Ahhhh, what a masterpiece this novel is. Great Expectations is not lauded as Dickens’ greatest work without cause. I haven’t read this since I was 12, and as I aimed to read at least one classic a month this year, Great Expectations was my pick for the month of January.
I actually attempted to annotate a bit when reading this; it’s a quality read that deserves quality commentary. So, while my efforts might not quite equate that high standard, I did do my utmost to try :’)
As I’ve made clear from my very first Musings post, this is a series that *will be full of spoilers* because it’s my space to express all my emotions towards a book. SooOoOo, if you don’t want to know about the climax, big reveals, and stuff like that, you might wanna skip to the end…
Quick Synopsis *this part is spoiler-free*
Phillip Pirrip, better known as Pip, is an orphaned, young boy who lives with his sister and her husband. He is our retrospective narrator, and he tells of his great expectations in three stages. As the story unfolds, Pip moves from adolescence to adulthood, and eventually, manhood.
Pip’s journey begins when he meets an escaped convict one blustery, winter morning, on the eve of Christmas. Little does he know that this is the encounter that will change his life forever. The kindness that Pip extends to this man, though certainly performed under great fear, will set him on his way as the years unfold.
A certain Miss Havisham, a woman of many eccentricities (though that is to put it very, very mildly), requires a young boy to “play” with her young ward, a beautiful young girl, named Estella. Pip becomes enamoured with her, and eventually falls in love, despite Estella’s coldness & mercurial manners towards him.
Shortly after Pip becomes an apprentice to his brother-in-law, Joe, he comes into a large fortune from an unknown benefactor. He moves to London and spends and manages his funds very rashly. Pip becomes great friends with a young man named Herbert, and they share rooms together as they live it up.
Pip forgets his friends and family, nurtures feelings of condescension and pride, and on the whole, becomes clouded by his better station and way of living while vainly pursuing Estella as the years go by. Upon finding out the identity of his generous benefactor, Pip undergoes a journey that will finally change the poor attitudes and habits he has kept and make a man out of him.
Humour!!
The subtleties of Dickens’ sense of humour are GOLDEN. He weaves these top-notch jokes in with such clever phraseology, and I laughed so many times. And, I definitely got more of the jokes than I did when I first read it 8 years ago :’) Here are a couple of my favourites:
…[Joe] persisted in sitting down in the damp to such an insane extent, that when his coat was to be taken off to be dried at the kitchen fire, the circumstantial evidence on his trousers would have hanged him if it had been a capital offence.
[Regarding Pip’s earnings being dropped into a money-box in the kitchen.] I have an impression that they were to be contributed eventually towards the liquidation of the National Debt, but I know I had no hope of any personal participation in the treasure.
Pip
Oh, Pip. He would be completely starved for love if not for his relationship with Joe. The diction Dickens employs in the first part of the book reflects the lens of a young boy so well. It is especially poignant after Estella has hurt Pip’s feelings, and Pip becomes aware of the lowness of his station and class.
I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry–I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart–God knows what its name was–that tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight in having been the cause of them.
…I was a common-labouring boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick; that I had fallen into a despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more ignorant than I had considered myself; and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way.
Pip has always desired knowledge, and now, he thirsts for elegance. He begins to associate Estella with the beauties in nature and all that is good in the world; thus, his current circumstances and friends become rough and undesirable. However, while doesn’t treat them as such, his greatest crimes against them occur in his own mind; in his pride and vainglory; in his forgetfulness of them when “his wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality,” and he was granted a great fortune.
Themes
I think one of the interesting themes brought up is that of nature vs. nurture. Pip tells us that his sister’s upbringing made him “morally timid” and sensitive: “In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.” The love he feels from Joe balances this, and his own character, though certainly influenced by his surroundings, emerges: Pip is kind-hearted and generous, seeking an education, but upon meeting Havisham and Estella, these good traits become a bit marred, and Pip slowly becomes more and more consumed with the things of this world until the climax of this tale.
Estella is also an interesting study of this theme. She is, of course, poisoned by Havisham. The love she could have felt towards Pip is ~impossible~ insofar as we can tell heheh. She has become unfeeling and cold, steely and without remorse. But, as time will tell and Estella goes down her own painful path in life, she eventually learns love that way.
Redemption and forgiveness are two, intertwined themes of great importance to this story. Pip, of course, is redeemed when he realises the depth of his ingratitude; the harm of his selfishness; the wrongness of his attitudes. This starts off slowly and is fully realised when his benefactor lies dying before him.
Arguably, Abel Magwitch, the convict and gracious benefactor of Pip’s great expectations, has a path of redemption more meaningful than Pip’s. His gratitude towards Pip, and his keen observance of Pip’s plight, motivated him to live a life without crime. One where he worked honestly and built up a fortune to give to the young man who extended him kindess. Magwitch completely changed his ways so that he might express his thankfulness and pay Pip back in the best way possible. It is his death that elucidates Pip’s wrongdoings to himself and puts him on the path to living a more honest and wholesome life.
Of course, there are many other themes in this work that are worth examining: how wealth leads to corruption, personal responsibility, prison reform, abandonment, ambition, etc.
Favourite Quotes
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before–more sorry, more aware of my own in gratitude, more gentle. If I had cried before, I should have had Joe with me then.
[Estella,] You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since–on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with.
For now, my repugnance to [Magwitch, the convict] had all melted away, and in the hunted wounded shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately, gratefully, and generously, towards me with great constancy through a series of years. I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to Joe.
Finally…
I really enjoyed this reread of Great Expectations! Dickens’ style & expression are brilliant. Humor, irony, repetition, sense of location, and unique characters all work together in a very successful manner. His choice to go with a happy ending–though it chagrined George Bernard Shaw–offers hope.
Have you read Great Expectations? Do you have a favourite Dickens novel? I’m excited to read The Pickwick Papers sometime this year! Hopefully, you enjoyed my musings on Great Expectations; it’s a fantastic novel 🙂