2.3.1 Author and His Life
Charles Dickens was born at Portsmouth, Hampshire in 1812 and was the second child of John Dickens, a clerk in the Naval Pay Office. It was the time of the New Industrial Age which gave birth to massive political, social upheavals in the society. Dickens’s family later moved to London in 1814 and then to Chatham where Charles started school and received his basic education. Dickens expereniced hardships in life as a young boy as his father was crushed by debts and financial difficulties. Due to increasing economic hardships in 1824 at the age of 12, he was sent to work in a Blacking factory at Hungerford Market, London. His father was imprisoned in Marshalsea foe debts. Most of Charles Dickens’s works reflect this deep rooted disturbed childhood, and makes him attack vigorously the social evils, injustice and hypocricy that he experienced at first hand.
In 1827, at the age of 15 Dickens had completed his studies at Wellington House Academy London. Then he learnt shorthand and took to journalism. He started as a freelance reporter; this experience enabled him to grow as a writer.
His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833, when his short stories and essays were published for public reading. He started his long writing career with ‘Pickwick Papers’ in 1837. By 1847 Charles Dickens wrote four successful novels, including Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge. After completing Dombey and Son, he turned to his own childhood in search of plot lines. David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times and Little Dorrit are drawn from his own experience and reflections approach to issues like social injustice, administrative inefficiency and violence in society.
Dickens’s last three novels, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend are mature novels with great depth of vision and evocative Language.
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2.3.2 Dickens and his Time
A better understanding of a writer is always achieved through a knowledge of the relevant time. Dickens was highly influenced by his personal experiences; his works reflect the ways in which his private crisis sharpened by his sensitivity this work also reflects his role as a social novelist- the moral values , of the society and the challenges in a changing society.
England was the first industrialised country in the world and the first nation to have more industrial workers than in agriculture. Victorian England with its empire took a different shape in every aspect. From the later part of the 18th C to the end of 19th C, England was subjected to massive social, economic and political changes due to the effects of the industrial revolution. With the rise of capitalism, many enterprising individuals rose from humble origins to positions of wealth and influence. Exploitation of man, labour and oppression became the key evils. People from the working class, from the rural areas were forced to come to overcrowded cities. Slums were born the dominant economic doctrine of the time was Free Trade and laissez faire. A few rich and wealthy industrialists had the monopoly and they ruled by forcing the government to be inactive by intervening the natural process of commerce and industry. This massive industrial prosperity had know eyes for the poverty and injustice faced by the working class. Trade unions began as a reaction. The works of Charles Dickens awakened the sleeping public conscience to respond to these evils. His sense of eagerness to see a better England made him a social reformer. As he was a spokesman for his own time he yearned for a change in the Victorian attitudes and institutions. He sought more humane attitudes that would create better human conditions and living environment for the people, he represented.
Genre
• Stylistic Construction.
Great Expectations is autobiographical in style, although the voice of the author can be heard well it is the story of Pip, writing his life from his early days of childhood until adulthood and aspiring to be a gentleman along the way.
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• Point of View
Voice- First Person Narration.
• Structure
Style- Descriptive and Narrative Approach. Sequential
Setting –between city, town and country life.
2.3.3
The Setting of Great Expectations
The action of the main story line takes place from Christmas Eve 1812, when the protagonist s about 07 years old to the winter of 1840. The story is placed in Kent. Pip’s Village is situated roughly on the flat land between the Thames Estuary and the mouth of the river Medway. This was the time when prisoners were taken to Australia. The Hulks were old ships which were used as temporary prison cells for criminals who awaited their exile to Australia. This practice was abolished in 1852.
Great Expectations was written by Charles Dickens to overcome financial difficulties. He was at the time serializing the works of other writers. The periodical “All the year Round” was falling in popularity. He decided to serialise his own work instead of the works of the other writers, and stated ‘Great Expectations’ which appeared in weekly installments on the front page of “All the Year Round” from December 1860 to June 1861.
Dickens revised the original ending he gave to Great Expectations. In his original script he made Pip and Estella meet by chance in a London Street where they greet each other and go their separate ways.
Later this pessimistic end was changed and the reader was allowed to go for an optimistic ending.
2.3.4 Plot
Can be divided into 3 phases.
•Pip’s childhood in Kent
Pip’s dissatisfaction with his own upbringing, background and social status and his sense of loneliness.
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His first encounter or the first contact with the “socially superior” world and with the underworld, the world of criminals. Foundation for reflection which is morally superior / inferior.
•Pip’s life in London
His attempts at climbing the social ladder, desire to be a gentleman. Completely rejects himself from his humble origins.
Responds to class distinction and gives it excessive significance.
Struggles with the memories of the past and associations with the criminals
•Pip’s attempts to save Magwitch and to win the love of Estella.
The two opposing worlds are brought together- the social status/ class distinction and the criminal underworld.
All three phases respond to the moral education of Pip. A sense of value forgiveness and humanity are awakened in Pip.
Charles Dickens’s tight plot line exploits a realistic world where social classes are intertwined in a web of dramatic coincidences.
Plot consists of mystery and an inverted fairytale.
Every episode carries a sense of mystery and grate expectation