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Good Fathers And Bad Mothers
Dec 2008
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - Oxford University Press, 2008
* * * * *
Truth be told, Dickens is not as great a writer as some critics and literary academics have made him out to be. He has an eye for character and a way with words, but his novels can be preachy, digressive and appallingly sentimental, with viewpoint characters who are thin moral ciphers rather than real people (exhibit A: The Old Curiosity Shop). These weaknesses, especially if encountered in an uninspiring educational context, must have created a legion of the Dickens-phobic, and it is possible that you, dear reader, are one of them. In which case, this review is for you.
Firstly it is important to acknowledge that your antipathy is not at all unreasonable (or unusual: a google for "I hate Dickens" returns 352,000 results). If you are intolerant of emotionalism or implausible characterisation, Dickens is always going to be a hard sell, and I am certainly not going to argue that Great Expectations is free from them. But it has a focused three-act plot structure, a flawed and therefore interesting hero, and things to say about betrayal, revenge, class, the corrupting effects of unearned rewards and the well-springs of character. So it might be worth a few hours of your time.
We first encounter Philip Pirritt (Pip) in the famous terrifying scene with the escaped prisoner Magwitch in the churchyard, the first of two haunting images from the book. Pip's acquiescence to the convict's demands may seem implausible until you learn that he is an orphan under the thumb of his bullying sister Mrs Gargery, who has taught him the hard way that obedience is the only escape from punishment. Of course, to obey the convict means to disobey Mrs Gargery and effectively betray her nice-but-dim husband Joe, and this is the first of many moral dilemmas that Pip faces. But unlike most of Dickens' other viewpoint characters, the choices he makes are not necessarily those of a good Victorian. Dickens' skill lies in showing the circumstances which lead Pip to make the decisions that he does.
The other famous image is of course Miss Havisham in her faded bridal gown, to whom Pip is introduced by the unctuous Mr Pumblechook. She would, I suppose, have to be classed as one of Dickens' grotesque caricatures, but her behaviour feels extreme but right given her backstory and the absence of psychotherapy in Victorian England, and she has a direct effect on the plot in her influence over her niece (and Pip's love interest) Estelle.
Like Pip, Estelle is a flawed Dickensian child character, and her snootiness is one of the goads that drive the second volume, as Pip acquires an allowance from a mysterious benefactor and abandons his loving but illiterate stepfather to become a gentleman in London. This is the weakest section, with more of the digressions and whimsical colour for which Dickens is noted. There is an implausibly nice student, Herbert Pocket, and the only truly sentimental character in the book, Mr Wemmick's deaf Aged Parent. Anyone who has lived with a deaf or even partially deaf relative will know that it is more frustrating than funny and the humour seems out of place.
But the Aged Parent's presence can be justified as part of a recurring motif in the book, which is positive father-figure relationships. Wemmick's relationship with his father reflects Pip's with Joe, and, to a lesser extent, with the forbidding lawyer Mr. Jaggers (whose demolition of an opinionated pub boor is a brilliant introduction to his character and a lesson to anyone who has presumed to second-guess a judge or jury on the basis of newspaper reports). By contrast, the female relationships are almost entirely dysfunctional - Pip's and Joe's with Mrs Gargery, Miss Havisham's with Estelle and with the rest of the world, Estelle's with Pip. This may of course be down to simple mysogyny - though there are several strong female characters in Dickens' works and even a view-point character (Esther Summerson in Bleak House), there is little sign in either his writing or his private life of deep psychological understanding of or sympathy with them - but the pattern is so striking that I can't help thinking that it was entirely intentional. I am pretty certain that Dickens was satirising and subverting contemporary views of gender roles by suggesting that men can display "feminine" qualities of affection and support and that this is a good thing.
This would fit with some of the other subversive themes. The entire story is a cautionary tale about the dangers of unearned wealth on the formation of moral character. It could be read as an attack on the hereditary principles of the aristocracy and the monarchy, but Dickens makes clear that it applies just as much to the "new money" of the up-and-coming commercial barons of the mid-Victorian period. All unearned wealth is a bad idea, says Dickens, because it gives people a sense of importance that bears no relation to their actual worth or usefulness. Given the recent evidence of the corrupting effects of vast salaries on the behaviour of bankers, he has a point.
The pace picks up in the third section of the book, and, despite an unnecessary melodramatic set-piece in which a minor character suddenly becomes a pantomime villain for no good reason, comes to a satisfactory and surprisingly ambiguous ending. The thoughtfulness and subtlety evidenced in Pip 's development is rare in Dickens and makes this novel, to my mind, his masterpiece. Even if you have hated every other Dickens you have ever tried to read, this one really is worth a go.
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - Oxford University Press, 2008
* * * * *
Truth be told, Dickens is not as great a writer as some critics and literary academics have made him out to be. He has an eye for character and a way with words, but his novels can be preachy, digressive and appallingly sentimental, with viewpoint characters who are thin moral ciphers rather than real people (exhibit A: The Old Curiosity Shop). These weaknesses, especially if encountered in an uninspiring educational context, must have created a legion of the Dickens-phobic, and it is possible that you, dear reader, are one of them. In which case, this review is for you.
Firstly it is important to acknowledge that your antipathy is not at all unreasonable (or unusual: a google for "I hate Dickens" returns 352,000 results). If you are intolerant of emotionalism or implausible characterisation, Dickens is always going to be a hard sell, and I am certainly not going to argue that Great Expectations is free from them. But it has a focused three-act plot structure, a flawed and therefore interesting hero, and things to say about betrayal, revenge, class, the corrupting effects of unearned rewards and the well-springs of character. So it might be worth a few hours of your time.
We first encounter Philip Pirritt (Pip) in the famous terrifying scene with the escaped prisoner Magwitch in the churchyard, the first of two haunting images from the book. Pip's acquiescence to the convict's demands may seem implausible until you learn that he is an orphan under the thumb of his bullying sister Mrs Gargery, who has taught him the hard way that obedience is the only escape from punishment. Of course, to obey the convict means to disobey Mrs Gargery and effectively betray her nice-but-dim husband Joe, and this is the first of many moral dilemmas that Pip faces. But unlike most of Dickens' other viewpoint characters, the choices he makes are not necessarily those of a good Victorian. Dickens' skill lies in showing the circumstances which lead Pip to make the decisions that he does.
The other famous image is of course Miss Havisham in her faded bridal gown, to whom Pip is introduced by the unctuous Mr Pumblechook. She would, I suppose, have to be classed as one of Dickens' grotesque caricatures, but her behaviour feels extreme but right given her backstory and the absence of psychotherapy in Victorian England, and she has a direct effect on the plot in her influence over her niece (and Pip's love interest) Estelle.
Like Pip, Estelle is a flawed Dickensian child character, and her snootiness is one of the goads that drive the second volume, as Pip acquires an allowance from a mysterious benefactor and abandons his loving but illiterate stepfather to become a gentleman in London. This is the weakest section, with more of the digressions and whimsical colour for which Dickens is noted. There is an implausibly nice student, Herbert Pocket, and the only truly sentimental character in the book, Mr Wemmick's deaf Aged Parent. Anyone who has lived with a deaf or even partially deaf relative will know that it is more frustrating than funny and the humour seems out of place.
But the Aged Parent's presence can be justified as part of a recurring motif in the book, which is positive father-figure relationships. Wemmick's relationship with his father reflects Pip's with Joe, and, to a lesser extent, with the forbidding lawyer Mr. Jaggers (whose demolition of an opinionated pub boor is a brilliant introduction to his character and a lesson to anyone who has presumed to second-guess a judge or jury on the basis of newspaper reports). By contrast, the female relationships are almost entirely dysfunctional - Pip's and Joe's with Mrs Gargery, Miss Havisham's with Estelle and with the rest of the world, Estelle's with Pip. This may of course be down to simple mysogyny - though there are several strong female characters in Dickens' works and even a view-point character (Esther Summerson in Bleak House), there is little sign in either his writing or his private life of deep psychological understanding of or sympathy with them - but the pattern is so striking that I can't help thinking that it was entirely intentional. I am pretty certain that Dickens was satirising and subverting contemporary views of gender roles by suggesting that men can display "feminine" qualities of affection and support and that this is a good thing.
This would fit with some of the other subversive themes. The entire story is a cautionary tale about the dangers of unearned wealth on the formation of moral character. It could be read as an attack on the hereditary principles of the aristocracy and the monarchy, but Dickens makes clear that it applies just as much to the "new money" of the up-and-coming commercial barons of the mid-Victorian period. All unearned wealth is a bad idea, says Dickens, because it gives people a sense of importance that bears no relation to their actual worth or usefulness. Given the recent evidence of the corrupting effects of vast salaries on the behaviour of bankers, he has a point.
The pace picks up in the third section of the book, and, despite an unnecessary melodramatic set-piece in which a minor character suddenly becomes a pantomime villain for no good reason, comes to a satisfactory and surprisingly ambiguous ending. The thoughtfulness and subtlety evidenced in Pip 's development is rare in Dickens and makes this novel, to my mind, his masterpiece. Even if you have hated every other Dickens you have ever tried to read, this one really is worth a go.