Great Expectations was first published in a newspaper over a space of weeks. That’s while you’ll find in different chapters that it seems like Dickens is reminding you of the characters, because after a week, people forgot different characters and he had to do this to refresh peoples memories. It’s an odd novel, because each character changes throughout. You’d never think that someone you liked so much in the beginning could become someone you don’t like further on in the novel, or vice versa, but that actually happens often in the book with most characters. A story of a young boy from rags to riches has been read thousands of times in the century and a half it’s been around, televised many times, and is still thought as one of Dickens’ best work. But is it as good as people think it is?

Pip hasn’t had the best of lives. His Mother, his Father, and all but one of his brother and Sisters have passed away. He lives with his sister, and his sister’s husband – Mr and Mrs Joe Gargery – in a small village. Pip is introduced to us like a sweet, innocent and normal little boy. His real name being Philip Pirrip, he admits on the first page, he couldn’t get his tongue round his real name, and the only thing that came out with was Pip! Mrs Joe is probably one of the wickedest women in literature at that time. In novels around the 19th Century, women in msot novels were sweet and innocent. Cooked the meals, did the cleaning, and the men were supposed to be nasty to them not the other way round.
But, in Great Expectations Mrs Joe beats her husband, and her helpless brother Pip. She mocks them nastily, and all readers are made to hate her. Dickens also brought another thing to us- fear from a man’s point of view.

Even though Joe loves Mrs Joe, he fears her very much, and in every other book at that time, the man was the tough guy, and rarely ever feared anyone; let alone his wife. Even though she rarely raised a finger to him, she did at times, and at that time, it was thought as right to hit your wife if necessary, but Joe didn’t do it; not once.

The novel begins very suddenly, with the main incident brought to us in the first 10 pages. Pip often goes to the graveyard to visit his mother, father’s and his brother and sister’s graves. Mrs Joe doesn’t like him going up there, so he sneaks up whilst he can.

When he’s there, he sees a tall, well built, ugly man. This man picks Pip up, and dangles him upside down. Clearly Pip is very scared at this point, not knowing who he is, or even why he’s actually doing this. It turns out the man is an convict, and he is after food.
“If you don’t get me food, I will get my friend, who’s much tougher and scarier than me, to kill you. He’ll slit your throat open.” The man tells Pip.
“Yes, sir… sir… yes.” Pip answers.

He gets food for him, and keeps taking it to him, but soon his sister begins to realise food is going missing. The police find the escaped convict in the end, but the convict knows how much Pip tried to help him. And here the story begins. What’s odd about this novel is, I presume it’s because it was printed in the newspaper, it has numerous stories in it. It doesn’t stick to one main plot, but has many with different characters and so many twists and turns.

One of the other main incidents in the novel is Pip’s adoration for Estella, a young girl who lives with a strange woman in one of the biggest houses in their village. He meets Estella, when he goes to see Miss Havisham…

Miss Havisham hasn’t set foot outside her house since her wedding day many years ago. She remains in her wedding dress, has kept the house how it was on the day, and stopped the clocks at the time she was jilted. Joe forces Pip to go up there, when Miss Havisham request company for her and her niece Estella. When Pip enters the odd house, he becomes engrossed with Miss Havisham’s lifestyle straight away.
At first he’s scared. A haggard old woman, in a wedding dress, now faded to a yellow colour, which hasn’t seen the light of day in decades is requesting him to play cards with her.

When he meets Estella who’s a tall, attractive, blonde girl he falls in love with her immediately. Like his sister, Mrs Joe, Estella is horrible to Pip treating him like dirt. It seems Miss Havisham encourages this, as she has so much hate for men after she was jilted. After a while it becomes less of love between Pip and Estella, but more like an obsession Pip has with her. He knows she hates him, but can’t help but love her when he visits.

Pip is the only person, apart from Estella, who has seen Miss Havisham since she was jilted. So, when Pip returns home everyone questions him what Miss Havisham is like, and just to annoy him or her, he lies about her. Pip carries on visiting Miss Havisham for many years, and we see him growing up from a young boy to a boy, and then a teenage boy. Throughout this time he still adores Estella, and never forgets her after she leaves to Paris. But, when Pip leaves the little village when he is becoming a man, to live in London, where he is expected to have “Great Expectations”. here is where Pip’s character changes, where the darker side comes out, and the full story unravels…
It may appear that I've given a lot of the plot away, but as it's so lengthy and has so many parts this is merely a tip of the iceberg!

I have so many strong views on Great Expectations. Dickens, I feel, has done so many things to make us think about what he’s writing, and to create a certain characters personality. Back then there wasn't television so authors had to creat clear pictures of things in his readers memories. So the descriptive parts can become tiresome and tedious.

At the beginning of the novel, when the escaped convict says:
“If you don’t get me food, I will get my friend, who’s much tougher and scarier than me, to kill you. He’ll slit your throat open.”
I can’t help but see that the convict is saying a “friend” will kill Pip. This makes me think, that the convict has a soft side, and that he’s not capable of killing Pip himself, that he doesn’t really want to hurt Pip at all, he just wants food, and is threatening him for that reason only. But, he’s such a nice person, that he can’t even threaten him by saying he’ll kill him. Because he knows deep down that he can't do it. He can't.
Even though he says his friend will cut his throat, which is a very brutal thing to do, he still keeps on saying that a friend will do it, and not once does “I” come out of his mouth when he’s threatening Pip.

Pip’s character changed a lot in the novel, and to think Dickens made you like him so much in the beginning of the novel, it was very clever the way he managed to make you not like him as much nearing the end. When he was beginning to be ashamed of Joe, it was such strong writing, he made us think twice about how much you actually liked Pip, and whether you still liked him. It showed how a lavish lifestyle can change someone.

When Pip was at home in his small village, it was lovely to read how pleased he was to go to London, and how much of a joy it was for him; he was so thankful to be going. Then, after a few years in London we get to see how he changes, and how something he’d be so thankful for before, now he didn’t really care and expected these to be given to him, and that he wasn’t lucky to be getting these things at all, but he deserved these things he got.

What I found extremely good writing on Dickens’ front as well was how he never told us Pip’s sisters name. She was always referred to as Mrs Joe, and we didn’t find out her real name in the book. What I found so fantastic about this was the way that Dickens managed to create her character secretly. Even though, he always described her evil and horrible, I think the fact he didn’t name her, made me feel that she wasn’t as evil as Dickens tried to make out.
It seems she’s been hiding behind Mr Joe’s character and she isn’t allowed her own personality, even though she rules the roost at home, she isn’t allowed a name of her own.

I feel Mrs Joe isn’t as wicked as Dickens makes out. She does some awful things in the novel, but when you think of it, look what she gone through. Her parents died, and she had to take care for her brothers and sisters. Then most of them died, and only she and her brother remained. In her life she has had to deal with deaths of her loved ones, and other worries as well. I presume that she wasn’t always as wicked as she was made out in the novel. Even though she shouldn’t have beaten Pip, and sometimes Joe, I think she only did it to make herself feel better and to get noticed, because she probably got no recognition for what she did for her family.

The way Dickens describes Miss Havisham and her house is fantastic in the novel as well. I've never seen such good descriptions, with use of adjectives, metaphors, similes, personifications in one other novel in my life. But that, for me, is a downer. It become tedious, and like most Dickens novels it become boring and too much.

Dickens does succeed many parts though. He shows us how hurt Miss Havisham was when she was jilted, and how all her pain has been locked up all these years, and how cold it has turned her. It seems that Miss Havisham has made Estella hate Pip because he’s a man, and she hates men for what has happened to her.

With Miss Havisham and Mrs Joe, it seems there’s a resemblance in their character’s. Two are women, and even though they’ve come from different backgrounds, they’ve had to deal with an awful lot, and have had no thanks or recognition. Dickens created a different kind of woman in Great Expectations. He modernised the women in his novel, and you wouldn’t have seen any other women behave like that in those sort of novels at that time.

Today we have televised version’s that create the picture for us, but back then, it had to be made in the readers’ imaginations, and I felt Dickens over-did that. I felt he concentrated too much on describing and stuck to the rules too much. He didn't use his imagination. Dickens managed to tell us things that were irrelevant and totally uneeded.

I wouldn’t say that Dickens is one of the best writers of all time, but Great Expectations is a good read, and has so many twist and turns you feel you’re on a rollercoaster! But, I just couldn't enjoy it, because it was Dickens and I'm not a fan of him at all. I find him tedious and simply over rated.

Even though I somewhat enjoyed Dickens writing here (well, in parts), I have read better than this. I don't recommend it to anyone who doesn't enjoy Dickens, but if you're a fan then read it. You most probably will enjoy. Although a clever man, Dickens, for me is too overated. I've had much greater expectations from a dick...!

© Matt Roberts 2003