Great Expectations
Explore some of the ways in which Dickens’ attitudes to Victorian society are presented in the opening chapter of Great Expectations.
For this essay I will be focusing on the opening chapters of Great Expectations, a novel written by Charles Dickens. I am going to consider the Victorian society at the time and dickens’ use of language to express themes, settings and characters.
Charles Dickens wrote this story in the Victorian times. Hence we seem to think what ‘does he mean’ by “Great Expectations”. By us the readers, knowing and understanding what it means, we can get a rough idea of what the story is like. By Great Expectations we mean having high expectations for life, class and dreams for a better life. Dreams that a person really wants for it to come true. Hoping or expecting more than you have. This lays quite an effect on the reader, this is because the title “Great Expectations” doest say much. The title itself can give ideas to us the readers as to what the story will be like. For example they can suppose that the story is about someone’s great expectations in life, of a job, of a person and even of himself or herself. This story was set in the Victorian times, which was actually in the mid 1800’s and Charles Dickens wrote it in the 1860’s. So life back then is very different as to how it is now. If we compare today to the Victorian era, we see people lived very different lives in many different ways. A few had access to educations, some didn’t. Some were able to get a good high standard job and some didn’t.
At the time of Charles Dickens a lot of the people were poor, many suffered from poor health and had to work all day late into the night. The few that were rich thought they were better ...
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...rown with nettles’, this tell us what the area is like and creates feelings in the reader. This also gives the impression that the atmosphere is dull, depressing, empty and hopeless. This makes the reader feel that there is no hope for Pip.
In conclusion I think Dickens has used language, setting and the theme of death etc in a very effective way. Dickens shows us the different ways of using language to introduce many themes and settings. He does this using different technique as he skilfully catches the reader’s attention in just through the first pages! He involves the reader so quickly that they just keep on reading. This makes the readers feel it is important to know what happens next. However I myself and many many other readers will find that Dickens does keep his readers interested all the way through the story and it shows how good he is at it.
Characters who yearn for appreciation, the portrayal of a depressing ambiance, and the repetition of buried guilt are a few resemblances of the Masterpiece rendition of Great Expectations and Dickens’ novel. In both adaptations, many characters struggle with the loneliness and troubles of life. Although life’s issues differ from when the novel was written until now, the audience can still relate to the characters. This classic story has traveled through many era’s and the moral is still understandable to all people who have enjoyed the tale in its many different formats. It is especially relatable to those who have struggled to cope with the challenges of life.
The Range of Devices Charles Dickens Uses to Engage the Reader in the Opening Chapter of Great Expectations
Rawlins, Jack P. "Great Expectations: Dickens and the Betrayal." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 23 (1983): 667-683.
Charles Dickens used Great Expectations as a forum for presenting his views of human nature. This essay will explore friendship, generosity, love, cruelty and other aspects of human nature presented by Dickens over 100 years ago.
In today's society and in Victorian England, people act differently at work compared to how they carry themselves at home. Charles Dickens, in Great Expectations, writes about the workplace and home environments in Victorian England. Wemmick works and Jaggers' office and has a completely separate home life with a parent and a girlfreind. Dickens uses contrasting tones, critical and pleasant, to illustrate how Wemmick feels and acts at work rather than at home.
Philip, Neil and Victor Neuberg. Charles Dickens A December Vision and Other Thoughtful Writings. New York: The Continuum Publishing Co., 1987. A helpful collection of 10 essays by Dickens with accompanying explanations by the authors. Essays are followed by relevant passages from Dickens' novels.
Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens that thoroughly captures the adventures of growing up. The book details the life of a boy through his many stages of life, until he is finally a grown man, wizened by his previous encounters. Dickens’ emotions in this book are very sincere, because he had a similar experience when his family went to debtor’s prison. Pip starts as a young boy, unaware of social class, who then becomes a snob, overcome by the power of money, and finally grows into a mature, hardworking man, knowing that there is much more to life than money.
The language Dickens uses in Great Expectations makes the atmosphere cold, frightening and mysterious. “I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churc...
It can be seen through Dickens’s highly successful novel Great Expectations, that his early life events are reflected into the novel. Firstly the reader can relate to Dickens’s early experiences, as the novel’s protagonist Pip, lives in the marsh country, and hates his job. Pip also considers himself, to be too good for his ...
In a lot of ways, the nineteenth Century depicted in Great Expectations is epitomic of the particular period. A lot of societal aspects correlate with the events in the book and especially the dynamical structure of the society. And even though the picture most people have of a Victorian society is set up in different compartments and highly contrasted one, the actualities of the time speak of an England adapting to industry and the ideals of the Enlightenment period. Dickens’ treatment of England at the time “is based on the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England” (Google Scholar). He ignores the aristocratic air associated with it and instead pursues a standpoint focused on commerce. Still and all, we get the sense of how pivotal, or rather, central, this notion of compartments is to the plot of the story, especially with regard to social class. And this leads to the point; the class system of the nineteenth century. Unlike modern England and the modern world, generally, the earlier 19th century version had more defined social classes because values and beliefs about what made people who they were had, just like the physical structures, been morphing in comparison.
Morgentaler, Goldie. “Meditating on the Low: A Darwinian Reading of Great Expectations.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 38.4 (Autumn 1998): 707-721.
“About the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: The Similarities Between Dickens and Pip.” A Date with Dickens. Oprah’s Book Club. 6 December 2010. Web. 21 March 2014.
Charles Dickens is well known for his distinctive writing style. Few authors before or since are as adept at bringing a character to life for the reader as he was. His novels are populated with characters who seem real to his readers, perhaps even reminding them of someone they know. What readers may not know, however, is that Dickens often based some of his most famous characters, those both beloved or reviled, on people in his own life. It is possible to see the important people, places, and events of Dickens' life thinly disguised in his fiction. Stylistically, evidence of this can be seen in Great Expectations. For instance, semblances of his mother, father, past loves, and even Dickens himself are visible in the novel. However, Dickens' past influenced not only character and plot devices in Great Expectations, but also the very syntax he used to create his fiction. Parallels can be seen between his musings on his personal life and his portrayal of people and places in Great Expectations.
“Charles Dickens: Great Expectations.” (2 Feb, 2006): 2. Online. World Wide Web. 2 Feb, 2006. Available http://www.uned.es/dpto-filologias-extranjeras/cursos/LenguaIglesaIII/TextosYComentarios/dickens.htm.
These elements are crucial to the structure and development of Great Expectations: Pip's maturation and development from child to man are important characteristics of the genre to which Great Expectations belongs. In structure, Pip's story, Great Expectations, is a Bildungsroman, a novel of development. The Bildungsroman traces the development of a protagonist from his early beginnings--from his education to his first venture into the big city--following his experiences there, and his ultimate self-knowledge and maturation. Upon the further examination of the characteristics of the Bildungsroman as presented here it is clear that Great Expectations, in part, conforms to the general characteristics of the English Bildungsroman. However, there are aspects of this genre from which Dickens departs in Great Expectations. It is these departures that speak to what is most important in Pip's development, what ultimately ma...