# books / Great Expectations -- Charles Dickens

Who tells the story of the kicked, scarred, hopeful underdog better than Dickens? Much of what draws me to him is my empathy with that down-but-not-out boy, hurt like a puppy, in a way the character internalises as his own deficiency. These poor souls, making their way in the world, is what Dickens paints so well.

The other thing about Dickens is the colour he brings to every interaction with the world, the ludicrously real nature of life that he was able to capture. Great Expectations is full of vibrant, absurd living moments.

Pip

This is my second bildungsroman from Dickens this year. What a treat. Unlike David Copperfield, our narrator Pip is more significantly flawed. Indeed, critics have been harsh. The most common characterisations name him selfish & self-important. These might be true, but his self-awareness & shame of these traits are illuminating: there is an internal conflict in Pip, between the person he believes he must present, and the kind & caring person we see emerge when nobody is looking or judging.

This conflict is not hard to understand. For a boy abused “by hand” throughout his upbringing, told that he is worthless & ungrateful, why should we expect him to know who he is? From these humble origins Pip is thrown, with some consequence, into the world of Miss Havisham & Estella, where he is unduly cut down by the latter’s snobbish remarks. What preparation has he had to know that there is nothing wrong with him, really? Shame for his coarse hands & thick boots are natural. These are people, it is suggested, who could change his future. There is no reason for Pip not to take their remarks seriously.

I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

I took the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard to look at my coarse hands and my common boots. My opinion of those accessories was not favorable. They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me now, as vulgar appendages.

Pip’s two acts of kindness are both, in different senses, secret. Where judgement cannot pique his shame. For Herbert, he provides the opportunity for a future, a secret benefactor himself. For Magwitch, he tries to save him, with little thought to money. In fact he has handed the money back to Magwitch, and only thinks of it again when it has been siezed by the Crown. Magwitch’s rescue is, too, secret by necessity of law.

Pip’s lack of gratitude to Joe, the person that had been his constant companion, is nothing less than a rejection of the parts in himself that Pip has learned he ought to be ashamed of, that he must hide. He watches Joe eat and feels a sense of embarrassment he had not felt when Herbert had politely corrected Pip’s manners. He cannot force Joe to change any more than he can force Joe to learn to write. But he can force himself to change, and pretend his humble past is no longer a part of him.

We all learn who we are from how we are taught to behave, what we are exposed to, and the suffering we endure. Dickens’ message was that suffering is greater than teaching. This is how, over the course of his life. Pip had many poor teachers, but some solid role models and some fruitful suffering.

Money, Class, Status

A theme which Pip’s apparent ingratitude highlights is the connection between money, class & status. In short, when Pip is given money, the view of him changes overnight, including from himself, as if he has risen to a higher status of person. In the modern day we certainly haven’t dettached this connection between money & human worth, but even so the idea that Joe should address him as “Sir”, or that he should be viewed as some rare & fine beast, is bizzare to ridiculous.

Pip struggles with this warped view right to the end of the novel, when Joe calls him “Sir” after his benefactor & fortune is lost:

That I was ashamed to tell him exactly how I was placed, and what I had come down to, I do not seek to conceal; but I hope my reluctance was not quite an unworthy one.

Pip winces at being called “Sir” by Joe, not because he has behaved terribly to Joe, not because Joe has been his one constant companion through his life, to whom he owes a lot. Rather, he thinks he isn’t worthy of this status elevation only because his money is gone.

The absurd nature of money & class is one of Dickens’ favourite themes, on a moral rather than political level. The worth of a person in his era, Dickens regularly highlights, is determined by the contents of their pocketbooks. Herbet & Joe are stunning models of a different way.

Wemmick & his Walworth sentiments

Wemmick is one of my favourite characters in all literature, and absolutely Dickensian in the literary sense: colourful, strange, good hearted & spirited.

I admire the straightforward joys he possesses, pride in his home, the happiness of company with an aging parent, and the literally understated ways that permeate even to his wedding day.

Wemmick may have been an inspiration for the show Severence, a reminder of the different people we are professionally & personally. Wemmick is professionally successful without anything about his humble home-life being impacted. His “Walworth sentiments” are a reminder to us all, and a guide to Pip, that we can aspire to more without leaving behind what we have, what really matters.

The forging of a person

While she criticises Pip for the coarse hands he earned as the adopted son of a Blacksmith, Estella was forged too by the iron will of Miss Havisham’s revenge, into an anvil & hammer for the punishment of the male species. This makes Estella a potential fascinating character, though we never in the end learn much about her success in this pursuit.

Most interesting about her is her resultant relationship with Miss Havisham.

You should know, I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me.

Miss Havisham is an extreme example of how parents shape us into what we are. Estella’s words remind us that parents, guardians, coaches & guides often want to take credit for those parts they like, and then blame the child for perceived failings. We must bear responsibility for both sides of the coin of our creations. We cannot accept responsibility only for the parts we’re happy with.

Everybody is a consequence of their environment. Even the choices we take, the choices that are available to us, are a product of our earliest & most formative times, whether as a child, in a job, a relationship. Pip, Estella, Miss Havisham. Escaping our launch position is the work of a lifetime. Everybody’s great expectations are defined by the start they get & the fight they must put up against it.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past – The Great Gatsby

Joe had his own difficult start in life, with a violent father who inhibited his education & didn’t do much to foster his apprenticeship. Joe speaks not bitterly, but fondly, of his childhood. He has come to terms with where he came from, is not angry at lost opportunities. And Joe offers the same forgiveness to Pip. Joe takes “all the failure”, and accepts all of Pip without question. Thanks to his interrupted schooling Joe can read only two letters: “Jo”. He knows who he is.

Higlights

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

My favourite line from the book.

I doubt if he were quite as fully sensible of that gentleman’s merits under arid conditions, as when something moist was going.

they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any light on the questions why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham’s, and what on earth I was expected to play at.

I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand gave her no right to bring me up by jerks.

If you can’t get to be oncommon through going straight, you’ll never get to do it through going crooked. So don’t tell no more on ‘em, Pip, and live well and die happy.”

It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world; but it is very possible to know how it has touched one’s self in going by, and I know right well that any good that intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented Joe, and not of restlessly aspiring discontented me.

“Because, if it is to spite her,” Biddy pursued, “I should think — but you know best — that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think — but you know best — she was not worth gaining over.”

“Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There’s a charming piece of music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith.”

Dickens at it with names as props again

It appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers were hatched were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches, judging from the places to which those incipient giants repaired on a Monday morning.

I could not help noticing, even then, that there was much more gravy on the tablecloths and knives and waiters’ clothes, than in the steaks.

so sulky a fellow that he even took up a book as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit.

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

An obliging stranger, under pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!

The lies we tell ourselves cost us most of all.

“I’ll tell you,” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, “what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter — as I did!”

Poor Miss Havisham.

So mean is extremity, that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park corner to see what o’clock it was.

However, this is not London talk. Where do you think I am going to?” “To the office?”

This is not “London talk”!

and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable object of improving the flavor of their soup.

We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle of something similarly out of the common way, in order that our minds might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well up to the mark. Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.

The sound of our pens going refreshed us exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding and actually paying the money.

Is this a modern reminder to every productivity guru?

In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to the great iron ring.

There being to my knowledge a respectable lodging-house in Essex Street, the back of which looked into the Temple, and was almost within hail of my windows

“Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.”

“You will get me out of your thoughts in a week.” “Out of my thoughts! 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. But, in this separation, I associate you only with the good; and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”

the spectral figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still covering her heart, seemed all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and remorse.

could not go back to the inn and see Drummle there; that I could not bear to sit upon the coach and be spoken to; that I could do nothing half so good for myself as tire myself out.

“…I stole her heart away, and put ice in its place.” “Better,” I could not help saying, “to have left her a natural heart, even to be bruised or broken.”

“I found her a tapping the spare bed, like a cask of beer, and drawing off the feathers in a bucket…”

Dickens loves a terrible housekeeper, he must have had poor luck

though a little gray, sat Joe; and there, fenced into the corner with Joe’s leg, and sitting on my own little stool looking at the fire, was — I again!

A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was not yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the mist, and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.