Issue 127
Term 4, 2023
Great expectations
Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person.[N 1] The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861.[1] In October 1861, Chapman & Hall published the novel in three volumes.[2][3][4]
Philip "Pip" Pirrip is a seven-year-old orphan who lives with his hot-tempered older sister and her kindly blacksmith husband Joe Gargery on the coastal marshes of Kent. On Christmas Eve 1812,[14] Pip visits the graves of his parents and siblings. There, he unexpectedly encounters an escaped convict who threatens to kill him if he does not bring back food and tools. Pip steals a file from among Joe's tools and a pie and brandy that were meant for Christmas dinner, which he delivers to the convict.
That evening, Pip's sister is about to look for the missing pie when soldiers arrive and ask Joe to mend some shackles. Joe and Pip accompany them into the marshes to recapture the convict, who is fighting with another escaped convict. The first convict confesses to stealing food, clearing Pip.[15
A few years later, Miss Havisham, a wealthy and reclusive spinster who lives in dilapidated Satis House wearing her old wedding dress after having been jilted at the altar, asks Mr Pumblechook, a relative of the Gargerys, to find a boy to visit her. Pip visits Miss Havisham and falls in love with Estella, her adopted daughter. Estella is aloof and hostile to Pip, which Miss Havisham encourages. During one visit, another boy picks a fistfight with Pip, where Pip easily gains the upper hand. Estella watches, and allows Pip to kiss her afterwards. Pip visits Miss Havisham regularly, until he is old enough to learn a trade.[16]
Joe accompanies Pip for the last visit to Miss Havisham, at which she gives Pip money to become an apprentice blacksmith. Joe's surly assistant, Dolge Orlick, is envious of Pip and dislikes Mrs Joe. Orlick also complains when Joe says he needs to take Pip somewhere midday, thinking this is another sign of favoritism, of which Joe assures him he can quit work for the day. When Pip and Joe are away from the house, Joe's wife is brutally attacked, leaving her unable to speak or do her work. When Pip sees a leg iron was the weapon used in the attack, he becomes worried believing that it was the same leg iron he helped liberate the convict from. Now bedridden, Mrs. Joe is unable to be "a rampaging" towards Pip as before the attack. Pip's former schoolmate Biddy joins the household to help with her care.[17]
CHarles Doggins
Charles Doggins
Sir
England
Barcode
Scanner
SCIS