in its depiction of sadistic schoolmasters as the Yorkshire schools in Nicholas Nickleby. Dr.

Strong's school in Canterbury seems to have been the exception rather than the rule in England during the first half of the nineteenth century. But Dickens presents Salem House and the students' lives there without...