Charles
Dickens's Great Expectations tells the story of Pip,
an English orphan who rises to wealth, deserts his true friends, and becomes
humbled by his own arrogance. It also introduces one of the more colorful
characters in literature: Miss Havisham.
Charles Dickens set Great Expectations during the time that England was
becoming a wealthy world power. Machines were making factories more productive,
yet people lived in awful conditions, and such themes carry into the story.
Written by: Charles
Dickens
Type of Work: serial story
turned novel
Genres: bildungsroman;
Victorian Literature; social commentary
First
Published: December 1860–April 1861 in weekly installments to a
magazine; July 1861 as a novel in 3 volumes; November 1862 as a whole novel
Setting: Early 1800s;
London, England, and around the marshes of Kent
Major Thematic Topics:
good versus evil; moral redemption from sin; wealth and its equal power to help
or corrupt; personal responsibility; awareness and acceptance of consequences
from one's choices; abandonment; guilt; shame; desire; secrecy; gratitude;
ambition; obsession/emotional manipulation versus real love; class structure
and social rules; snobbery; child exploitation; the corruption and problems of
the educational and legal systems; the need for prison reform; religious
attitudes of the time; the effect of the increasing trade and industrialization
on people's lives; the Victorian work ethic (or lack thereof)
Motifs: sense of
location; criminals; social expectations
Major Symbols: Miss
Havisham's house; money
The three most important aspects
of Great Expectations:
·
Great Expectations is a bildungsroman,
or coming-of-age novel. Other examples of this form include Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte, The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and The Catcher
in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Great Expectations is
unusual in that its main character, Pip, is often hard to sympathize with
because of his snobbery and the resulting bad behavior he exhibits toward some
of the other characters, like Joe Gargery.
·
Like much of Charles
Dickens's work, Great Expectations was first published in a
popular magazine, in regular installments of a few chapters each. Many of the
novel's chapters end with a lack of dramatic resolution, which was intended to
encourage readers to buy the next installment.
·
Over the years since the novel's publication,
many critics have objected to its happy ending, with its implication that Pip
and Estella will marry; these critics have said that such a conclusion is
inconsistent with the characters as we have come to know them. In fact, Dickens
originally wrote an ending in which Pip and Estella meet and then part forever
after a few conciliatory words.
Ways into Great Expectations
Once you have read through the novel, you should identify
subjects for study. We can arrange these in categories.
·
One would be characters and their relationships. In this novel many of the
characters are best considered in pairs, as they resemble or are mirror images
of others. Try and arrange them into pairs or small groups.
·
Another category is themes. Themes are important ideas, which recur through the novel;
often they are connected with particular characters. What, in your view, are
the important ideas in this novel?
·
The third category is perhaps the hardest of the
three to consider: this is the author's
technique, how the story is told. Technique includes:
o the
plot and structure;
o the
style of narrative and dialogue;
o the
viewpoint of the narrative;
o symbolism
and imagery, and
o other
decorative or "poetic" features.
Charles Dickens Biography
Early Years
In
spite of humble beginnings, little education, and the sometimes-critical
literary reviewers, Charles Dickens was loved by his public, and amassed
wealth, prestige, and a large legacy of published works. He was one of the few
writers to enjoy both popular acceptance and financial success while still alive.
The drive for this success had its roots in his childhood.
Charles
John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England on Friday, February 7, 1812 . He was the
second of eight children born to John and Elizabeth Dickens. His father, John,
was the son of illiterate servants. John Dickens managed to escape a similar
fate when the family his parents worked for got him a job in a navy pay office.
John continued his upward climb by keeping his own lowly background a secret
and courting Elizabeth Barrow, the daughter of a wealthy senior clerk who
worked there. The marriage succeeded, but John's hopes for further advancement
fizzled when his father-in-law was accused of embezzlement and fled the
country. The loss of this financial opportunity did not slow the spending
habits of John and Elizabeth, who liked the upper-class lifestyle. This problem
would be their downfall as time went on.
During
Charles Dickens' early years, his family moved a great deal due to his father's
job and spending habits. He recalled later that the best time of his childhood
was their five years in Chatham, where they moved when Dickens was five, and
where life was stable and happy. Dickens loved the area, learned to read, and
was sent to school.
However
his father's financial problems required a move to smaller quarters in London
when Dickens was ten. Their four-room home was cramped, creditors called
frequently trying to collect payments, and Dickens' parents alternated between
the stress of survival and the gaiety of continuing to party. Dickens wanted to
return to school but was instead sent to work at the age of twelve to help
support the family.
For
twelve hours a day, six days a week, Charles Dickens pasted labels to bottles
of shoe polish at the rat-infested, dilapidated Warren's Blacking factory. He
was ridiculed and harassed by the older, bigger workers and shamed by the
stigma of working in such filthy, low-class surroundings. Intellectually
frustrated, resentful of his older sister (who was studying at the Royal
Academy of Music), and hurt by his parents' lack of interest in his education,
Dickens despaired.
When
his father was arrested for nonpayment of a debt, Dickens' mother and younger
siblings moved into prison with his father, leaving the twelve-year-old alone
on the outside to continue working. His older sister remained at the music
academy. Lonely, scared, and abandoned, Dickens lived in a run-down
neighborhood close to the prison so that he could visit his family. It was a
firsthand experience of poverty and prison life and a reinforcement of the
considerable insecurity and emotional abandonment that marked his childhood.
A
small inheritance a few months later allowed his family to leave prison.
Dickens was finally allowed to attend school over his mother's objections — she
did not want to lose his income. School was short-lived though: At fifteen,
Dickens had to return to work. Dickens never got over the time he spent at
Warren's and his fierce sense of betrayal and rage at his mother's callousness
stayed with him for life. Recalling that time, he said: "I never
afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was
warm for my being sent back [to Warren's Blacking]."
Education
In
the strictest sense, Dickens' formal education was limited. His mother taught
him to read when he was a young boy, and his early education was of a
self-taught nature. By the age of ten, he had devoured novels such as Daniel
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, and Miguel
Cervantes' Don Quixote. At nine, he experimented with writing a play for
his family and called it Misnar, the Sultan of India.
In
1821, Dickens attended the Giles Academy in Chatham for about one year. Later,
when he was twelve, he attended the Wellington House Academy in London. At
fifteen, family problems required him to return to work, and so his last
"schooling" was again, self-taught. He purchased a reading ticket to
the British Museum at eighteen and immersed himself in its large library. He
also taught himself shorthand.
Jobs
For
seven years after Dickens left Wellington House, he lived at home and worked at
various jobs. He spent the first two years as a law clerk. After learning
shorthand he spent four years as a legal reporter, then as a shorthand reporter
in Parliament. In 1834 he joined the staff of the Morning Chronicle as a
news reporter covering elections, Parliament, and other political events.
Dickens also spent some of his time involved in the theater, and he also began
to write for publication. His adulthood was marked by a feverish work pace and
a desire to achieve.
Love and Family
At
eighteen Dickens met Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a rich banker. She was two
years older, beautiful — he fell totally in love. He wrote to her:
"I never have loved and I never can love any human creature breathing but
yourself." Though the relationship went well for a while, she lost
interest in him after returning from finishing school in Paris. Dickens' friend
and biographer, John Forster, was at first surprised that Dickens was so affected
by this relationship, a pain that continued even years later. But Forster
realized that this was fueled by a deep sense of social inferiority. Dickens
was determined to succeed beyond everyone's wildest dreams and show them how
wrong they were about him. Interestingly enough, he met Maria again years
later. Eagerly looking forward to his meeting with her, and expecting the
desirable vision of his youth, he was crushed when a middle-aged woman
resembling his wife showed up. As his sister-in-law happily put it, Maria
"had become very fat!"
In
1834, Dickens met Catherine Hogarth, the oldest daughter of the Morning
Chronicle's editor, George Hogarth. Hogarth had favorably reviewed Dickens'
work, Sketches by Boz, and the two men had become friends. Charles and
Catherine were engaged in 1895 and married in 1836. It was a strange courtship:
While the two held each other in affection and Catherine share his interest in
a family, the courtship lacked the passion of his relationship with Beadnell.
Dickens often broke dates with Catherine to meet work deadlines and sent her
reprimanding letters if she protested.
As
time went on their differences grew more apparent. Catherine was not outgoing
or socially poised, and she avoided the public and social events her husband
attended. In addition, Catherine's younger sister, Mary, had come to live with
them shortly after their marriage. Dickens was very attached to Mary and when
she died suddenly in 1838 at the age of seventeen, he was devastated. His
enduring grief over her death incurred his wife's jealousy. Mary, adored by
Charles Dickens, would show up again and again as a character in his works.
In
time, another seventeen-year-old would steal his heart. Middle-aged, hard
working, and disillusioned with his marriage, Dickens met Ellen Ternan, an
actress in one of his plays. She was everything his wife was not: lovely,
young, and slim. Catherine, with ten pregnancies, had grown stout, and at
forty-three could not compete with the younger woman. It did not take long for the
marriage to dissolve, resulting in something of a scandal at the time.
Catherine, rejected by her husband, left the family home. The children rarely
saw her because they stayed with Dickens, and she died in 1879, nine years
after he. Dickens spent the rest of his life maintaining a secret relationship
with Ternan.
Literary Writing and the Rest of Life
During
his early working years, Dickens had started writing short pieces or
"sketches." Some were stories; others, descriptions of places in
London, such as Newgate Prison or the shopping districts. One of these, "A
Dinner at Poplar Walk," was published in 1833 in the Monthly Magazine.
It was an emotional and exciting moment for the young writer even though he
received no payment or credit for that first article. The magazine requested
more and he started using the pen name, Boz. In 1836, he published a collection
of sixty of these pieces in a book called Sketches by Boz. It received
critical praise and sales were good. Monthly Magazine then asked Dickens
to write a humorous novel that they would publish in twenty installments. Thus,
Dickens' novel Pickwick Papers was born.
By
the fourth installment of Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens was a
dramatic success. People at all levels of society loved him. The acclaim only
fueled his intensity. While still working on Pickwick Papers, Dickens
started a much darker novel, Oliver Twist. It was a social
criticism of the exploitation of orphans both in institutions and on the
streets. Not to be slowed, he began Nicholas Nickleby when Oliver
Twist was only half-finished. Nickleby combined both the humor of
his first novel with the criticism of his second, focusing on the corruption of
private boarding schools.
His
grief over the death of his sister-in-law, Mary, probably served as the basis
for the character, Little Nell, in his next novel, The Old Curiosity Shop.
His readers followed the story closely especially when Nell became sick — many,
desperately hoping she would not die, begged the publisher to spare her. Barnaby
Rudge was Dickens' next novel, a historical novel set in England during the
French Revolution.
In
1842, Dickens and his wife traveled through America. He found himself crushed
with admirers to the point of feeling oppressed by his fame. In addition, the
attitudes and vanity of some of the Americans disturbed him, especially with
regard to slavery, and he was frustrated by the lack of copyright protection in
the States — many of his works were being published there without any
payment to him. When he returned home, Dickens wrote American Notes.
While polite, Dickens' feelings about America were nevertheless obvious.
American critics were, as you may expect, hostile.
His
next works were a series of five Christmas stories, of which "A Christmas
Carol" was the most successful. Martin Chuzzlewit, a more direct
attack on America and its attitudes, followed. Dickens also spent time creating
and editing a newspaper, the Daily News, and acting in a number of
amateur theater productions. At this same time, he had a number of flirtations
with other women and his marriage was crumbling. Concentration and sleep
suffered, so much so that his seventh novel, Dombey and Son, took a
great deal of time and struggle to finish. However, the slower pace didn't
diminish the quality of Dickens work: Philip Collins called Dombey and Son
Dickens' "first mature masterpiece."
This
period was marked by a number of painful personal experiences: the death of his
older sister, Fanny, in 1848; Catherine's nervous breakdown in 1850 after the
birth of their daughter Dora Annie; the 1851 death of Dora; and the death of
Dickens' father, John, in 1851. Yet during this period, Dickens achieved a
major turning point in his writing: David Copperfield. Lawrence Kappel,
a modern reviewer, crystallizes the achievement:
"For
the first time, he conceived a hero who could survive in the midst of the
problem-filled world of experience by using his artistic imagination, like
Dickens himself. This autobiographical novel was a celebration of the artist's
ability to cope with the world right in the center of it, as opposed to just
surviving the world by retreating to some safe place at the edge of it, as
Dickens' earlier heroes had done."
The
next several years would bring the publication of Dickens' next three novels — Bleak
House, Hard Times, and Little Dorrit — as well as the anguish
and personal scandal of his involvement with Ellen Ternan and his divorce from
Catherine. The novels were darker than anything he had previously written and
their focus was mostly social criticism: Bleak House's criticism
targeted the legal system (it may have been the first detective novel published
in English), Hard Times hit the government, and Little Dorritt
aimed at the problems of society's class structure. This period also saw Dickens
become involved in more theatrical productions, start a weekly magazine, Household
Words, and give public readings of his works.
In
1859, after a dispute with the publishers of Household Words, Dickens
left and started another magazine, All the Year Round. The first issue
carried the first installment of his next novel, A Tale of Two Cities.
Like Barnaby Rudge it was a historical novel, set in France during the
riotous 1770s and 1780s. The novel was popular with his readers, but did not
receive much critical acclaim. Struggling to improve the magazine's circulation
and revenue, Dickens hit gold and a financial rescue with his next novel: Great
Expectations. In spite of a mixed reception by reviewers, the reading
public loved it — many proclaimed it to be his best work.
Also
during this time, Dickens burned most of his letters and papers: In his
success, he did not want anyone to make his life more interesting than his
novels. By destroying his notes, he effectively took his insights regarding his
works to the grave, leaving the interpretations of his stories up to his
literary critics and readers.
After
Great Expectations, Dickens began work on his last complete novel, Our
Mutual Friend. It was a return to Dickens' darker style: social criticism
was of a corrupt society, with London's dumps and polluted river symbolizing a
modern industrial wasteland. Dickens continued to chain-smoke and overwork,
maintaining a heavy public-reading schedule as well as national and
international tours. From 1865 until his death, Dickens experienced a number of
health problems, including a possible heart attack and a series of small
strokes. The work he began in 1869, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was
never finished — on June
8, 1870 he suffered an apparent cerebral hemorrhage, collapsing on
the floor after dinner. He died the next day.
