by Charles Dickens
STUDY GUIDE
Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations is your set text for GCSE English Literature. You will need to read the complete text before you start the course in September. This guide is designed to help you to enjoy the story. We hope you liked our assembly and are now ready to get to know the full story.
The novel was published between 1860 and 1861. However, it was not published as an entire novel in the first instance, instead, Dickens published it in instalments in a magazine. When you read it, you will notice that quite often Dickens ends a section on a cliff-hanger – this is probably where a particular instalment finished and was designed to make sure the reader buys the next instalment. This method of storytelling is just the same as the one used by modern writers of soap operas – they end an episode on a particularly exciting bit to make sure we watch next time!
So that you can get into reading the novel, we are going to email you the instalments every week to your school email, this way you can read it in the same way as it was read by its first readers in the nineteenth century.
We will use the school email, here are the key dates: Chapters 1-9 today! Chapters 9-15 Tuesday 21st April Chapters 16-21 Friday 1st May Chapters 22-29 Friday 8th May Chapters 30-37 Friday 15th May Chapters 38-42 Friday 22nd May Chapters 43-52 Friday 12th June Chapters 53-57 Friday 19th June Chapters 58-59 Friday 26th June
If you find the reading difficult, here are some tips:
Find yourself a summary of the story – try not to read too far ahead, you don’t want to spoil it, but it might help!
Watch a film or TV version of the book – this will help you to picture the action and the characters in your head.
Download an audio version – you will be able to find these on Youtube or itunes – and should be able to get it for free. Download it onto your phone or ipod and listen at your leisure!
Have a look on Youtube – there are lots of really great resources to help you to understand the novel and find out something about Charles Dickens too!
Discuss the book with friends and family – get everyone reading it and see who can guess what’s going to happen next!
Charles Dickens had a really interesting life. He was born in 1812 and although he did start going to school, he soon had to leave and work in a factory because his father was thrown into a debtors’ prison (a prison for people who got into debt because they owed other people so much money). As such, he was very street wise and was very used to going in and out of prisons and meeting all kinds of people. Despite not having very much formal education at all, he wrote fifteen novels, five short novels (novellas) and lots and lots of short stories. He also wrote articles and gave lectures and dramatic readings of his work. He was an international celebrity and really successful. Dickens is known for his fantastic characters – he depicted all kinds of different characters in wonderful detail and was fascinated by people from all works of life from the very rich to the very poor. His characters were often very humorous and they give us an excellent picture of what Victorian society was like. Dickens also campaigned for children’s rights and other social reforms. He was very aware of the awful circumstances many people lived in in both the towns and the countryside and tried to raise awareness of this with the government.
The leader of Fagin’s gang of kid criminals, the Artful Dodger is an entertaining figure, who is “as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see” but with “all the airs and manners of a man.” All decked out in clothes much too large for him — not to mention that huge fantastic hat — “He was, altogether, as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or something less, in the bluchers.” From the novel, OLIVER TWIST
Ebenezer Scrooge - even at the beginning of the novel, there’s something lovably crotchety about Scrooge, and if your heart isn’t warmed by watching his grow, well, we think you might just have some visitors this Christmas. From the novel, A CHRISTMAS CAROL
The wrathful, ghostlike Miss Havisham was abandoned twenty minutes before her wedding by a man who was only after her money, Miss Havisham had all the clocks stopped at the moment she learned of her betrayal, and continued living in her wedding dress, with only one shoe on. She adopts Estella and raises her to be cruel and heartless — at first in a genuine effort to save the girl from her own fate, and then as a sort of vicarious revenge. From the novel, GREAT EXPECTATIONS