Name:
____________________________________
Here are extracts from articles written by some of the
world’s greatest Dickens scholars. Read
them, study them, and then ask yourself:
do you agree or disagree with the ideas proposed? Why or why not?
Price, Martin. Introduction. Dickens: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Martin Price.
Whose "great expectations" concern us most – Pip's dream of gentility, Magwitch's dream of the gentleman he can create, Miss Havisham's dream of revenge upon all men for the shame she has suffered? They are all inextricably connected. Pip's fantasies are tied to the unattainable Estella, whom Miss Havisham has trained in heartlessness. Magwitch succeeds in creating a creature genteel enough to despise him, while his own daughter has become the despair of his artificial gentleman. And presiding over all these ironies is the mysterious Jaggers, himself a victim of his own defenses, hardened by disappointment, still concerned for the savage woman he seems to abuse, foolishly saving her daughter by making her the instrument of Miss Havisham. The simple malevolence of Compeyson or Orlick seems almost refreshingly clear in a world of self-destroying fantasies that range from Pumblechook's snobbery or Wopsle's declamations all the way to the grim self-hatred of Estella, convinced that she cannot love and can only be a curse to the man who wins her. And yet there are other expectations that are rewarded in time:
the warm trust of Joe Gargery, the modest ambitions of Herbert Pocket, even Pip's own dreams, as they are freed of the tawdry social pretensions that travesty gentility of spirit. . . . The mature Pip, whose voice we hear throughout the novel, with its saving humor of self-acceptance, can finally see Estella as what she is instead of as the fantasy he has had to make her.
GEORGE LEVINE
Levine, George. "Communication in
Great Expectations." Charles Dickens: New Perspectives. Ed. Wendell Stacy Johnson.
Money is quite literally the root of evil for Pip and for his society. Once having got it (without any sense of meriting it), Pip loses his sense of belonging among the people he had loved. He manages, through a complicated mixture of egotism and guilt feelings, to impute to Joe and Biddy motives of which they are incapable. As Pip tries to assuage his conscience for leaving Joe and offers to send for him, Biddy replies, "Joe is too proud to let anyone take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well and with respect." To this Pip responds selfrighteously: "I am very sorry to see this in you. I did not expect to see this in you. You are envious, Biddy, and grudging. You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, and you can't help showing it." Here, .
because Pip feels that money has raised him above his original class, he twists and misinterprets perfectly honest, rational, and straightforward language. Without trust language is useless.
CHRISTOPHER RICKS
Ricks, Christopher. "Great
Expectations." Dickens and the Twentieth Century. Ed. John Gross and Gabriel Pearson.
Of all Pip's good deeds it is his loyal love for Magwitch which most matters. It more than counterbalances his ingratitude to Joe and Biddy, partly for the good reason that Pip's love for Magwitch is so strongly felt, partly for the bad reason that Joe and Biddy, despite all their occasional vividness, remain characters sadly insubstantial compared with Magwitch (or at any rate become so as soon as Pip grows up). The fact that, when Magwitch first returns, Pip feels nothing but repugnance for him, is not only the most powerful reason why his final love is so moving, but also the most powerful reason why it is so convincing.
G. ROBERT STANGE
Stange, G. Robert. "Expectations Well Lost: Dickens' Fable for His Time." College English 16 (Oct. 1954-May 1955).
Conflicting values in Pip's life are. . . expressed by the opposed imagery of stars and fire. Estella is by name a star, and throughout the novel stars are conceived as pitiless: "And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude." Estella and her light are described as coming down the dark passage of Satis House" like a star," and when she has become a woman she is constantly surrounded by the bright glitter of jewelry.
Joe Gargery, on the other hand, is associated with the warm fire of the hearth or forge. It was his habit to sit and rake the fire between the lower bars of the kitchen grate, and his workday was spent at the forge. . . .
At the end of the novel Pip finds the true light on the homely hearth, and in a last twist of the father-son theme, Joe emerges as a true parent-the only kind of parent that Dickens could ever fully approve, one that remains a child.
PAUL PICKREL
Pickrel, Paul. "Great
Expectations." Dickens: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Martin Price.
The plot of Great Expectations is a good one; it holds the reader's interest; it is full of surprises and odd turns; its complexities all come out neatly in the end. But more than that, it is a symbolic representation of Dickens' vision of the moral universe, and the chief haracteristic of that vision is that good and evil, what we most desire and what we most loathe, are inextricably intertwined.