Download And Enjoy Great Expectations Illustrated By Charles Dickens Shared As Audiobook
was really mad when I finished this book last night, I have to say I enjoyed this much more than the other Dickens' books I've read which is funny because someone told me it was written for kids so I should read it because I would like it better probably and I did.
It just felt too long and I kind of saw the twist of who was Pip's benefactor coming but at the same time I think the way everything is told and developed is really good.
I think I mostly felt it was long because I had to read slower than I would have otherwise because the writing was more complex and I wanted to make sure I was understanding what was happening and fully understanding each sentence.
I think the last sentence or two of this book was really beautiful and so well written but it made me really mad to have it end that way despite the fact that it was a really good ending because it was ambiguous.
I know it seems like no matter what happens with a book I complain and I think that's just my disposition as a person.
Most of the characters were so unlikable though, especially Pip, so many times through out the book I wanted to throttle him.
Anyway definitely the best Dickens book I've read thus far, and I would say this ones a,from me, it be higher but reading it felt slow and like I had to trudge through it at multiple points.
“You are in every line I have ever read, ”
Why couldn't every line in this book be this good I took me nearly three whole months to finish it.
Not because it was bad, but because it dragged and dragged and there are far more intriguing books out there than Great Expectations.
The good stuff:
An exciting cast of characters, most of them very weird, extravagant and almost to completely ridiculous.
By far my favourites are Joe because he's such a goodhearted person and Miss Havisham because I totally look up to her dedication to melodrama.
What also got me hooked were the huge revelations in this book, There were a few things that I did not see coming,
The bad stuff:
Too many words, too many pages, I was completely demotivated to ever finish this, which is why I made myself write a term paper about it so that I would actually pick it up again and read all of it.
I worked.
Honestly, though, this book was originally published in a Victorian Periodical, Imagine watching your favourite TV Show and waiting for a new episode every week, Well, it was like that with this novel, It was published in several instalments, The readers needed to be entertained enough so that they would buy next weeks magazine copy, This also means that Charles Dickens needed to fill the pages every week so that the readers got what they paid for.
And I'm afraid it also reads like that, If this novel waspages shorter, I might have enjoyed it more, There was so much going on that I didn't care about, so many details that could have been omitted,
Overall a fine classic and a wellplotted story that bored me with its obsession for things unimportant, I can't wait to watch the adoption with Helena Bonham Carter, though!
sitelinkFind more of my books on Instagram Oh, the beauty and the agony tears at me as I think about this stunning story.
The characters are vivid and the settings so well written that I was transported to the graveyard alongside young Pip and his convict, fear streaking through me as it was for that small boy torn by a nearimpossible decision.
And Im there with Pip and kindhearted Joe in the forge, I can feel the fire on my skin and taste hot metal on the back of my tongue, In my mind, I hear the crackling of the decadesold crinoline of Miss Havishams skirts rustling against the marble floors of the mausoleum she calls home.
Amid the stopping of Miss Havishams clock, the cool radiance that is Estella vibrates from the pages, bringing her to life.
If you havent read Great Expectations, I encourage you to do so, Yes, it was first published in, and the syntax is more eloquent than that weve become accustomed to, but once this tale grabs hold, you will forget the language and year it was written and be all in with these new friends.
The love, the heartbreak and the lessons still hold true today, Some choices, once made, can leave longreaching scars on the hearts of those we never knew we touched, A good deed can ripple through time to places never imagined, The consequences of our actions must be accounted for, and there will always be outcomes we could never have anticipated.
Great Expectations is the real deal! The deliciouslysatisfying prose is the whipped cream on the proverbial sundae that is Dickens.
The plot and subplots and subsubplots are astounding! The way he can weave this tangled web yet keep the interest of the reader while giving nothing away until the perfect moment and BAM! He has you, and you sigh with the perfection of it all.
Youve missed a gorgeous piece of literature if you dont dive into this book! Great Expectations.
What a superb title this is wonderful, in the best and truest sense of the word, It is upbeat, exciting, and full of intrigue, It quickens our pulse and gives us a little thrilling frisson, Who is it, who has these “Great Expectations” We want to meet them, We want to share their anticipations and their pleasure, We are hooked into the story by these first two words,
Perhaps most significant of all is that it is a short, memorable title, Great Expectations is one of Charles Dickenss latest novels, his thirteenth in fact, serialised weekly, in his newspaper “All the Year Round” in nine monthly sections between Decemberand August.
It was also serialised in the US oddly a few days before and on the continent, Then Dickenss publishers, Chapman and Hall, published the first edition in book form in three volumes in, with five subsequent reprints, and a onevolume edition in.
Sadly Dickens had quarrelled with his great friend and illustrator Hablot Knight Browne, “Phiz”, so there are none of his quirky and instantly recognisable illustrations.
The silver lining in this cloud is that there are a plethora of illustrations by other artists, both contemporaneous and later.
They vary from the absurd, clearly mimicking Phizs caricatures, to increasingly ghastly ghouls, and stuffed shirt heroes, Some are darkly effective, capturing the gothic mood, but others make the reader yearn for Phizs perception and insightful eye.
Dickens was only to write more novel, “Our Mutual Friend”, plus an unfinished one, aptly named “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” a mystery never to be solved, although plenty have tried.
By now Dickens was a master of his craft, He had abandoned the lengthy titles, which sometimes took up half a page and which are rarely used in full.
He had also learned, wisely, that his public liked optimism, Other short titles such as “Hard Times” and “Bleak House” had preceded this one, but they reek of Victorian deprivation and hardship.
They do not attract us in the same way, nor are they timeless in appeal, whereas the title Great Expectations could have been coined yesterday.
In other ways too this novel stands head and shoulders above some of the others which precede it.
Dickens always had an eye to his popularity, and whereas “Bleak House” may well be his greatest novel, it is not, and has never been, his most popular.
It is so weighty that it is in danger of toppling over, and many readers struggle with the complexity of it.
There are several interwoven plots, and although it contains some of his finest writing, Dickens makes few concessions to those who prefer one strong thread to follow.
Conversely Great Expectations has a streamlined plot which moves along at a good pace, We are mesmerised by the forceful characters, and crave desperately to unravel the mysteries, It could be argued that of Dickenss novels, Great Expectations makes the greatest use of plot, characterisation and style, sacrificing a little of the dense maze of “Bleak House”s annals for more urgency, a simpler story focus, and a strong sense of direction.
In Great Expectations Dickens returns to one of his favourite themes: the story of a young man, and how he grows and learns through his various experiences.
It is at heart a bildungsroman, or “coming of age” story, Some of the best loved novels by Dickens follow this format, for instance, “David Copperfield”, “Nicholas Nickleby” and most notably, the hugely popular ragstoriches story, “Oliver Twist”.
Yet the difference in execution between these two is startling,
“Oliver Twist” is recognisably an early work by Dickens and has all his idiosyncratic features, It has a myriad of cameos, both comic and grotesque, It has a strong social conscience, humour, and tragedy, But it also has all the faults of a young writer fully on display, It is overful of hyperbole, with a cardboard hero who is well nigh a saint, It is overwritten. We are shocked at the social conditions, but swayed by the pathos rather than by the authors writing skills, By the time of his autobiographical novel, “David Copperfield”, Dickens had honed his skills, In fact before embarking on Great Expectations he reread “David Copperfield”, fearing that he might unintentionally repeat himself.
With Great Expectations Dickens has reached his pinnacle, He has written a novel full of heartbreak and obsessions of various kinds, and the reader is putty in his hands.
He has learned to control his expostulations his declamatory outbursts, his overt theatricality, and therefore has written a much more gripping and persuasive novel.
This is a novel with everything you could want, There is adventure, excitement, horror and passion, There is madness and vast wealth beyond imagination, and a benefactor who is to remain mysterious until the denouement, There are vicious crimes, wifebeating and murders, duplicity and depravity, malicious cruelty, and characters crazed by love and obsession, There is humour, ridicule, absurdity and overwhelming sadness and grief, It is, in short, a perfect Dickens novel, It is a gothic masterpiece, You will thrill to the horrors of Satis House and its halfcrazed inhabitant, You will despair at the ineptitude of the hero, blinded by his passion for a young woman whose heart has been turned to stone.
You will cry for the nobility of the steadfast Joe, wanting nothing for himself only wanting to do what is right.
The central character is Pip, Philip Pirrip, plagued by his feelings of inferiority at his thick boots and coarse hands.
He desires wealth and status, and for some part of the novel it looks as if he might be groomed for this.
We do not have much compassion for Pip, He seems an insensitive, selfish and selfcentred brat of a boy, for more than half the novel, Once destined to become a gentleman, Pip becomes increasingly arrogant and embarrassed by what he sees as his humble origins and unforgivably casts off the man who had been his protector.
We wonder how he will ever become the Dickens hero we feel he must inevitably become, For Dickenss novels are not tragedies, although they have tragic elements among the mix, The deserving are usually rewarded in the end, and the cruel, wicked or manipulative characters usually suffer an ignominious fate.
Dickens liked to please his readers to make them feel life was as it should be, It reassured them that however messy their own lives were, things would work out alright for the heroic characters they had been reading about and championing in their newspapers, for over a year.
Is this then an exception Do we have a “bad boy” an antihero against the usual Dickens type The answer is no.
Dickens, once more, has used his skill and created a superb subtly layered novel, The novel is straightforward in its time frame, with events moving forward logically, except where there is some reported history which is usually crucial to move the story along, by one of the characters.
But in among the intrigue and the action, we hear the voices of three Pips, and occasionally an omniscient narrator and occasionally even Dickens himself, when he cannot resist giving an opinion or two, or poking fun at one of his creations.
Five voices Surely then, it must be hard to read And again, the answer is no.
It moves seamlessly between the voices, yet they add a richness and depth, We know that Pip is to become a deserving character an upright young man, And we know this because we see him there on the page, in every word that he narrates, We see the characters through his eyes, and we gain a full picture of them, We see the young boys impressions, doubts and fears the older boys vanity, shallow ambitions and intolerance, and we see the older, wiser Philip Pirrip, now grown into his full name and maturity, and reporting as truthfully as he can on the vagaries of his youth.
And the story he has to tell thrills us, Dickens himself referred to it as “a grotesque tragicomic conception”, It is unbelievably grotesque and riddled with gloom, full of coincidences, with highly exaggerated vivid characters, yet we believe every word, and are compelled to keep turning the page.
We soak up the darkly terrifying descriptions, and the ominous sense of place, We wonder surely these places could not exist, Nor the characters But yes, they could, and yes, sometimes they did,
Great Expectations begins in a churchyard where Pips family is buried, and where he is to have a devastating meeting with someone who strikes terror into his very soul.
The churchyard is based on a desolate church in the village of Cooling, lying out among the marshes seven miles from “Gads Hill”, Dickenss family home at that time.
He describes Cooling Castle ruins and the marshes evocatively, imbuing the narrative with dark foreboding and menace, The young Pip, visiting his familys graves, is very close to Dickenss heart, As a young child himself, between the ages ofand, he had lived in Chatham, and this is only a couple of miles away from Cooling.
In fact this is when he first admired “Gads Hill”, the house he was later to buy, These descriptions were all transcribed from memory complete with the young childs terror at the stark scene, the unforgiving bleak marshes, the sea, the swirling mists, wind and rain, the beacon of distant light, and the gibbet and chains.
These early scenes are very ghoulish, for instance as the stranger threatens to cut out Pips heart and liver, but they exemplify the morbid relish Dickens excels in.
They are a perfect example of black humour, because the events are described from a childs point of view, as he is almost petrified with fear.
Even the tombstones of Pips siblings, the “five little stone lozenges”, is a lighthearted reference to something common enough, but really full of pathos and tragedy.
Cooling churchyard actually contains not just five but thirteen child graves all together, from two families in the village who were related.
Perhaps Dickens unusually toned this down, for fear of scepticism on the part of his readers,
Pip is brought up by his termagant of a sister, full of bitterness and selfinflicted martyrdom, knocking her husband Joes head against the wall or banging Pips head like a tambourine with her thimble.
She is proud of having brought Pip up “by hand” such a sarcastic doubleedged phrase making copious use of “the Tickler” such a gentle name for something which was capable of inflicting a great deal of pain! The lively and caustic descriptions make us smile, although the smile may well be a rueful grimace.
Joe Gargerys forge, incidentally, where Pip lives with them both, really exists, It is located at Chalk village in Kent, Dickens and his wife Catherine had stayed there on their honeymoon in,
What about the historical facts are they accurate The answer is mostly, yes, although some dramatic license has been taken with the timing.
Convicts in Britain were not actually sent to America any more at the time of Great Expectations, It had stopped in, and after then they were sent to Australia, It is estimated that,criminals were transported to Australia betweenandand this isyears before this novel was published.
Transportation was abolished in, but was as the novel says, for life, If a convict ever returned to Britain, they were hanged by law, until, even though the original offences were sometimes quite minor by modern standards.
Dickens was also particular as to detail, There are two exciting and dramatic river scenes in the book, one at the beginning in the marshes, and an echo of it as the novel rushes headlong along the river to its climax.
Dickens wanted to ensure that his description of the course of the boat was authentic under these conditions, In order to make absolutely sure, and perhaps explore further possibilities, he hired a steamer for the day ofnd May.
The route was from Blackwall to Southend, Accompanying him on board were eight or nine friends, and also three or four members of his family, They all assumed Dickens was enjoying a relaxed summer day out, as he entertained them as usual, But in truth, his mind was working overtime, keenly observing and noticing every single detail, Nothing escaped his attention, as he made a mental note of what happened on each side of the river during the course of their journey.
The vast edifice, “Satis House”, home of the decrepit and griefstricken Miss Havisham, was based on “Restoration House” in Rochester, Kent.
Charles II had stayed there on his return to England in, restoring the English monarchy after Oliver Cromwell, Dickens turned it into a crumbling ruin, full of cobwebs and their menacing lurkers, rats and dust, The only light to be seen is Estella, the “star”, either as herself, or by the candle she bears amidst the gloom.
Yet even now you can visit “Restoration House” if you choose, and marvel at how it was transformed into a temple of filth, ruin and chaos, rotten with decay and perversion, an almost living presence, when the master magician Dickens wove his spell.
So we see chapter and verse about the places, They do exist, yet the view of them here is unique and powerful, seen through Dickenss eyes, We also know that he often liked to include people he knew in his novels, sometimes in homage, but with notorious or famous celebrities of his time, it was more often to poke fun at them.
Are there any such in Great Expectations, Certainly there are, yes. Just think of the most likely character, the most overthetop grotesque imaginable, Are you thinking of Miss Havisham, crazed by her grief and loss For, incredibly, she is based on a real person.
She is very probably based on Eliza Emily Donnithorne of Camperdown, Sydney, Australia, Miss Donnithorne was a recluse and an eccentric,
At the time of writing this novel, Dickens wastoyears of age, His domestic life was in tatters, as it had rapidly gone downhill in the lates, and he had now separated from his wife, Catherine.
He was having a secret affair with an actress, the much younger Ellen Ternan, who could well be the basis for the character of Estella.
During the writing of Great Expectations, Dickens went on tour, reading and acting out parts of his immensely popular novels.
In March and Aprilalone, he gave six public readings, More like performances, they were very successful in every way, but it took a terrible toll on his health,
There are so many ways of sharing reactions to this novel, I have just tried to give a few here, You will find unforgettable characters here, as in all Dickenss novels, You will laugh at Crabbs boys antics and Uncle Pumblechooks absurd pomposity, You will loathe the brutish bully, Bentley Drummle and the sly lazy Orlick, You will be in fear and awe of Abel Magwitch, and also, in a different way, of Mr Jaggers, the Old Bailey lawyer.
Clever and sharp, “putting a case” but never admitting anything, he
remains clinically dispassionate to the last, forever and literally, like Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of the dirty business he had to follow.
You may learn to love his clerk, the kindhearted Wemmick, with his “postbox” of a mouth, his insistence of the value of “portable property”, and keeping a nice distinction between home life and business life not to mention the “aged P”, nodding away enthusiastically.
Both of these provide some muchneeded light relief, in their fortified miniature haven, away from the throng and bustle of the avaricious, mercantile, heartless capital, with its filth, grime and squalor.
Wemmick says one may get “cheated, robbed, or murdered in London”,
Such affectionate portraits, these, There is Pips true friend, the “pale young gentleman” Herbert Pocket, and his hilariously feckless family loyal to a fault, but hopelessly impractical, and at a loss to organise their lives.
Herbert is so goodnatured the scenes where he demonstrates how to behave in polite society are a delight, Immediately saying that he and Pip are harmonious, he asks if he might call him Handel, because of the “charming piece of music, by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith”.
Herbert uses the words “dear” and “good” whenever he refers to Pip, and is genial, frank, friendly, and decent, which Pip has rarely seen.
Perhaps you will admire quiet Biddy and her simple wisdom, seeing far and away more than any other character, or sturdy Joe, the salt of the earth, who offered Pip unconditional love and friendship, and taught him lifes true values.
Perhaps you too will be besotted with haughty, beautiful Estelle, who unknown to both Pip and herself is equally a puppet, or cry at the hopelessness of Miss Havishams situation, driven halfmad by her obsession and surrounded by sycophantic relatives.
Whenever I see people refer to Dickenss simpering women, I think of the myriad of strong female characters such as she, or Pips demonic whirlwind of a sister, who was “always on the rampage”, or the venomously vindictive Madame Defarge from “A Tale of Two Cities”, or the duplicitous ladys maid Hortense in “Bleak House”, who was based on a real life murderess, or Nancy, the tragic prostitute in “Oliver Twist”.
And there are many, many more, Dickenss novels are packed with strong women, both good and bad, It is merely that Dickens conformed to the Victorian ideal of female goodness for his heroines, They were to be virtuous, competent, intelligent and compliant, and these are not seen as quite such admirable qualities in the present century.
No, Great Expectations is peopled with characters I am always sad to leave, as I turn the final page.
Each time I read it I feel despair, horror and joy in equal measure, and surprised in such a novel to find I burst out laughing at some ridiculous aside or eccentric cameo I had forgotten.
Each time I am completely taken up in the twists and turns one plot twist close to the end will take your breath away when you first learn it.
It feels so right, yet Dickens manages to conceal it all the way through, This is a novel where the intrigue is laced throughout, I defy you to guess the ending, should it not be already familiar to you,
Do you want a happy ending for young Pip He does have one, of sorts, But Dickens was still not satisfied that it was acceptable, after his friend, the novelist Edward BulwerLytton had said it was too sad, so he wrote an alternative couple of paragraphs at the end, slightly changing its course, and leaving it deliberately vague.
The original ending was not revealed until after his death, when his mentor and biographer John Forster wrote of it.
Many critics do prefer the original darker ending, as being more in keeping with the dark nature of the story.
Perhaps you may prefer the Victorian rewrite however, and to imagine a more upbeat and better future for our young hero.
Most editions print the original ending afterwards, so the choice is yours,
But please, if you have never read this novel, make sure you leave a place for it in your reading life.
I am sure you wont regret it,
“We are not free to follow our own devices, you and I, ”
“Wot larks Pip ol chap, wot larks!”,