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A review by thaurisil
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
4.0
This is a story of Pip, who begins life as an orphan living with his heavy-handed adult sister and her kind husband Joe, a blacksmith. Miss Havisham, a wealthy, isolated spinster, calls Pip to her house to be a companion, and there he meets the cold, beautiful Estella, through whom he comes to realise his low social standing. When Pip gains an inheritance from an unknown benefactor, whom he assumes to be Miss Havisham, he moves to London to be a gentleman, with Mr Jaggers, an aggressive and prominent lawyer, as his guardian. He gains the friendship of the good-natured Herbert and Mr Jaggers' two-sided clerk Wemmick, acquires expensive tastes and idle habits, and distances himself from Joe and his old home, all the while dreaming to win Estella. Things change when his benefactor is revealed to be Abel Magwitch, an escaped convict whom Pip helped in his childhood. Pip's dreams are dashed. His fortunes disappear with Magwitch's arrest and sentencing to death, but in the process he gains moral principles, lets go of his pride, renews his life with Joe, and begins life as a gentleman in character if not in wealth.
There are powerful moral lessons to learn from this tale, about the emptiness of pursuing worldly dreams, the importance of drawing your identity from virtue instead of wealth, and the falseness of judging man based on standing rather than character. The awareness of social status can create artificial divisions through the workings of pride, but as Pip comes to realise, all men are equal before God, who strips away the differences created by differing circumstances, and judges us based on our true characters. Indeed, there is an undercurrent of a moral message running through the whole story. This is generated mainly by the fact that Pip writes from the perspective of a man reflecting on his past, and it is his condemnation of his old sins that makes his behaviour bearable.
Apart from the moral messages, the other highlight is the imaginative characterisation. Miss Havisham, who through living in isolation in a desolate house since she was abandoned on her wedding day has had time to cultivate her vengefulness, is frightening when we first meet her. In time it becomes clear that Estella is her tool for taking revenge on men by winning and breaking their hearts. Yet you never really hate her because she is a victim of her circumstance. She eventually repents, but dies after setting herself on fire, a fitting end for such an impassioned woman. Wemmick was for me the most delightful character. I've never met any character quite like him. With Mr Jaggers he is no-nonsense, tight, and echoes only the demanding and uncaring views of his employer. But outside the office he owns a pleasant little home built in the fantasy of a castle, with its own moat, drawbridge and cannon, an lives with an almost deaf amiable old man known only as "Aged Parent" or "Aged P.". Another standout character for me, though a minor one, was Herbert's mother Mrs Pocket, who believes that her grandfather should have been baron, spends her time reading a book about nobility, is utterly inept at raising her children, and insists on being respected yet is respected by no one. Unfortunately her character wasn't developed much, like several other promising characters – a flaw that probably arose from Dickens writing and publishing the book in serials, four chapters at a time. But these characters and several others added life to the story through their eccentricity.
There are powerful moral lessons to learn from this tale, about the emptiness of pursuing worldly dreams, the importance of drawing your identity from virtue instead of wealth, and the falseness of judging man based on standing rather than character. The awareness of social status can create artificial divisions through the workings of pride, but as Pip comes to realise, all men are equal before God, who strips away the differences created by differing circumstances, and judges us based on our true characters. Indeed, there is an undercurrent of a moral message running through the whole story. This is generated mainly by the fact that Pip writes from the perspective of a man reflecting on his past, and it is his condemnation of his old sins that makes his behaviour bearable.
Apart from the moral messages, the other highlight is the imaginative characterisation. Miss Havisham, who through living in isolation in a desolate house since she was abandoned on her wedding day has had time to cultivate her vengefulness, is frightening when we first meet her. In time it becomes clear that Estella is her tool for taking revenge on men by winning and breaking their hearts. Yet you never really hate her because she is a victim of her circumstance. She eventually repents, but dies after setting herself on fire, a fitting end for such an impassioned woman. Wemmick was for me the most delightful character. I've never met any character quite like him. With Mr Jaggers he is no-nonsense, tight, and echoes only the demanding and uncaring views of his employer. But outside the office he owns a pleasant little home built in the fantasy of a castle, with its own moat, drawbridge and cannon, an lives with an almost deaf amiable old man known only as "Aged Parent" or "Aged P.". Another standout character for me, though a minor one, was Herbert's mother Mrs Pocket, who believes that her grandfather should have been baron, spends her time reading a book about nobility, is utterly inept at raising her children, and insists on being respected yet is respected by no one. Unfortunately her character wasn't developed much, like several other promising characters – a flaw that probably arose from Dickens writing and publishing the book in serials, four chapters at a time. But these characters and several others added life to the story through their eccentricity.