ENG 1120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Miss Havisham, Satis House, Abel Magwitch
15 Aug 2018
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Unit 5: Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Background Information
- Great Expectations shows how one individual responds to a diversity of experiences, in
the process learning more about the self and others.
- Dickens uses a retrospective first-person narration to present a story of how individual
values are acquired, usually through painful experience.
- The novel uses the travels of its central character, and a wide range of settings, for the
purpose of broadening the range of its vision of society and for reflecting the
protagonist’s state of mind and stage of development.
- Dickens’s readers in 1860 first encountered the novel in serial form; it was published in
installments over a nine month period in Dickens’s own weekly magazine. As you
read Great Expectations, keep the fact of its serial publication in mind, and notice the
ways in which Dickens keeps his audience eager to buy his magazine for the next
installment of the story.
- The lives of Pip, Miss Havisham, Magwitch, and Estella are all built on fantasies,
falsehoods, or concealed facts. Pip’s central experience is the experience of coming to
know the truth.
Comment on the Narrative Point of View in Great Expectations
- As a “mature” individual, the narrator of Great Expectations looks back on his life,
assesses it, and brings down a harsh judgment on himself. He recreates himself as he was
in the past, and we share the perspective of the young protagonist, filtered through the
consciousness of an older, wiser narrator
- Pip has been educated by experience; the subject of his narration is the undeveloped Pip
whom events will shape. The older Pip reflects on his own early behaviour, analyzes it,
and accounts for its influence on his present feelings.
- We must believe in the reality of both Pips, although they may differ in some respects,
and, at the same time, we must believe that the child could become the man.
- Furthermore, the narrating Pip adopts, from the beginning of his tale, a critical view of
the younger Pip. If we are to be convinced that the narrator has learned from his
experience and is wiser than he was, we must be able to share his criticism of himself. On
the other hand, we must have enough sympathy with the younger Pip to be able to see
how he could have gone wrong and to be able to care about what happens to him.
- The narrator in Dickens’s novel has the limited awareness and the sense of first-hand
experience that an individual character would have. At the same time, Dickens accounts
for the fact that Pip is telling us about his experience by making him an author writing for
an audience. Pip addresses the reader directly: “Pause you who read this, and think for a
moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have
bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day” (66).
Analyze Dickens’s Symbolic Use of Setting
- Two of the settings in Great Expectations, the marshes and Satis House, will serve as
examples. Dickens presents these two in language that is perfectly satisfying to our sense
of verisimilitude, to our need to know what appear to be the facts. We know where the
marshes are, what their location is relative to the river or to the forge, and so on.
Document Summary
Great expectations shows how one individual responds to a diversity of experiences, in the process learning more about the self and others. Dickens uses a retrospective first-person narration to present a story of how individual values are acquired, usually through painful experience. Dickens"s readers in 1860 first encountered the novel in serial form; it was published in installments over a nine month period in dickens"s own weekly magazine. As you read great expectations, keep the fact of its serial publication in mind, and notice the ways in which dickens keeps his audience eager to buy his magazine for the next installment of the story. The lives of pip, miss havisham, magwitch, and estella are all built on fantasies, falsehoods, or concealed facts. Pip"s central experience is the experience of coming to know the truth. Comment on the narrative point of view in great expectations.
