*Spoilers*
I recently read Great Expectations, written by Charles Dickens in 1860. I really enjoyed this book; it was a great coming-of-age story full of humor, love, loss, heartache, and reward. It was a little hard to read because the writing was a bit circuitous, and there were a lot of references to living in Victorian England, but it was great overall.
The book is about Pip (Philip Pirrip), a poor orphan boy living with his cruel sister and her kind-hearted husband, Joe, in the marshlands of Kent. Dickens did a great job with the perspective of a child and how they see the world. Pip’s fears surrounding assisting the escaped convict Magwitch are how I would have felt in that position as a kid.
Dickens created many memorable characters in this book, like Miss Havisham, Estella, Herbert, Jaggers, Mr. Wemmic, and The Old. I also enjoyed Mrs. Pocket, I found her character very funny. Mr. Wopsle and Uncle Pumblechook were memorable as well.
The story really picks up steam when Mr. Jaggers, a lawyer, visits Pip to tell him someone wishes for him to become a gentleman; everyone is stunned. The identity of his benefactor is to remain a secret until the person wishes to come forward. Pip immediately sees this as an opportunity to impress Estella, the haughty, beautiful orphan girl who lives with Miss Havisham. He decides to cut all ties with his old life and gives up on the one close, meaningful friendship he ever had with Joe. When he moves to London, he makes another friend, Herbert, whom he met before at Miss Havisham’s mansion, and the two become very close friends. Pip views Herbert’s good nature as a drawback and sees it as his duty to help him behind the scenes to get a good job. This misguided but selfless act helps Pip out later.
Pip makes more visits to Miss Havisham’s mansion while in London and often goes with Estella. He was under the impression that Miss Havisham was his mysterious benefactor, and she was grooming him to get Estella when the time was right. Pip could not see reason with anything surrounding Estella. He was blindly in love and confident that he would get the cold beauty in the end, even though he was told repeatedly that Miss Havisham was a spiteful woman who was hell-bent on taking revenge against men and was using Estella to do it.
There were some memorable, funny parts to the book as well. Mrs. Pocket, the wife of Pip’s tutor while in London, is convinced she is descended from royalty and is single-minded in her attempts to prove it. She has many children but is a terrible mother and prefers to have her servants take care of them. The scenes of her not knowing how to hold her baby and being inattentive to all her children are funny. Then there is Mr. Wopsle who was known to read the newspaper at a local tavern with a lot of panache while Pip was living in his old village, decided to become an actor, and was in a truly horrible amateur play. The descriptions of the play were very funny and were a nice, light-hearted part of the book.
When Pip’s true benefactor is revealed, his whole world falls down around him, and life starts to take some bumpy roads. He needs to smuggle someone out of London, he is captured and almost killed by an old rival, he receives burns all over his arms trying to save Miss Havisham, and Estella marries someone else. After all that, he became ill for months, and when he finally decided to go back home to start over, broke and alone, the old adage “you can never go home again” rings very true for Pip.
Out of options, Pip starts over with his friend Herbert, who promised Pip a job before they parted. Pip works his way up slowly, carves out a comfortable life for himself, and meets Estella again at the end of the book.
The story explores themes of class. How Pip is treated by everyone, most notably Uncle Pumblechook, when it was revealed he came into money and opportunity, is a stark difference from how he was treated when he was just an apprentice to Joe in the forge. When Pip meets Biddy, a girl from his village, he acknowledges that she is pretty, smart, and kind, but he cannot let go of his desire for Estella. Estella represents more, better.
Many times in the book Pip regrets his decision to become a gentleman and feels like it has not enriched his life at all. He often feels like he was happier when he was in his village with Joe and Biddy and had a more simple life. He hated that he was not satisfied with what he had and that he turned his back so fully on his old life.
While he is becoming a gentleman, Pip is single-minded in his pursuit of Estella; his only objective is to have her. When that hope is lost, Pip is directionless and depressed. Because he was in love with her, he felt like he would be happy when he was with her, but she treated him with such indifference he was always miserable when they were together. Even still, he found it difficult to let her go. Pip’s great expectations fell flat when he realized it takes more than expectations to make something of yourself and be happy.
I would highly recommend this book!
Rating 9/10
CozyWrites 
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