5909_TXT.indd vi
Introduction Two children who have never met before are told to play together in a house full of dust and shadows. They are watched over by a spectral, skeletal figure in a decaying bridal dress, now tattered and yellow with age. The girl asks the boy what card game he can play. ‘Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss,’ he replies. And so they play. ‘Beggar him,’ commands the spectral bride. There can have been few less promising starts to a romantic relationship in all of literature. Yet the meeting between the poor ‘labouring-boy’ Pip and the beautiful but remote Estella, the adopted child of wealthy Miss Havisham, remains one of the most captivating episodes in Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel Great Expectations. Is the card game the children choose to play significant? Perhaps. In many ways it is the winner-takes-all game of ‘beggar my neighbour’ that gives us the best clue to understanding one of Dickens’s most popular and most thoughtful late novels. In Great Expectations gains are made, but they always come at a price. When one character wins, or realises their ‘expectations’, another must lose. And, of course, the paradoxical image of two children playing in the ruins tell us that this twisted fairy tale of a novel will be much more than a rags-to-riches story. Oddly, Dickens’s original ‘notion’ for his novel was that it would be ‘very funny’ and ‘exceedingly droll’, and its famous opening – where a frightened orphan Pip meets the escaped convict Magwitch in the graveyard – was conceived by him as a grotesque-comic encounter to delight his loyal readers.1 Dickens therefore contrasts Magwitch’s violently aggressive ‘tilting’ of poor Pip’s body and his threat to have his ‘heart and liver out’ with Pip’s comically polite request to ‘kindly please’ vi
19/11/2018 16:39
5909_TXT.indd vii
INTRODUCTION
keep him upright otherwise he’ll be sick. This memorable passage remained one of Dickens’s favourites to perform when he gave dramatic readings from his works. But although there are comic characters and elements in Great Expectations, the novel often develops along darker, deeper lines, many of which reflect the writer’s more serious concerns in the 1860s. And, like mist on the bleak marshes where Pip and Magwitch meet, these concerns often rise to shadow Pip’s story.
Contexts By the time Dickens came to write Great Expectations in 1860, he was at the height of his powers. He had already published a dozen novels, numerous articles and stories – many in his own weekly magazines – and established his Christmas Books series with the fantastic success of A Christmas Carol, published in 1843. Yet in 1860 this celebrated journalist, writer and performer needed another sure-fire hit – and quickly. His new magazine All the Year Round was losing readers and money, so Dickens decided to use his latest novel as the lead serial to win them back. Starting in December 1860, for just two pence a week, readers were offered the story of Pip’s ‘great expectations’ – his hopes and his regrets – in 36 irresistible parts. Dickens lured them back and All the Year Round was saved. The success of Great Expectations depended on Dickens’s ability to give his public what it wanted. He therefore returned to a formula that, in 1850, had generated one of his biggest hits, David Copperfield. This formula offered a captivating story with memorable comic characters and a first-person narrator who readers could grow to love. But, as ever, Dickens gave his readers so much more than this. He was, after all, a campaigning journalist trained on the Morning Chronicle (a daily newspaper known for its hard-hitting coverage of urban poverty, education and political issues), so it is no surprise vii
19/11/2018 16:39
5909_TXT.indd viii
INTRODUCTION
that Great Expectations asks some difficult questions of its readers and of Victorian society in general. How should you punish criminals? Is there a moral cost to great wealth? Is country life better than city life? Can you ever really change social class? What is real love? Who is your real family? With the last question, it could be said that Dickens presents a very modern view of different forms of families – extended families, adoptive or surrogate parents, friends, even kind strangers – and how they shape us.2
Crime and punishment Great Expectations reflects many of the fierce debates and campaigns about prison life, transportation and the use of the death penalty that raged in the decades leading up to 1860 and which would have been very familiar to Dickens’s readers. The events of the novel, however, run from around 1810 to 1840 and recount the horrors of an earlier criminal justice system that, astonishingly, had once been even more arbitrary and brutal. In the opening of the novel we are introduced to Magwitch, who has escaped from a prison ‘hulk’: an ex-warship used as temporary floating prison to deal with overcrowding in gaols. Conditions in the hulks were appalling: disease was rife and one-in-ten prisoners died while held there. Prisoners, some as young as eight years old, were kept in ‘irons’ or chains while on ship and forced to do hard labour in the fields or on roads each day. If they survived their ordeal on the hulks, prisoners were then placed on convict ships and transported 16,000 miles away by sea to what was then the furthest colony of the British Empire – Australia, where they lived and laboured, many never to return. For serious offenders the alternative to lifelong ‘transportation’ was worse: death by public hanging. Dickens was a long-time campaigner against public executions and, in 1849, he wrote an impassioned letter to The Times viii
19/11/2018 16:39
5909_TXT.indd 1
CHAPTER 1 My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister – Mrs Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, ‘Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,’ I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine – who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle – I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence. Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; 1
19/11/2018 16:39
5909_TXT.indd 2
CHARLES DICKENS
and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip. ‘Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. ‘Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’ A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin. ‘O! Don’t cut my throat, sir,’ I pleaded in terror. ‘Pray don’t do it, sir.’ ‘Tell us your name!’ said the man. ‘Quick!’ ‘Pip, sir.’ ‘Once more,’ said the man, staring at me. ‘Give it mouth!’ ‘Pip. Pip, sir!’ ‘Show us where you live,’ said the man. ‘Pint out the place!’ I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church. The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me 2
19/11/2018 16:39
5909_TXT.indd 3
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
upside-down and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself – for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet – when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously. ‘You young dog,’ said the man, licking his lips, ‘what fat cheeks you ha’ got.’ I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong. ‘Darn Me if I couldn’t eat ’em,’ said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, ‘and if I han’t half a mind to’t!’ I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying. ‘Now then, lookee here!’ said the man. ‘Where’s your mother?’ ‘There, sir!’ said I. He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder. ‘There, sir!’ I timidly explained. ‘Also Georgiana. That’s my mother.’ ‘Oh!’ said he, coming back. ‘And is that your father alonger your mother?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said I, ‘him too; late of this parish.’ ‘Ha!’ he muttered then, considering. ‘Who d’ye live with – supposin’ you’re kindly let to live, which I han’t made up my mind about?’ ‘My sister, sir – Mrs Joe Gargery – wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir.’ ‘Blacksmith, eh?’ said he. And looked down at his leg. 3
19/11/2018 16:39
5909_TXT.indd 595
Glossary Chapter 1 1
blacksmith: a person who makes and repairs iron objects such as horseshoes
1
lozenges: elongated rectangular tombstones with curved edges which, from Pip’s description, appear like little stone bodies arranged around the parents’ grave
2
late of this parish: once a resident of this ‘parish’ area – a small rural district with its own church
2
dykes: walls built to prevent flooding in low-lying areas
2
great iron on his leg: a metal leg chain used to prevent a prisoner from escaping
2
‘Pint out the place!’: Point out the place (to me). The convict’s dialect is characterised by Dickens with missed letters, often marked with apostrophes and non-standard pronunciation. This brings out the comic contrast between Pip and the stranger and emphasises the convict’s low status and possibly dangerous character.
2
pollards: trees whose branches have been cut right back to the trunk to encourage growth
4
weather-cock: a revolving arrow placed underneath the shape of a cockerel, used to tell the wind direction
4
wittles: dialect word for victuals (food supplies). Dickens has the escaped prisoner pronounce ‘v’ as ‘w’; this heightens the comic effect and contrast again, but it was also once a common feature of East London or Cockney dialect.
4
old Battery: a disused military site, once used by soldiers to defend the River Thames
5
in wain: ‘in vain’ or hopeless, pointless – another dialect pronunciation
6
gibbet: a wooden frame used for the execution of criminals by hanging
595
19/11/2018 16:40
5909_TXT.indd 596
GLOSSARY
Chapter 2 7
flaxen: very fair, or blond, like the golden colour of flax, a grass-like food crop
7
Hercules: a Roman god and hero famous for his physical strength
7
nutmeg-grater: a metal cylinder with raised holes used to grate hard, round nutmeg seeds to create a powdered spice used in cooking; in other words, her face looks very rough
8
baker’s dozen: a dozen plus one (13)
8
Dutch clock: a cheap wooden clock
8
jack-towel: towel kept on a fixed roller
8
connubial: marital, related to marriage. Pip is here thrown like a ‘missile’ from wife to husband
9
larceny: theft
10
apothecary: chemist
10
plaister: poultice or wet bandage applied to painful or swollen injuries
12
stuck pig: a butchered pig with its throat cut
12
Tar-water: foul-tasting herbal medicine made from pine tree extract and water which, as its name suggests, smells exactly like ‘tar’ used to paint fences
12
boot-jack: device that held the heel of a shoe to help when pulling it off
13
imbruing: staining (with blood)
13
garret: attic
14
Hulks: ex-navy ships moored in the Thames estuary and used as temporary prison-ships for convicts awaiting transportation to the British colony of Australia
16
speaking-trumpet: a trumpet-shaped instrument used to make the voice carry further or for speaking to someone who is hard of hearing
16
pantry: a small store room where food was kept
16
flint and steel: the friction between the flint (a shiny stone) and steel (metal) would create sparks to light a fire
596
19/11/2018 16:40
5909_TXT.indd 597
GLOSSARY
16
Spanish liquorice-water: a sweet, non-alcoholic drink made from liquorice root (commonly imported from Spain) soaked in water
Chapter 3 18
cravat: a small scarf worn round the neck instead of a tie
19
’prentice to him regularly bound: Apprenticeships were a common way of training young boys in certain skilled trades. Boys, who were usually about 12 (but could be younger), were ‘bound’ to a master for seven years in return for a sum of money. Apprenticeships were arranged with legal documents – indentures – that also had to be signed by a legal representative.
20
ague: fever
21
warmint: a slang term for vermin, mischievous child or rogue, with dialect pronunciation of ‘v’ and ‘w’
23
fetter: a prisoner’s chain, usually around the legs or ankles
Chapter 4 25
mince-pie: In the Victorian period, this sweet pie with dried fruit also contained minced beef and beef fat.
25
cramming and busting: slang at the time for eating greedily and excessively
26
Accoucheur Policeman: Accoucheur means male midwife. Dickens combines two very different job titles of midwife and policeman in this phrase, to show that Pip’s sister thought Pip was born a criminal type and would always need to be punished.
26
Reformatory: an institution for the punishment of young or juvenile criminals
26
banns: public notices that announce a marriage
26
wheelwright: someone who repairs or makes wooden wheels
26
corn-chandler: a person who sells grain such as corn, wheat, and so on
597
19/11/2018 16:40