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Unit 11: Charles Dickens—Great Expectations

Self Assessment Notes

Fill in the blanks:
1. Great Expectations is a novel by ......... .
2. Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England on ......... .

3. Charles Dickens was exposed to many ......... and ......... .
4. Charles Dickens travels abroad in the ......... first to America and then through Europe.
5. Charles Dickens started his thirteenth novel, Great Expectations in ......... .
Though not considered as autobiographical as David Copperfield which he had published
some ten years earlier, the character of Pip represented a Dickens who had learned some hard
lessons in his later life. Especially strong throughout the novel are the concepts of fraternal
and romantic love, how society thwarts them, how a man should find them.
For financial reasons, Dickens had to shorten the novel, making it one of his tighter and better
written stories. It was published in serial form, as were all of his novels, and the reader can
still see the rhythm of suspense and resolution every couple of chapters that kept all of
England waiting for the next issue.
Though a dark novel, Great Expectations was deliberately more humorous than its predecessor
A Tale of Two Cities, and even while it presented Dickens’ ever present social critique, it did
so in a way that made people laugh.
The greatest difference between Great Expectations and Dickens’ earlier novels is the introduction
of dramatic psychological transformations within the lead characters, as opposed to characters
that are changed only through their circumstances and surroundings. The story of Pip is a
Bildungsroman — a story that centers on the education or development of the protagonist —
and we can follow closely the things that Pip learns and then has to unlearn.
All in all, Great Expectations is considered the best balanced of all of Dickens’ novels, though
a controversy still persists over the ending. Dickens had originally written an ending where
Pip and Estella never get back together. Many critics, including George Bernard Shaw, believe
that this rather depressing ending was more consistent with the overall theme and tone of the
novel, which began, continued, and perhaps should have finished with a serious, unhappy
note.
Nevertheless, Dickens published the ending where all is forgiven and Estella and Pip walk out
of the Satis House garden together. It was, perhaps, an ending that Dickens would have like
to have had for his own life. Dickens published one more novel, Our Mutual Friend, before
dying in 1870.

11.2 Summary

• Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form
in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861.
• Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, on February 7, 1812, to John and
Elizabeth Dickens.
• A publishing phenomenon, The Pickwick Papers was published in monthly installments
and sold over forty thousand copies of each issue.
• Dickens had just separated from his wife two years earlier, there were rumors of an
affair with a young actress in the newspapers.

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