These are just my thoughts on Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, I’m reading it for school but this is a general review, as opposed to deep, critical analysis. Which is lucky, because I didn’t do any!
(Oh, and, because I am scheduling this post, this will appear on the blog on my FIRST day of my LAST EVER year of school. Scary, huh?)
So, Great Expectations. This is believed to be Dickens’ most autobiographical novel, and he apparently shared many traits with the protagonist, Pip. The story follows Pip from the age of seven, when he meets a convict on the moors, through his life until he is probably around thirty. It tracks his life, and as such, his ‘expectations’ for what his life should be like.
Pip meets and introduces the reader to some very colourful characters on his journey, from the infamous Miss Havisham and Estella, to the kind-hearted Herbert Pocket and Joe Gargery, his father figure.
Dickens is a master at description. You can feel yourself on the marshlands being accosted by the convict, joining the chase of the soldiers, entering the strange home of Miss Havisham and starting life as a gentleman in London. His ability to set the scene so well, is equally matched by his ability to bring characters perfectly to life. There is a reason why Miss Havisham is one of the most referenced characters, and why the opening description of her is one that is one of the most quoted pieces of literature.
Although Dickens succeeds in making the supporting characters, mainly, well-rounded, I found Pip quite hard work. In the beginning of the novel, it was easy to sympathise with a small boy, who was so young and poorly educated that when reading his parents tombstone ‘Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above’ he believed his mother’s name was Also Georgiana. However, once he meets Miss Havisham and Estella, who he instantly becomes infatuated with, he becomes obsessed with his status in society, and how he is inferior. Granted, this is because Miss Havisham and Estella represent the unattainable nature of society, and Pip is essentially being used as a training tool for Estella-but throughout the book Pip only seems to moan. This was a little grating as the novel is told through first-person narrative, and I would have liked to see more narrative and less person.
Another problem I had was that it took until Pip’s benefactor is revealed that I really began to get into the book, and that is about the last third. Up until then I felt like I was trudging through it, and at times I got tired of the amount of men in the book. There were multiple scenes of men talking, of men plotting, of men talking about plotting, and very few female characters. The only women represented were-Mrs Joe Gargery, Pip’s violent older sister; Miss Havisham, the almost evil jilted spinster; Estella, the ice-cold product of Miss Havisham; a reformed murder and Clara Barclay, who is the love interest of Herbert, and probably the only decent woman in the book.
Generally though, I did quite enjoy it, and it will be interesting to go over it again in class. It makes a refreshing change to Pride & Prejudice from last year which I really, really didn’t like, even if it is sacrilege to say that. Great Expectations is funny, quite an easy read and packed with colourful supporting characters, although I still say that A Tale of Two Cities is a good place to start with Dickens, and NOT David Copperfield, which is what I did.
(Oh, and, because I am scheduling this post, this will appear on the blog on my FIRST day of my LAST EVER year of school. Scary, huh?)
So, Great Expectations. This is believed to be Dickens’ most autobiographical novel, and he apparently shared many traits with the protagonist, Pip. The story follows Pip from the age of seven, when he meets a convict on the moors, through his life until he is probably around thirty. It tracks his life, and as such, his ‘expectations’ for what his life should be like.
Pip meets and introduces the reader to some very colourful characters on his journey, from the infamous Miss Havisham and Estella, to the kind-hearted Herbert Pocket and Joe Gargery, his father figure.
Dickens is a master at description. You can feel yourself on the marshlands being accosted by the convict, joining the chase of the soldiers, entering the strange home of Miss Havisham and starting life as a gentleman in London. His ability to set the scene so well, is equally matched by his ability to bring characters perfectly to life. There is a reason why Miss Havisham is one of the most referenced characters, and why the opening description of her is one that is one of the most quoted pieces of literature.
Although Dickens succeeds in making the supporting characters, mainly, well-rounded, I found Pip quite hard work. In the beginning of the novel, it was easy to sympathise with a small boy, who was so young and poorly educated that when reading his parents tombstone ‘Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above’ he believed his mother’s name was Also Georgiana. However, once he meets Miss Havisham and Estella, who he instantly becomes infatuated with, he becomes obsessed with his status in society, and how he is inferior. Granted, this is because Miss Havisham and Estella represent the unattainable nature of society, and Pip is essentially being used as a training tool for Estella-but throughout the book Pip only seems to moan. This was a little grating as the novel is told through first-person narrative, and I would have liked to see more narrative and less person.
Another problem I had was that it took until Pip’s benefactor is revealed that I really began to get into the book, and that is about the last third. Up until then I felt like I was trudging through it, and at times I got tired of the amount of men in the book. There were multiple scenes of men talking, of men plotting, of men talking about plotting, and very few female characters. The only women represented were-Mrs Joe Gargery, Pip’s violent older sister; Miss Havisham, the almost evil jilted spinster; Estella, the ice-cold product of Miss Havisham; a reformed murder and Clara Barclay, who is the love interest of Herbert, and probably the only decent woman in the book.
Generally though, I did quite enjoy it, and it will be interesting to go over it again in class. It makes a refreshing change to Pride & Prejudice from last year which I really, really didn’t like, even if it is sacrilege to say that. Great Expectations is funny, quite an easy read and packed with colourful supporting characters, although I still say that A Tale of Two Cities is a good place to start with Dickens, and NOT David Copperfield, which is what I did.
No comments:
Post a Comment