Abstract:Dickens, the famous British critical realist Dickens in 1900s paid special attention to describing the lives at the bottom of society in UK, reflecting the complex social reality in Britain. Dickens played an important role in the history of English critical realism literature. His works are still popular. In the autobiographical novel David Copperfield, he built many vivid characters. Psychologically speaking, character is defined as a man who has a core psychological character, which, once formed, has strong stability. Ancient Greek philosopher Hera Kerry also once said that a person’s character is his fate. This idea has been around for thousands of years and many people take it as wisdom. This idea includes two aspects: one is that the character is innate, which anyone will never get rid of; secondly, it is a personal character that determines the fate of his lifetime. Namely we often say “character is destiny.” Undeniably, a person’s character will have a significant effect on a person’s lifestyle, attitude, and character. But it is not necessarily invariable in certain circumstances and can be formed and thus reshape a personality to possibly change his fate. So character primarily remodels the environmental impact. Generally speaking environment includes two aspects. One aspect is the people he lives with, and another is the thing that happens to him. So in this essay I will take Dickens’ masterpiece of David Copperfield as an example to discuss the relationship between environment, character and destiny.

Keywords: circumstances   fate    character

Contents

中文摘要

Abstract

Chapter 1  Introduction-1

1.1Research Background-1

1.2Study Implications-1

Chapter 2 The Background-2

2.1 brief introduction of  Dickens-2

2.2Introduction of David Copperfield-2

2.3introduction of Industrial Revolution-2

Chapter 3  The brief introduction of the main characters in David Copperfield-4

Chapter 4 The relationship between circumstances and character-5

4.1 The people David Copperfield living with-5

4.1.1His aunt---Miss Betsey-5

4.1.2David’s nanny and caretaker---Clara Peggoty-6

4.2the things happened to David Copperfield-6

Chapter 5   The relationship between character and fate-9

Chapter 6 conclusion-11

Acknowledgements-12