Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

I read the abridged, illustrated classic version of this many times as a kid, and what really stuck in my mind was the vision of Miss Havisham in her corpse-like bridal outfit with her rotting wedding cake still sitting on the table, and Pip having to visit her when he was a child. But I think since I knew the story so well as a child, I assumed that I had read the whole thing. But I'm pretty sure I never have. I have wanted to get to more of Dickens' works in the last few years, and I finally bought this one and made it a priority enough to make it through it.

It's funny--there are books that I want to read, that I enjoy reading when I'm actually reading it, but that don't grip me enough to make me sit down and power through it in a few short days. It seems like many classics are like that. I wonder if it's because my brain has been trained to expect books that have been thoroughly edited to be as fast-paced and interesting and well-written as possible, so that when I read a classic, no matter how much I truly love it, it's just harder to read and harder to focus on for such a long time. I've read several articles (one I assigned to my class for homework) about how our brains have been changed by the Internet and smartphones and how we are not as able to focus on things that are long and hard any more because we are so used to jumping from thing to thing. I wonder if this difficulty with reading Dickens is part of that, or if it's normal to have a hard time reading Dickens.

All of this is to say--I really like Dickens. I find his characters so original and interesting and sometimes hilarious, and the storylines are great. Tale of Two Cities is one of my very favorite books. But man, this book took me so long to get through. And I think it's probably because I wasn't as drawn into it to forsake all of my other responsibilities and throw caution to the winds and read it all day and night until I finished. I think I need to balance books like this with shorter, quicker reads so that it doesn't always feel like a chore, and I can feel that small sense of accomplishment that I get when I finish a book without having to wait so long in between books.

There were so many things I loved about this book. The beginning of Pip as a child in the creepy graveyard with the convict threatening him for food; the whole story about Pip going to Satis House and meeting Miss Havisham and Estella; his brother-in-law Joe and his disinterested goodness and simplicity; Pip's coming-of-age and realization of how he'd squandered his "great expectations" and his desires to fix his mistakes; the whole character of Wemmick and his totally different personalities and beliefs when he's at home vs. when he's in the office. Everything seems so original, particularly the images of Miss Havisham in her ravaged wedding gown and her obsession with punishing men for what happened to her.

And there are just so many spots where Dickens encapsulates some essence of humanity, or touches on something so universally human and emotional, which always rings so true, particularly when it comes out of a story that seems so quintessentially Victorian and almost foreign to our modern ears. I think that is the true reason for his genius--he really understands people and how we think and feel. Here were some of my favorite quotes that I underlined as I was writing:

"Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise" (218).

"Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together" (224).

"All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself" (225).

"There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. In the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one" (274).

"I did really cry in earnest when I went to bed, to think that my expectations had done some good to somebody" (299).

"I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death" (301).

"You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since--on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil." (364).

"Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but--I hope--into a better shape" (484).


There are always parts of Dickens' books that could be cut out or cut down, in order to focus on the main point of the plot. But then I bet the whole Wemmick storyline would be cut out, and I would never want to lose that story of him and his Aged Parent and his hilariously surprising wedding. So I guess we just need to decide where to skim and where to savor in his books and enjoy it all.