Great Expectations

Charles Dickens
英语1班
姜鸿英
 brief introduction
 Charles Dickens
 (1812-1870)
 Novelist
 Notable work(s)
 1 Oliver Twist,
 2 A Christmas Carol,
 3 A Tale of Two Cities,
 4 David Copperfield
 5 Great Expectations
 He is one of the most popular English
novelists of the Victorian era, as well as a
vigorous social campaigner.（积极的社会活动家）
 Writting Style
 unique, clever personalities,a mixture of
fantasy and realism.
brief introduction of his early life
 His family's early
moderate wealth provided
the boy Dickens with
some private education.his
early years seem to have
been an idyllic（田园）
time,and,he reads lots of
books.
 his father was imprisoned
when he was 12-year-
old .Then his extremely
poignant childhood began.
 influence to his life
 He talked, later in life, of his extremely
poignant memories of childhood, and of his
continuing photographic memory of the
people and events that helped to bring his
fiction to life.
 In the book,many of
events from Dickens's
early life are mirrored
in this book.sort of his
autobiographical novel.
 backgrond
 the book is set in early Victorian *England,a
time when great social changes sweeping
the nation .Although social class was no
longer entirely dependent on the
circumstance of one's birth ,the divisions
between rich and poor remained nearly as
wide as ever.
 main characters
 Pip: the protagonist (主人公）and
narrotor .he is
passionate ,romantic,somewhat
unrealistic at heart
 Estella:Miss Havisham's beautiful young
ward.Pip's unttainable dream .she is
cold,cruel ,and uninterested in him.
 Miss Havisham:a wealthy ,eccentric old
woman .
 Abel Magwitch(the convict):a fearsome
criminal ,elevates Pip into a higher class.
 Joe Cargery :Pip's brother-in-law,the
blacksmith.a quiet man.
 Jaggers:a powerful foreboding lawyer hired
by Magwitch.he is privy to some dirty
bussiness.
 main plot

 young orphan Pip,living with his sister and

brother-in-law,meet a convict.one day he
goes to Miss Havisham's house and meets
Estalla ,he fells in love with her ,but Estalla
rejects him.With Miss Havisham's
guidance,Pip apprenticed to his brother-in-
law ,he works very unhappily. A lawyer
named Jaggers appears with news:a secret
man gives Pip a large amount of money ,Pip
must go to London to begin his education as
a gentleman.He meets Herbert.But soon Pip
leads a fairly undiciplined life.
 He also knows it is the convict who gives
his the money.Pip is shocked,and helps Abel
Magwitch to escape .Before Abel Magwitch 's
escape,Estalla marries an upper class
man .He pays a visit to Miss Havisham's
house, Miss Havisham begs his forgivness
for the way she treats him.And he forgives
her.Just before the escape ,Pip is called by a
shadowy meeting in the marshes,where he
encounters the evil Orick
 Herbert helps him,and,
 Abel Magwitch is
found by police and
sentenced to prison.
 at last ,Pip and Estalla
get merried.
 themes
 love loyalty and conscience.
 they are more important than social
advancement ,weath ,class.
 social and educational improvment are
irrelevant to one's real worth.
analyse of the main charecters
 Pip is he is passionate ,romantic,somewhat
unrealistic at heart,a very generous and
sympathetic man.Pip's main line of
development is may be seen as the process
of learning to place his innate sense of
kindness and conscience above his
immature idealiam.
 Estella is ofen cited as Dickens's first
convicing character,a supremely ironic
creation .Life among the upper classes does
not represent salvation ,instead ,she is
victimized by her adopted class .The auther
uses her life to tell us :one's happiness and
well-being are not deeply connected with
one's social position.
 Miss Havisham,both she and people in her
life suffer greatly because of her reveng.But
in the end she realizes her fault ,rather than
achieving any kind of reveng,she has only
cause more pains. She begs Pip's forgivness
for the way she treats him.This reinforcing
the novel's theme that bad behevior can be
redeemed by contrition and sympathy.
 About the Ending
 the ending of the book is controversial
 The original ending；
 After Estella's husband died ,Estella marries a
doctor , Pip and Estella does not get married.
 The later ending：
 Pip and Estella get married.
 some critics has found that the original ending is
more true to the tone of the book,that the process
of Pip 's redemtation is exactaly the process that
would make his continued love for Estella is
impossible.
 Others think that original ending is too
harsh, that the common past has destined
Pip and Estella for one and another.
 WHICH DO YOU THINK IS BETTER?