Funny / David Copperfield

• The entirety of chapter one where we first meet Aunt Betsey:
  • Her interaction with Clara, who keeps bursting into tears.
  ‘Do you know anything?’
  ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ faltered my mother.
  ‘About keeping house, for instance,’ said Miss Betsey.
  ‘Not much, I fear,’ returned my mother. ‘Not so much as I could wish. But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me—’
  (‘Much he knew about it himself!’) said Miss Betsey in a parenthesis.
  • Her brusque manner clashing badly with the mild-mannered doctor called to assist the birth. Mr Chillip is properly intimidated and has no idea how to deal with her.
  ‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear nearest to him.
  ‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are - we are progressing slowly, ma’am.’
  ‘Ba—a—ah!’ said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the contemptuous interjection. And corked herself as before.
  • Two hours later.
  ‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side again.
  ‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are - we are progressing slowly, ma’am.’
  ‘Ya—a—ah!’ said my aunt.
  • Her response to being told David is a boy is to take off her bonnet and aim at his head with it.
• Aunt Betsey's... bizarre reaction to young David showing up on her doorstep and telling her who he is.
• A surprising number of moments when the Murdstones arrive to claim custody of Davy, as the result of them coming up against Aunt Betsey.
  • The struggle with the donkey until Aunt Betsey tackles it.
  • Aunt Betsey's savage dig to Miss Murdstone after the latter says she always thought of Clara as "a mere child."
  "It is a comfort to you and me, ma’am," said my aunt, "who are getting on in life, and are not likely to be made unhappy by our personal attractions, that nobody can say the same of us."
  "No doubt!" returned Miss Murdstone, though, I thought, not with a very ready or gracious assent.
• Aunt Betsey provides another funny moment at the end of her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the Murdstones. "If you come riding donkeys over my green again, I'll knock your bonnet off. And tread upon it!"
• "...you Heep of infamy!"
• David and Dora's attempt at a dinner party. The meat isn't cooked, and the oysters aren't opened. Mr. Micawber tries to open one with a fork. Several minutes later, the oyster still isn't open and the fork is bent.
  Mr. Micawber: ...Soup?
• Barkis insists a box is full of old clothes. After his death, his will reveals that it contains three thousand pounds (roughly £450,000 in 2023!)
  Peggotty: Not bad for old clothes!
• David is not above making fun of his own love-addled state regarding Dora.
  • "I, the moon-struck slave of Dora [...] romantically calling on the night, at intervals, to shield my Dora - I don’t exactly know what from, I suppose from fire. Perhaps from mice, to which she had a great objection."
  • Upon giving Dora flowers: "I wonder I didn’t say, ‘Kill me, if you have a heart, Miss Mills. Let me die here!"

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