I have a question which I direct into the ether. Why did Charles Dickens introduce the absurd Dora Spenlow character only to kill her off? Did he come to have doubts about her as he was writing? Then why not excise her out entirely? David Copperfield would have been improved by the subtraction. I have read this book a couple of times and am perusing it again and from first reading I have wondered about Dora Spenlow. David Copperfield was Dickens own favorite of his novels, it is autobiographical; was one of Dickens' own wives or loves Dora-like? Deary me, I hope not. The "child-wife" diminishes the Copperfield character and, to the extent Dora was a caricature of a real woman in Dickens' life, diminishes Dickens moreso. She is Exhibit A in the feminist critique of Dickens, instantiating the proposition that Dickens did not write women well because he could not write women. I do not find that proposition carried, not in a book also with Betsey Trotwood, but I cannot defend Charles Dickens against the charge on Dora Spenlow.