Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (orig. 1861; MLEdition 2001) [IBR2024]

I fell asleep recalling what I “used to do” when I was at Miss Havisham’s; as though I had been there weeks or months, instead of hours; and as though it were quite an old subject of remembrance, instead of one that had arisen only that day.
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. 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.

[Ed.Note: Something is up with WordPress; my usual method of inserting quotes isn’t working, so I’ve used a work-around which looks a bit different than preceding posts.]

The only comments I’ve ever heard anyone make about this book refer to Miss Havisham, still wearing the wedding dress from the day she was jilted, and Estella. I got the impression this was a romance played out with overtones of class differences. Oh, it is, certainly, and the two women are central characters; but it’s so much more: a mystery, a rise-and-fall story, occasionally a comedy, and, in the last section, a thriller.

I would even disagree with Pip’s own assessment that the day he met Miss Havisham and Estella was the first link in a chain that created his life. I think the chain started much earlier, in the very first chapter, when the child Pip encountered an escaped convict on the marshes and was compelled to bring him food and a file. Of course, the Pip who meets Miss Havisham a bit later has no idea yet of the enormous significance of that earlier experience.

I wonder if those who talk of nothing more than Miss Havisham have read the book. Or if this is one of those books no one wants to admit they’ve never read.

Book I lays the foundation for the story. I’ve never been big on descriptive passages, and there are a lot of them throughout the book – Miss Havisham’s house, parts of London, details of physical interactions. But the one that grabbed me was in the second paragraph of the book:

As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,” I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine,—who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle,—I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

I have an affinity for cemeteries and gravestones, and this struck me as a wonderful way to introduce Pip: a boy who’s never seen his family, and thus imagines them from their stones. The touch of relegating his mother to “Also…” almost hurts, as does the death of five of six siblings. Death of a young child is such a singular event these days, outside of wars and famines and endemic disease zones; it’s hard to realize that just a few hundred years ago, it was rather commonplace.

The end of Book I changes the course of Pip’s life, and we learn the origin of the title.

“My name,” he said, “is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in London. I am pretty well known. I have unusual business to transact with you, and I commence by explaining that it is not of my originating. If my advice had been asked, I should not have been here. It was not asked, and you see me here. What I have to do as the confidential agent of another, I do. No less, no more.”<br>
Finding that he could not see us very well from where he sat, he got up, and threw one leg over the back of a chair and leaned upon it; thus having one foot on the seat of the chair, and one foot on the ground.<br>
….
“Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.”
Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another.
“I am instructed to communicate to him,” said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his finger at me sideways, “that he will come into a handsome property. Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that property, that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman,—in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations.”

Ah, so this is to be a Horatio Alger tale, I thought. I wasn’t as sure Miss Havisham was behind it as Pip was, but it was a reasonable theory. When the Bright Lights, Big City began to turn his head, it felt familiar, and very contemporary. In fact, though everything is clearly early 19^th century, the relationships and possibilities aren’t that far removed. But this is no rags-to-riches: it’s more of a rags-to-riches-to-find-one’s-moral-center tale. Most of the major characters end up where they should be, though a few run out of mercy too soon.

If you’re a student looking for a quick way to get through your assignment on the themes or someone’s character development or pacing or whatever, you’d best look elsewhere. It was in small moments that I found the greatest enjoyment, and where I am putting my focus.

For example, Chapter 14 contains a meditation on home and loyalty that might have saved Pip a lot of trouble, had he remembered it better.  Chapter 34 contains a similar soul-searching, which is finally beginning to take root. Chapter 53 made me laugh, for it contains a jeopardy scene that could belong in any James Bond film: the villain captures the hero, prepares to kill him – but must first explain everything, both cuing in the audience and allowing time for help to arrive. And Chapter 55 presents the Best Wedding Idea Ever:

When we had fortified ourselves with the rum and milk and biscuits, and were going out for the walk with that training preparation on us, I was considerably surprised to see Wemmick take up a fishing-rod, and put it over his shoulder. “Why, we are not going fishing!” said I. “No,” returned Wemmick, “but I like to walk with one.”
I thought this odd; however, I said nothing, and we set off. We went towards Camberwell Green, and when we were thereabouts, Wemmick said suddenly,—
“Halloa! Here’s a church!”
There was nothing very surprising in that; but again, I was rather surprised, when he said, as if he were animated by a brilliant idea,—
“Let’s go in!”
We went in, Wemmick leaving his fishing-rod in the porch, and looked all round. In the mean time, Wemmick was diving into his coat-pockets, and getting something out of paper there.
“Halloa!” said he. “Here’s a couple of pair of gloves! Let’s put ’em on!”
As the gloves were white kid gloves, and as the post-office was widened to its utmost extent, I now began to have my strong suspicions. They were strengthened into certainty when I beheld the Aged enter at a side door, escorting a lady.
“Halloa!” said Wemmick. “Here’s Miss Skiffins! Let’s have a wedding.”

Wemmick’s motivation to keep his wedding secret from Mr. Jaggers still strikes me as a bit weak, but I’ll accept it on faith.

I was also struck by the final encounter between Miss Havisham and Estella: “I am what you have made me.” Yes, she is. Estella was raised as a weapon, to wreak Miss Havisham’s vengeance on the world; when Miss Havisham can’t get what she wants from her in her old age, she’s outraged. It’s a meme from the Leopard-Eating-People’s-Faces Party: “I never thought they’d eat my face.” In a similar vein, I was amused by the second paragraph of Chapter 20:

We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything; and while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty.

What, you think we invented American Exceptionalism all by ourselves? We imported more than tea from the mother ship, grasshopper (and that, dear reader, is called mixing metaphors, the thing we are told we should never do).

The writing of the end of the book is a story in itself. In his introduction to this edition of the text, Bernard Shaw writes: “Dickens wrote two endings and made a mess of both.” I was a bit disappointed with the introduction overall, to the point where I checked to make sure this was THE George Bernard Shaw (it is; apparently he hated the ‘George’ and never used it, leaving us plebians looking like idiots when we include it) and it was. Dickens’ original ending was melancholy, placing Estella forever out of reach, whereas the new ending, while not crystal-clear, certainly gives the impression that Pip’s decades-long unrequited love will at last find a response.

What’s rather hilarious to me is that the rewrite was suggested by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Now, that name may not ring any bells, but his book, Paul Clifford, began: “It was a dark and stormy night.” Not only is this a meme as the worst opening line ever, there’s a contest, set up in 1982 by Professor Scott Rice at San Jose State University in California, for “the opening sentence of the worst possible novel.” Let it be noted, however, that Bulwer-Lytton also wrote the better-received The Last Days of Pompeii, which has served as inspiration for several films and works of art.

As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me. Their influence on my own character I disguised from my recognition as much as possible, but I knew very well that it was not all good. I lived in a state of chronic uneasiness respecting my behaviour to Joe. My conscience was not by any means comfortable about Biddy. When I woke up in the night,—like Camilla,—I used to think, with a weariness on my spirits, that I should have been happier and better if I had never seen Miss Havisham’s face, and had risen to manhood content to be partners with Joe in the honest old forge. Many a time of an evening, when I sat alone looking at the fire, I thought, after all there was no fire like the forge fire and the kitchen fire at home.

One of my Bluesky compatriots mentioned his favorite character was Joe Gargery. I was more drawn to Biddy: she’s a teacher, after all, and Pip explicitly compares her to Estella in such a contemporary way – not as pretty, not as rich, not as cultured, but so much nicer, oh that he could love her instead – it’s hard not to stand by her side. So the paths of these two characters have a fitting end.

This is another entry in my project of reading the Western Canon that I somehow avoided through high school and college. I read A Tale of Two Cities last year; I read Oliver Twist in junior high, though we relied more upon the film, just released, than the book. I know there’s a lot more to Dickens, but I think I’ve covered enough, though Shaw’s mention of David Copperfield as Dickens’ favorite child makes me a bit curious, as does his remark that “Little Dorritt is a more seditious book than Das Kapital.” But my heart isn’t in the nineteenth century as far as fiction is concerned (science is a different matter). Too many books, too little time.