Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Few novels capture the complexity of human ambition, social class, and personal redemption like Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Originally pub...
Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations as a serial between 1860 and 1861, and it runs around 544 pages in most editions. It follows Pip, an orphan being raised by his sister and her husband the blacksmith, who comes into a secret fortune and sets off to become a gentleman. The catch, which Pip takes most of the book to figure out, is that money and a nicer accent do not make him a better person. If anything they make him worse for a while.
What stuck with me is that Pip is not an easy hero to root for. Once he has the money he gets snobbish about the people who actually loved him, especially Joe, the blacksmith, who is about the kindest character in the book. Watching Pip be ashamed of Joe is uncomfortable in a way that felt honest. Dickens lets his narrator be petty and ungrateful and does not rush to forgive him for it.
The Estella thread is the one that frustrated me, in a productive way. Pip loves her from childhood, and she is raised by Miss Havisham, a woman jilted at the altar who has worn the same wedding dress and kept the same rotting cake on the table ever since. Havisham trains Estella to be cold so she can break men's hearts as revenge. Pip pours years into someone who is built, on purpose, to never love him back. It is a hard thing to watch a person do, and Dickens does not let him off the hook for doing it.
Where the fortune comes from is the part I will not spoil, except to say it is not who Pip assumes, and the reveal recolors everything that came before it. Dickens was clearly enjoying himself with the mystery of it. The benefactor question runs under the whole book like a wire.
The prose is dense in the way Victorian serials are, written to be read a chapter at a time with a cliffhanger at the end of each. It asks for patience. I found it paid off. There is a real argument buried in here about class, about how England decided who counted and who did not, and Dickens is angry about it without ever stopping the story to lecture you.
I gave it four and a half out of five. It is a slow read and Pip spends a lot of it being someone you would not want to know, but that is the point, and the ending earns the trouble. If you want a classic that is genuinely about how money changes a person, this is a good one.
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Character & Growth
Dickens' exploration of ambition and class resonates with:
- The Art of Showing Up: Writing, Work, and Wandering Thoughts - On measured accomplishment and the journey of growth
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