Great Expectations

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

I’ve taken a step way back in time with this week’s choice of book. Coming from the streets of New York as viewed by an angsty teenager to the Thames marshes and the streets of London as seen by a mistreated orphan, this week I got on the Dickensian ride that is Great Expectations.

Considered the shortest of Dickens’ dramatic novels (though still a challenge at over four hundred pages long), Great Expectations is the fictional autobiography of orphan Pip who recounts his childhood and the strange chain of events that put him on his road of becoming a gentleman. From a fearsome encounter with a convict to the mysterious employment by an eccentric rich spinster, Pip’s childhood and his transition into adulthood is filled with strangeness after strangeness, as the links between the memorable folk of his youth are made clear along with the identity of his mysterious patron.

 

In true Dickensian fashion, Great Expectations is a challenge, one that is only conquered through perseverance. Written as a fictional autobiography, it’s a book that really explores the link between the author and their ‘hero’, whilst at the same time working on multiple other levels such as being a political fairytale a la Cinderella, exploring the instability in identity, and being a snarky and satirical social commentary. There’s an awful lot going on!

 

Pip as a protagonist is particularly interesting as the emotional attachment with the reader goes through some real highs and lows. At first, we are inclined to root for Pip and his big dreams –he’s the loveable Dickensian orphan- but those feelings soon receive a sharp shock when his character changes with the acquisition of money and those dreams become corrupted. However, through all the troughs that Pip lands himself in, there’s a flicker of purity and moral innocence that carries on, which makes the final hundred pages (where all of the drama happens) all the more incredible.

Image credit: Britannica

As with many Dickensian novels, the pages are filled with strange, loveable, infuriating, and memorable characters from the eccentric, mummified bride-to-be Miss Havishman to the infuriatingly arrogant Uncle Pumblechook. All the characters are vibrant and manifest themselves securely in one’s head as to cause fevered dreams.

 

What’s more, there is such longevity in Pip’s story that we can see parts of it in various, modern classics such as The Great Gatsby. It’s the relativity of its themes, the striking and visual characters, and the many literary avenues that it explores that makes Great Expectations a most important read and a solid ball in the literature canon.

 

Author: Charles Dickens, 1860

Published: First published by Chapman & Hall (London) in 1861