My expectations were greatly met.
Superbly written by Charles Dickens and superbly read and dramatized by Simon Prebble.
My thoughts on this book ranged from 3 stars while reading the first half of the print version to 4 stars and eventually 5 stars while listening to the second half on audio. The story grew stronger as it progressed.
Worthy of the time spent reading and listening to the unabridged versions. 18.5 hrs.

Oh, the beauty and the agony tears at me as I think about this stunning story.

The characters are vivid and the settings so well written that I was transported to the graveyard alongside young Pip and his convict, fear streaking through me as it was for that small boy torn by a near-impossible decision. And I’m there with Pip and kind-hearted Joe in the forge. I can feel the fire on my skin and taste hot metal on the back of my tongue. In my mind, I hear the crackling of the decades-old crinoline of Miss Havisham’s skirts rustling against the marble floors of the mausoleum she calls home. Amid the stopping of Miss Havisham’s clock, the cool radiance that is Estella vibrates from the pages, bringing her to life.

If you haven’t read Great Expectations, I encourage you to do so. Yes, it was first published in 1861, and the syntax is more eloquent than that we’ve become accustomed to, but once this tale grabs hold, you will forget the language and year it was written and be all in with these new friends. The love, the heartbreak and the lessons still hold true today. Some choices, once made, can leave long-reaching scars on the hearts of those we never knew we touched. A good deed can ripple through time to places never imagined. The consequences of our actions must be accounted for, and there will always be outcomes we could never have anticipated.

Great Expectations is the real deal! The deliciously-satisfying prose is the whipped cream on the proverbial sundae that is Dickens. The plot and subplots (and sub-subplots) are astounding! The way he can weave this tangled web yet keep the interest of the reader while giving nothing away until the perfect moment … and BAM! He has you, and you sigh with the perfection of it all.

You’ve missed a gorgeous piece of literature if you don’t dive into this book!

n  "Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."n

That is such a quote. If there was ever a novel that shows us the dangers of false perceptions then it’s Great Expectations . Pip is such a fool; he constantly misjudges those around him, and he constantly misjudges his own worth. This has lead him down a road of misery because the person who held the highest expectations for Pip was Pip himself. But, in spite of this, Pip does learn the error of his ways and becomes a much better person, though not before hurting those that have the most loyalty to him.

The corrupting power of money is strong through this novel



The money Pip received clouds his vison completely. He, in his innocence, longed to be a gentleman, but when he has the chance he forgets everything thing he is. In his self-imposed aggrandisement he can only deduce that his money came from a source of respectability; his limited capacity has determined that only he, a gentleman, could receive money from a worthy source. But, what he perceives as respectable is the problem. Indeed, Dickens contrasts societies’ gentleman (created through social station) with the true gentleman of the age who may, or may not, have any money. Pip has falsely perceived that to be a gentleman one must have money, and must have the social graces that comes with it. However, this is far from the truth as Pip later learns. He thinks Joe is backward and ungentlemanly, but Joe, in reality, is more of a gentle man than Pip could ever be.

In this, he has forgotten his routes and his honest, if somewhat rough, upbringing. He has been tainted by money and the rise in class that came with it. I think if he never received the allowance he would have eventually been happy at the forge. He may have sulked for a year or two, but, ultimately, he would have got over himself as he does eventually do. The money gave him hope; it gave him a route in which he could seek his Estella. Without the money he would have realised she was, in fact, unobtainable regardless of his class; he would have moved on and got on with his life. But, that wouldn’t have made for a very interesting novel.

Pip’s journey of morale regeneration is the key

Indeed, Pip wouldn’t have learnt a thing. Through the correcting of his perceptions he learns the value of loyalty and simple human kindness. This changes him and he is, essentially, a much better person for it. He learns the errors of his ways, and how shameful and condescending his behaviour has been to those that hold him most dear, namely Joe. You can feel the pain in his narration as he tells the last parts of his story; it becomes clear that Pip could never forgive himself for his folly. He wishes forgiveness from those that love him that’s why he forgives Havisham, but I don’t think he fully deserves it. He is repentant, but the damage is done.

Heaven knows we never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of the earth, overlaying our hard hearts.



Pip’s morale regeneration was a necessary facet for the brilliance of this work. It creates an ending that, for me, was perfect. It is not the ending that Pip thought he would get, but it is the ending this novel deserved. Pip’s morale regeneration and revelations are just not enough to offset the past. He has grown but, like Havisham, cannot turn back the clocks. The ending Joe receives signifies this; he, as one of the only true gentleman of the novel, receives his overdue happiness. Whereas Pip is destined to spend the rest of his life in a state of perpetual loneliness, he, most certainly, learnt his lesson the hard way.

"Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.

Anguish is in equal measures



Pip’s story though, ultimately, sad is not the most woe begotten of the character stories in this novel. Abel Magwitch and Miss Havisham are two incredibly miserable individuals because life has really got them down. Havisham is the caricature of the spinster; she is stuck in the past (quarter to nine to be precise) and is unable to move on; she has turned bitter and yellow; she has imposed herself to perpetual agony. Despite her harshness and venom there is a flicker of light within her soul that Pip unleashes. For me, she is the most memorable, and well written, character in this novel because her story transcends that of Pip’s.

And then there is the lovable Abel Magwitch. The poor man had been used and cheated; he had been bargained away and sacrificed. He has been shown no kindness in his life and when he meets a young Pip in the marshes he is touched by the small measure of friendship the boy offers him. His response: to repay that debt, with what he believes to be kindness, in turn. These characters are incredibly memorable and harbour two tragic and redemptive stories. But, in order to display their anguish to the world and society, they both use another to exact their revenge. Havisham uses Estella to break the hearts of men, like hers was once broken; Magwitch creates his “own” gentleman as a revenge to the world of gentleman that betrayed him.



I love Great Expectations. It is more than just a story of love; it is a strong story about the power of loyalty and forgiveness; it is a story about falsehoods and misperceptions; it is a story of woe and deeply felt sadness: it is about how the folly of youth can alter your life for ever. It is an extraordinary novel. I've now read it three times, and I know I'm not finished with yet.

My history with "Great Expectations" goes back quite a ways. It all began at a party, back in the days when I was young and full of hope, unaware of life's many pitfalls and twists and turns. This is to say that I was unaware of them except at a cognitive level and had yet to experience "life's brutal indifference."

The party was honoring some professor for one of the many awards the university bestowed and, shockingly, the crowd consisted mainly of professors from various departments. It was, as one might expect, a dull party full of fawning younger pedagogues being obsequious to their academic betters. No one got drunk and crazy and there were no scenes of untoward behavior.

I happened upon a literature professor who seemed very bored with literature and who wanted to talk about my job, which, I admit, was far more interesting than life as a pedant. I persisted, however, in asking what books he recommended me to read. He wearily named two, one being "Jude the Obscure" and the other "Great Expectations."

I had never heard of "Jude the Obscure" and rushed out to buy a copy. I was familiar with "Great Expectations," though had no idea of the story line, and at that point the only book I had read of Dickens was, "A Christmas Carol." My opinion of Dickens was low, not based on his actual work but based on a Thomas Wolfe novel I had recently read (can't remember if it was "The Web and the Rock" or "You Can't Go Home Again?"). The protagonist of the Wolfe book was forever comparing Dickens to Dostoyevsky, the implication being that Dickens was an overly sentimental purveyor of treacle, whereas Dos was the real deal, a chronicler of life as it really was--grim, filled with uncertainties and contention and people who asked a lot of questions about what life meant and whether living was even worth it. Dostoyevsky was a hero of mine and Thomas Wolfe's novel had given me reason to doubt that Dickens was in the same league with him.

I started reading "Jude the Obscure" and felt like I had found a kindred soul in Thomas Hardy. Jude had to be one of the most depressing books I had ever read, and as his hopes were continually dashed I felt pity for him while also realizing that this book was not going to end happily.

Somewhere along the way I'd also picked up a used copy of "Great Expectations," one of the old Signet Classic editions. I tried several times to read it and the book simply did not "grab" me right from the start. I had friends who told me it was on of their favorite books, with a wonderful story, but I found it extremely off-putting.

Thirty years pass, and now I have lived and suffered and had come to reconcile my successes and failures and not have too many expectations for life. I was still afflicted with the habit of reading, though this had dwindled with the coming of the Internet. Still, I somehow managed to derive pleasure from reading and, being a whim reader, I was in my usual frenetic state after finishing one book and examining the thousands of unread books in my "to be read" personal library. For reasons I cannot fathom, I settled upon "Great Expectations." I was prepared to scuttle the book if it still failed to hold my interest. By this time I had read "A Tale of Two Cities" and "David Copperfield" and felt a bit more respect for Dickens and did not feel "Great Expectations" would be beyond my admittedly limited apprehension.

It was a shock when I started reading the book and found that it made sense, that I understood the voice of this small boy, Pip, writing about life with his harridan sister and her kindly husband Joe after being orphaned at an early age. It was like looking at a complicated puzzle I'd been unable to solve for years and finally, for the first time, the solution was crystal clear. I was to continue having this crystal clear feeling for a bit over 200 pages, when suddenly the puzzle's solution once again became opaque. I blame the character of Mrs. Havisham for clouding my vision. I simply could not understand why this character existed in the novel or what the point behind her was, if any? Once again the book became a chore and I feared I would have wasted twenty hours or so of reading and consoled myself by thinking that I probably would have wasted the time listening to lectures on Ancient Rome only to forget them in a month.

It was Audible that saved my bacon. In one of my many manic book-buying sprees, I had at some point already purchased the novel on Audible; so immediately switched to the audiobook format for the remaining 11+ hours of "Great Expectations."

It was a listening slog and had it not been for the excellent narrator Mr. Simon Prebble, I might have abandoned the venture. As I listened, I continued to dislike the book and could never figure out what purpose Miss Havisham or her ward, Estella, actually served in the book. The whole tale of Magwitch, the criminal whom young Pip feeds after Magwitch accosts him in the cemetery where Pip has gone to view his parents' graves, seemed barely plausible to me and the convenient wrapping up of all the confusion seemed mawkish and incredulous (though I must admit I cried on a few occasions due to Mr. Prebble's remarkable narrative skills).

The moral of the story, as G. K. Chesterton said in his preface was: Don't be a snob--something I learned in kindergarten. I had understood all of the many characters in Dickens' other first-person novel David Copperfield. Mr. Micawber seemed like many people I had known, as did Uriah Heep, the scheming, unctuous clerk. The fault of "Great Expectations, for me, was the falsity of the characters and the storyline. Joe and his termagant wife and Solicitor Jaggers and his assistant Wemmick were the only characters in this story who rang true to me.

Given the near overwhelming love of this novel by my fellow goodreaders, I have also not ruled out the likelihood that I am a shallow Philistine who wouldn't recognize literary genius even if I had Mr. Pocket as my teacher.

.

As improbable and moralizing as it is, the story completely seduced me. Pip's life is an adventure, and the small events that mark her are just as exciting as the big ones: her encounters with Miss Havisham, the dinners in Wemmick's Castle, the rivalry with the brooding Drumble, the love for Estrella, the meeting with the convicts, the friendship with Herbert, the young gentleman.
I enjoyed the little touches of humor, especially the Avenger Jack or the grotesque Pumblechook. I found Pip intelligent and lucid despite his cowardice and pettiness. Suddenly, I particularly enjoyed the 2nd part, which was weaker in twists and turns than the other two but exciting as a learning novel in reverse.
On the other hand, I had a lot of trouble with the styling. I may not have chosen the best translation, but I found it choppy, sometimes obscure, and often painful. I am surprised I remember a very smooth reading of 'A Christmas Carol.'
In short, it was a good book, but it did not entirely meet my great expectations.

Great Expectations…were formed...were met…and were thoroughly exceeded!n  n

The votes have been tallied, all doubts have been answered and it is official and in the books ...I am a full-fledged, foaming fanboy of Sir Dickens and sporting a massive man-crush for literature’s master story-teller*.

*Quick Aside: My good friend Richard who despises “Chuckles the Dick” is no doubt having a conniption as he reads this…deep breaths, Richard, deep breaths.

After love, love, loving A Tale of Two Cities, I went into this one with, you guessed it [insert novel title] and was nervous and wary of a serious let down in my sophomore experience with Dickens. Silly me, there was zero reason for fear and this was even more enjoyable than I had hoped. Not quite as standing ovation-inducing as A Tale of Two Cities, but that was more a function of the subject matter of A Tale of Two Cities being more attractive to me.

PLOT SUMMARY:

Here Dickens tells the story of the growth and development of young Philip Pirrip (“Pip”) who begins his life as an orphan, neglected and abused, by his sister (Mrs. “Joe” Gargery). "I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends." Through a series of chance encounters, Pip rises above his disadvantaged beginnings to become a gentleman in every sense of the word. Pip’s journey is not a straight line and his strength of character and inner goodness are not unwavering, but, in the end, they shine through and he the better for it.

THOUGHTS & GUSHINGS:

Dickens prose is the essence of engaging and his humor is both sharp and subtle and sends warm blasts of happy right into my cockles.

n My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbors because she had brought me up “by hand.” Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.

In addition to his ability to twist a phrase and infuse it with clever, dry wit, Dickens is able to brings similar skill across the entire emotional range. When he tugs on the heart-strings, he does so as a maestro plucks the violin and you will feel played and thankful for the experience.

n   For now my repugnance to him 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.
…
We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one. n

Dickens never bashes over the head with the emotional power of his prose. In fact, it is the quiet, subtle method of his delivery of the darker emotions that make them so powerful.

Okay…okay…I’ll stop on the prose. I think I’ve made my point that I love his writing.

Combine his polished, breezy verse with his seemingly endless supply of memorable characters that is his trademark and you have the makings of a true classic...which this happens to be. There are so many unique, well drawn characters in this story alone that it is constantly amazing to me that he was able to so regularly populate his novels with such a numerous supply. To name just a few, Great Expectations gives us:

- the wealthy and bitter Miss Havisham,
- the good-hearted but often weak social climbing main character Pip,
- the good-hearted criminal Magwitch,
n  n
- the truly evil and despicable Orlick and Drummle,
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- the virtuous, pillar of goodness "Joe" Gargery
- the abusive, mean-spirited, never-to-be-pleased Mrs. Joe Gargery,
- the cold and unemotional Estella,
- the officious, money-grubbing Mr. Pumblechook, and
- the iconic Victorian businessman Mr. Jaggers.

It’s a veritable panoply of distinct personalities, each with their own voice and their own part to play in this wonderful depiction of life in 19th Century London.

The only criticism I have for the book is that I tend to agree with some critics that the original "sadder" ending to the story was better and more in keeping with the rest of the narrative. However, as someone who doesn't mind a happy ending, especially with characters I have come to truly care for, that is a relatively minor gripe.

4.5 to 5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATIONS!!!

P.S. A few bonus quotes that I thought were too good not to share:

Pip: “In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”

Joe to Pip: "If you can't get to be uncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked."

Its a great human weakness to wish to be the same as our friends. If they are rich we wish to be rich. If they are poor then we don't mind being equally poor. We are not ashamed of being stupid, we are only ashamed of being more stupid than our friends. Its a matter of comparison. It is also a matter of expectation. We don't miss things that we never expected to have. We are not disappointed at being poor if we never expected to be rich.....

A classic for certain, and only my second Dickens to date. The most surprising thing I found? Dicken's amazing humor! This is especially true in the first third, or so, in the story of Pip. But it may be the themes of this book that I remember most, and the growth of Pip. What does it take to make one happy? Is it wealth, or is it love and friendship? Those are the few things I thought about most often here.

Yeah, the writing is vintage. But, I found it mostly relatable, even a nice change of pace for me (all truth be told – some parts were confounding. I back-tracked often, sometimes I simply moved on). At story's end I was left these feelings: A little bit of joy, a little bit of heart-break, quite a bit of contentedness. Glad I finally read this one.

Great Expectations. What a superb title this is; wonderful, in the best and truest sense of the word. It is upbeat, exciting, and full of intrigue. It quickens our pulse and gives us a little thrilling frisson. Who is it, who has these “Great Expectations”? We want to meet them. We want to share their anticipations and their pleasure. We are hooked into the story by these first two words.

Perhaps most significant of all is that it is a short, memorable title. Great Expectations is one of Charles Dickens’s latest novels, his thirteenth in fact, serialised weekly, in his newspaper “All the Year Round” in nine monthly sections between December 1860 and August 1861. It was also serialised in the US – oddly a few days before - and on the continent. Then Dickens’s publishers, Chapman and Hall, published the first edition in book form in three volumes in 1861, with five subsequent reprints, and a one-volume edition in 1862. Sadly Dickens had quarrelled with his great friend and illustrator Hablot Knight Browne, “Phiz”, so there are none of his quirky and instantly recognisable illustrations. The silver lining in this cloud is that there are a plethora of illustrations by other artists, both contemporaneous and later. They vary from the absurd, clearly mimicking Phiz’s caricatures, to increasingly ghastly ghouls, and stuffed shirt heroes. Some are darkly effective, capturing the gothic mood, but others make the reader yearn for Phiz’s perception and insightful eye.

Dickens was only to write more novel, “Our Mutual Friend”, plus an unfinished one, aptly named “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (a mystery never to be solved, although plenty have tried).

By now Dickens was a master of his craft. He had abandoned the lengthy titles, which sometimes took up half a page and which are rarely used in full. He had also learned, wisely, that his public liked optimism. Other short titles such as “Hard Times” and “Bleak House” had preceded this one, but they reek of Victorian deprivation and hardship. They do not attract us in the same way, nor are they timeless in appeal, whereas the title Great Expectations could have been coined yesterday.

In other ways too this novel stands head and shoulders above some of the others which precede it. Dickens always had an eye to his popularity, and whereas “Bleak House” may well be his greatest novel, it is not, and has never been, his most popular. It is so weighty that it is in danger of toppling over, and many readers struggle with the complexity of it. There are several interwoven plots, and although it contains some of his finest writing, Dickens makes few concessions to those who prefer one strong thread to follow. Conversely Great Expectations has a streamlined plot which moves along at a good pace. We are mesmerised by the forceful characters, and crave desperately to unravel the mysteries. It could be argued that of Dickens’s novels, Great Expectations makes the greatest use of plot, characterisation and style, sacrificing a little of the dense maze of “Bleak House”’s annals for more urgency, a simpler story focus, and a strong sense of direction.

In Great Expectations Dickens returns to one of his favourite themes: the story of a young man, and how he grows and learns through his various experiences. It is at heart a bildungsroman, or “coming of age” story. Some of the best loved novels by Dickens follow this format, for instance, “David Copperfield”, “Nicholas Nickleby” and most notably, the hugely popular rags-to-riches story, “Oliver Twist”. Yet the difference in execution between these two is startling.

“Oliver Twist” is recognisably an early work by Dickens and has all his idiosyncratic features. It has a myriad of cameos, both comic and grotesque. It has a strong social conscience, humour, and tragedy. But it also has all the faults of a young writer fully on display. It is overful of hyperbole, with a cardboard hero who is well nigh a saint. It is overwritten. We are shocked at the social conditions, but swayed by the pathos rather than by the author’s writing skills. By the time of his autobiographical novel, “David Copperfield”, Dickens had honed his skills. In fact before embarking on Great Expectations he reread “David Copperfield”, fearing that he might unintentionally repeat himself.

With Great Expectations Dickens has reached his pinnacle. He has written a novel full of heartbreak and obsessions of various kinds, and the reader is putty in his hands. He has learned to control his expostulations; his declamatory outbursts, his overt theatricality, and therefore has written a much more gripping and persuasive novel.

This is a novel with everything you could want. There is adventure, excitement, horror and passion. There is madness and vast wealth beyond imagination, and a benefactor who is to remain mysterious until the denouement. There are vicious crimes, wife-beating and murders, duplicity and depravity, malicious cruelty, and characters crazed by love and obsession. There is humour, ridicule, absurdity - and overwhelming sadness and grief. It is, in short, a perfect Dickens novel. It is a gothic masterpiece. You will thrill to the horrors of Satis House and its half-crazed inhabitant. You will despair at the ineptitude of the hero, blinded by his passion for a young woman whose heart has been turned to stone. You will cry for the nobility of the steadfast Joe, wanting nothing for himself; only wanting to do what is right.

The central character is Pip, Philip Pirrip, plagued by his feelings of inferiority at his thick boots and coarse hands. He desires wealth and status, and for some part of the novel it looks as if he might be groomed for this. We do not have much compassion for Pip. He seems an insensitive, selfish and self-centred brat of a boy, for more than half the novel. Once destined to become a gentleman, Pip becomes increasingly arrogant and embarrassed by what he sees as his humble origins - and unforgivably casts off the man who had been his protector. We wonder how he will ever become the Dickens hero we feel he must inevitably become. For Dickens’s novels are not tragedies, although they have tragic elements among the mix. The deserving are usually rewarded in the end, and the cruel, wicked or manipulative characters usually suffer an ignominious fate. Dickens liked to please his readers; to make them feel life was as it should be. It reassured them that however messy their own lives were, things would work out alright for the heroic characters they had been reading about and championing in their newspapers, for over a year.

Is this then an exception? Do we have a “bad boy”; an anti-hero against the usual Dickens type? The answer is no. Dickens, once more, has used his skill and created a superb subtly layered novel. The novel is straightforward in its time frame, with events moving forward logically, except where there is some reported history which is usually crucial to move the story along, by one of the characters. But in among the intrigue and the action, we hear the voices of three Pips, and occasionally an omniscient narrator (and occasionally even Dickens himself, when he cannot resist giving an opinion or two, or poking fun at one of his creations).

Five voices? Surely then, it must be hard to read? And again, the answer is no. It moves seamlessly between the voices, yet they add a richness and depth. We know that Pip is to become a deserving character; an upright young man. And we know this because we see him there on the page, in every word that he narrates. We see the characters through his eyes, and we gain a full picture of them. We see the young boy’s impressions, doubts and fears; the older boy’s vanity, shallow ambitions and intolerance, and we see the older, wiser Philip Pirrip, now grown into his full name and maturity, and reporting as truthfully as he can on the vagaries of his youth.

And the story he has to tell thrills us. Dickens himself referred to it as “a grotesque tragicomic conception”. It is unbelievably grotesque and riddled with gloom, full of coincidences, with highly exaggerated vivid characters, yet we believe every word, and are compelled to keep turning the page. We soak up the darkly terrifying descriptions, and the ominous sense of place. We wonder - surely these places could not exist. Nor the characters? But yes, they could, and yes, sometimes they did.

Great Expectations begins in a churchyard where Pip’s family is buried, and where he is to have a devastating meeting with someone who strikes terror into his very soul. The churchyard is based on a desolate church in the village of Cooling, lying out among the marshes seven miles from “Gads Hill”, Dickens’s family home at that time. He describes Cooling Castle ruins and the marshes evocatively, imbuing the narrative with dark foreboding and menace. The young Pip, visiting his family’s graves, is very close to Dickens’s heart. As a young child himself, between the ages of 5 and 11, he had lived in Chatham, and this is only a couple of miles away from Cooling. In fact this is when he first admired “Gads Hill”, the house he was later to buy. These descriptions were all transcribed from memory – complete with the young child’s terror at the stark scene, the unforgiving bleak marshes, the sea, the swirling mists, wind and rain, the beacon of distant light, and the gibbet and chains.

These early scenes are very ghoulish, for instance as the stranger threatens to cut out Pip’s heart and liver, but they exemplify the morbid relish Dickens excels in. They are a perfect example of black humour, because the events are described from a child’s point of view, as he is almost petrified with fear. Even the tombstones of Pip’s siblings, the “five little stone lozenges”, is a light-hearted reference to something common enough, but really full of pathos and tragedy. Cooling churchyard actually contains not just five but thirteen child graves all together, from two families in the village who were related. Perhaps Dickens - unusually - toned this down, for fear of scepticism on the part of his readers.

Pip is brought up by his termagant of a sister, full of bitterness and self-inflicted martyrdom, knocking her husband Joe’s head against the wall or banging Pip’s head like a tambourine with her thimble. She is proud of having brought Pip up “by hand” - such a sarcastic double-edged phrase - making copious use of ��the Tickler” - such a gentle name for something which was capable of inflicting a great deal of pain! The lively and caustic descriptions make us smile, although the smile may well be a rueful grimace. Joe Gargery’s forge, incidentally, where Pip lives with them both, really exists. It is located at Chalk village in Kent. Dickens and his wife Catherine had stayed there on their honeymoon in 1836.

What about the historical facts; are they accurate? The answer is mostly, yes, although some dramatic license has been taken with the timing. Convicts in Britain were not actually sent to America any more at the time of Great Expectations. It had stopped in 1776, and after then they were sent to Australia. It is estimated that 140,000 criminals were transported to Australia between 1810 and 1852 and this is 8 years before this novel was published. Transportation was abolished in 1857, but was as the novel says, for life. If a convict ever returned to Britain, they were hanged (by law, until 1834), even though the original offences were sometimes quite minor by modern standards.

Dickens was also particular as to detail. There are two exciting and dramatic river scenes in the book, one at the beginning in the marshes, and an echo of it as the novel rushes headlong along the river to its climax. Dickens wanted to ensure that his description of the course of the boat was authentic under these conditions. In order to make absolutely sure, and perhaps explore further possibilities, he hired a steamer for the day of 22nd May 1861. The route was from Blackwall to Southend. Accompanying him on board were eight or nine friends, and also three or four members of his family. They all assumed Dickens was enjoying a relaxed summer day out, as he entertained them as usual. But in truth, his mind was working overtime, keenly observing and noticing every single detail. Nothing escaped his attention, as he made a mental note of what happened on each side of the river during the course of their journey.

The vast edifice, “Satis House”, home of the decrepit and grief-stricken Miss Havisham, was based on “Restoration House” in Rochester, Kent. Charles II had stayed there on his return to England in 1660, restoring the English monarchy after Oliver Cromwell. Dickens turned it into a crumbling ruin, full of cobwebs (and their menacing lurkers), rats and dust. The only light to be seen is Estella, the “star”, either as herself, or by the candle she bears amidst the gloom. Yet even now you can visit “Restoration House” if you choose, and marvel at how it was transformed into a temple of filth, ruin and chaos, rotten with decay and perversion, an almost living presence, when the master magician Dickens wove his spell.

So we see chapter and verse about the places. They do exist, yet the view of them here is unique and powerful, seen through Dickens’s eyes. We also know that he often liked to include people he knew in his novels, sometimes in homage, but with notorious or famous celebrities of his time, it was more often to poke fun at them. Are there any such in Great Expectations. Certainly there are, yes. Just think of the most likely character, the most over-the-top grotesque imaginable. Are you thinking of Miss Havisham, crazed by her grief and loss  who had vowed to wreak havoc on all mankind? For, incredibly, she is based on a real person.

She is very probably based on Eliza Emily Donnithorne of Camperdown, Sydney, Australia. Miss Donnithorne was a recluse and an eccentric. She had been jilted on her wedding day, and spent the rest of her life in a darkened house, leaving her wedding cake to rot, as it was on the table. She also left her front door permanently ajar, in case her groom ever returned.

At the time of writing this novel, Dickens was 48 to 49 years of age. His domestic life was in tatters, as it had rapidly gone downhill in the late 1850s, and he had now separated from his wife, Catherine. He was having a secret affair with an actress, the much younger Ellen Ternan, who could well be the basis for the character of Estella.

During the writing of Great Expectations, Dickens went on tour, reading and acting out parts of his immensely popular novels. In March and April 1861 alone, he gave six public readings. More like performances, they were very successful in every way, but it took a terrible toll on his health.

There are so many ways of sharing reactions to this novel. I have just tried to give a few here. You will find unforgettable characters here, as in all Dickens’s novels. You will laugh at Crabb’s boy’s antics and Uncle Pumblechook’s absurd pomposity. You will loathe the brutish bully, Bentley Drummle and the sly lazy Orlick. You will be in fear and awe of Abel Magwitch, and also, in a different way, of Mr Jaggers, the Old Bailey lawyer. Clever and sharp, “putting a case” but never admitting anything, he remains clinically dispassionate to the last, forever and literally, like Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of the dirty business he had to follow.

You may learn to love his clerk, the kind-hearted Wemmick, with his “postbox” of a mouth, his insistence of the value of “portable property”, and keeping a nice distinction between home life and business life; not to mention the “aged P”, nodding away enthusiastically. Both of these provide some much-needed light relief, in their fortified miniature haven, away from the throng and bustle of the avaricious, mercantile, heartless capital, with its filth, grime and squalor. Wemmick says one may get “cheated, robbed, or murdered in London”.

Such affectionate portraits, these. There is Pip’s true friend, the “pale young gentleman” Herbert Pocket, and his hilariously feckless family; loyal to a fault, but hopelessly impractical, and at a loss to organise their lives. Herbert is so good-natured; the scenes where he demonstrates how to behave in polite society are a delight. Immediately saying that he and Pip are harmonious, he asks if he might call him Handel, because of the “charming piece of music, by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith”. Herbert uses the words “dear” and “good” whenever he refers to Pip, and is genial, frank, friendly, and decent, which Pip has rarely seen.

Perhaps you will admire quiet Biddy and her simple wisdom, seeing far and away more than any other character, or sturdy Joe, the salt of the earth, who offered Pip unconditional love and friendship, and taught him life’s true values. Perhaps you too will be besotted with haughty, beautiful Estelle, who unknown to both Pip and herself is equally a puppet, or cry at the hopelessness of Miss Havisham’s situation, driven half-mad by her obsession and surrounded by sycophantic relatives.

Whenever I see people refer to Dickens’s simpering women, I think of the myriad of strong female characters such as she, or Pip’s demonic whirlwind of a sister, who was “always on the rampage”, or the venomously vindictive Madame Defarge from “A Tale of Two Cities”, or the duplicitous lady’s maid Hortense in “Bleak House”, who was based on a real life murderess, or Nancy, the tragic prostitute in “Oliver Twist”. And there are many, many more. Dickens’s novels are packed with strong women, both good and bad. It is merely that Dickens conformed to the Victorian ideal of female goodness for his heroines. They were to be virtuous, competent, intelligent and compliant, and these are not seen as quite such admirable qualities in the present century.

No, Great Expectations is peopled with characters I am always sad to leave, as I turn the final page. Each time I read it I feel despair, horror and joy in equal measure, and surprised in such a novel to find I burst out laughing at some ridiculous aside or eccentric cameo I had forgotten. Each time I am completely taken up in the twists and turns; one plot twist close to the end will take your breath away when you first learn it. It feels so right, yet Dickens manages to conceal it all the way through. This is a novel where the intrigue is laced throughout. I defy you to guess the ending, should it not be already familiar to you.

Do you want a happy ending for young Pip? He does have one, of sorts. But Dickens was still not satisfied that it was acceptable, after his friend, the novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton had said it was too sad, so he wrote an alternative couple of paragraphs at the end, slightly changing its course, and leaving it deliberately vague. The original ending was not revealed until after his death, when his mentor and biographer John Forster wrote of it. Many critics do prefer the original darker ending, as being more in keeping with the dark nature of the story. Perhaps you may prefer the Victorian rewrite however, and to imagine a more upbeat and better future for our young hero. Most editions print the original ending afterwards, so the choice is yours.

But please, if you have never read this novel, make sure you leave a place for it in your reading life. I am sure you won’t regret it.

“We are not free to follow our own devices, you and I.”

“Wot larks Pip ol’ chap, wot larks!”

Δεν χρειάζεται κανένα σχόλιο ή "κριτική" από εμένα. Απλά Υ Π Ε Ρ Ο Χ Ο.

Διαβάστε το και αναζητήστε και το πρώτο τέλος που έδωσε ο συγγραφέας!

Dickens had two endings for this novel - one of continued disconnection and destruction and the other of healing and HEA. Despite the fact this may have been forced on you in school or uni, and you may have only skimmed it, it’s a worthy realism novel and deserves (and rewards) a dedicated read.

n  The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.n

Many people consider „Great Expectations“ to be Charles Dickens‘ masterpiece, his greatest work with the most impressive cast of characters. And while I cannot comment on its quality in comparison to other well-known Dickens novels like „A Tale of Two Cities“ or „David Copperfield“, it certainly managed to live up to my expectations and even more: to make me feel part of Pip Pirrip’s life, of his relations to Miss Havisham and Estella and Joe and Herbert and all the other memorable cast members of this novel.

Great Expectations accompanies the protagonist, a young boy called Pip, during his journey through life, his struggling and his attempts to overcome the obstacles life has thrown into his path. Being raised as an orphan by his elder sister and her kind-hearted and generous husband Joe, Pip faces the scales of fate, unease and love when being introduced to the eccentric Miss Havisham, a wealthy woman and one of the most memorable characters of the entire novel. Pip falls in love with Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter Estella, and several years later, a mysterious benefactor finances Pip’s climbing into the higher parts of English society. Confronted with dangerous secrets, friendships and enmities alike and a love foredoomed to failure, Pip is forced to find his place in life, to grow up and stand on his own feet – a task which proves to be more difficult than he would ever have imagined.

n  According to my experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always true. The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorror, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.n

Apart from the perfect way Dickens weaves the words he chooses in, he also manages to characterize his protagonists in such an easily remembered style that you can’t help but feel sorry for what Pip, Estella or even Miss Havisham have to endure. Pip, the first-person-narrator and thus the character we have to spend the entirety of the novel with, is known to the reader from the very first days of his (conscious) existence, and Dickens allows us to accompany him on his troublesome way through life during his childhood and his early adolescence. While not always the most likeable person, Pip remains a realistic character with faults and mistakes of his own, the essential aspect which ultimately defines human beings.

n  “Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, […], and of course if it ceased to beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no – sympathy – sentiment – nonsense.“n

The character of Estella is another person we encounter during her childhood and whom we accompany while growing up. While Pip misses significant parts of her life, the reader is also able to judge Estella’s development through Pip’s eyes, which – of course – can’t be a reliable perspective, but even more emphasizes the love Pip feels for Estella. The true scales of Estella’s coldheartedness and her hostile behaviour will become clearer during the course of the novel, and it is not surprising that she is a character you find yourself wanting to know a lot more of. In modern days, Estella might be a (stereo-)typical prude, someone people are fascinated with, but never quite manage to get through to the core of her soul. Raised by Miss Havisham, Estella is far from the happiness other girls her age might be allowed to experience, yet those lessons of life she has to learn very early draw her character and her behaviour more significantly than anything else.

n  “Love her, love her, love her! If she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her! […] I adopted her, to be loved. I bed her and educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved. Love her! […] I’ll tell you […] what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter – as I did.“n

Oh, Miss Havisham. Throughout the entire course of the novel, she was the character I looked forward to meeting again the most, who I missed the most when not present in Pip’s narrations, who I want to know more of even now, after finishing the novel. Such a well-drawn character with a tortured soul and wishes and desires of her own based on her fateful experiences. In contrast to the time this novel was written in by Charles Dickens, today’s literature is partly marked by many authors developing trilogies out of their stories in order to write more stuff about their characters (which is a general direction I definitely don’t approve of due to various reasons), but if there ever was a story which I wanted to follow more closely, more elaborately, more intensively, it would certainly be Great Expectations. The mysterious appearances of Miss Havisham and Estella were very appealing to me; not knowing their true destinations, their true motivations before their reveal to the main character Pip was even more appealing; but reading something about their thoughts from their own points of view would have been most appealing. I wouldn’t want Charles Dickens to have written his novel from any other perspective – this merely emphasizes how memorably and full of potential he has managed to draw his characters.

n  There was a melancholy wind, and the marshes were very dismal. A stranger would have found them insupportable, and even to me they were so oppressive that I hesitated, half inclined to go back.n

His ability of developing a setting, a Gothic atmosphere, which will allow you to feel part of the story, is one of the aspects which ultimately succeeded in allowing Dickens to become as popular as he later did. Psychologically the latter part of Great Expectations is about the best thing Dickens ever did. –I could not have expressed it in any better way than George Orwell did in this sentence. The novel did have some flaws, after all. I needed to read chapter summaries on the Internet to figure out how Pip was related to people like Mr. Jaggers, Wemmick or Bentley Drummle, party because I wasn’t particularly interested in those characters, partly because I only read one chapter at a time and thus was likely to forget aspects and not remember exact details when reading about them again. However, Great Expectations influenced me like few other novels managed to do before. Whether it was Pip’s friendship with Herbert, his love for Estella or the complicated relation to Joe – Dickens made me fear with Pip, feel for Pip, and hope for Pip to find happiness.