The story of Miss Havisham. Great Expectations

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is the greatest English writer of the 19th century. The works of Charles Dickens have not lost their popularity in our time. But if in childhood our parents read his books "Oliver Twist" And "David Copperfield", then today film adaptations of the works of this writer are no less popular. So, not only children, but also adults watch Christmas based on “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. However, this article will focus on another famous work by Dickens, written by him at the peak of his fame. And it's so contradictory and multifaceted novel "Great Expectations".

Great Expectations is Charles Dickens' favorite novel. The success of the novel was obvious, Charles Dickens thought through everything to the smallest detail, he not only managed to make his novel interesting for everyone, but also accessible. After all, in the 19th century, few could afford to buy books; this required money, and most people lived on very little money. Then Dickens decided to publish his large novel in editions. The work was divided into 36 parts, and they were published every week. It would seem that one problem has been solved, but will people buy this novel? Will they follow the releases? To attract the attention of readers, and then maintain it, Dickens combined in one work different types of novel.

Types of novels in Charles Dickens's work "Great Expectations"

1. Gothic Novel

As you know, people have always been drawn to something mysterious, and Dickens decided to add mystery to his work by adding features of a Gothic novel. Thus, the novel begins with a scene in a cemetery, where a lonely boy wandered one evening.

Imagine, there is no one around. Only graves overgrown with nettles and dark crosses. A piercing wind is blowing, and all around, wherever you look, there is a swampy plain, along which, meandering, a gray river slowly creeps towards the sea. The boy finds his parents' grave and is plunged into memories. How suddenly...

2. Secular Novel - Silver Fork Novel

3. Social novel - The Social Purpose Novel

Among other things, this is also a social novel - a morally descriptive novel. Here the writer raises such serious problems that concern society, such as class inequality and child labor. In general, it should be noted that the topic of “child labor” is touched upon by the writer in many of his works, for example, “Oliver Twist”, “David Copperfield”. Perhaps because his own childhood was crippled by the lack of that same family well-being. Thanks to his extravagance, the father of the Dickens family (by the way, Charles Dickens was the second child in their large family) ended up in prison for debt. In order to somehow support the existence of the family, Charles's mother sent him to work in a factory. For a twelve-year-old fragile and creative child, working in a blacking factory became backbreaking work. But even after his father’s release from prison, the mother forced her son to continue working, for which the future writer was never able to forgive her. The writer’s childhood can hardly be called joyful; he had to grow up early, which is probably why in his works we so often see pictures of happy families, where children enjoy their youth without worrying about anything. Having matured, Dickens himself created the family that he could only dream of as a child. He, the head of a large family, was proud that he was able to support his family and not deny them anything. Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth had 10 children. There is an interesting article about Charles Dickens on this site —> http://www.liveinternet.ru/community/1726655/post106623836/ After all, this is exactly what he himself once lacked. It must be said that the family occupied a central place in Victorian society. A large family was considered an ideal family at that time. An example of such a family was King George's familyIII(Queen Victoria's grandfather).

4. Detective novel - Newgate Novel

The work also included a detective novel. The first scene in the novel begins with the appearance of escaped convicts, then this episode is gradually forgotten, but the writer never does anything for nothing and, as is customary, if in a story there is a gun hanging in a room, then it will definitely fire in the end. Gradually the plot becomes more and more intricate and, therefore, more and more interesting.

5. Love Novel

And finally, where would we be without a love story? Pip and Estella's love story is complicated by the fact that they are people of different social classes. While still a very young boy, Pip was brought to the house of the wealthy Miss Havisham. Then Pip's poor family thanked fate for the fact that their boy was placed in this house. However, everything was not as rosy as it seemed at first glance. Estella looked down on him, as Miss Havisham taught her, because she was to become a lady, while Pip was to become a blacksmith. This love story runs through the entire novel.

A few words about the main characters of the novel “Great Expectations” and their prototypes

First of all, let us recall some facts from, notable in that they largely overlap with the lives of the main characters of the novel. So, at the very beginning of the work, the author paints us a bleak picture of Pip’s childhood. The protagonist's older sister Pipa remains in place of his mother. She is very strict, if not harsh, with her nephew. Already knowing about the writer’s childhood, it’s easy to guess that its prototype is Dickens's mother.

In addition to the prototype of the mother, there is a hero whose features remind us writer's father. And this is the convict Abvil Magwitch, as we remember, my father was also in prison for debt. Abvil Magwitch fatherly follows the life of a boy completely alien to him, and throughout the novel helps him. The writer’s father would also be happy to help his son; he did not demand money from him, as his mother did, so the writer did not have the same hostility towards his father that he had towards his mother.

We have already mentioned the love story between Estella and Pip. Let us note that this girl is being raised by a half-crazy woman who has doomed herself to a slow death in an empty house. Full of hatred and resentment, she tries to instill the same feelings in her pupil. As a result, Estella, obeying her “mother,” rejects Pip, the only one she loves. Charles Dickens himself suffered a similar disappointment, whom he rejected. Maria Beadnell, his first love.

And finally, in the novel, the noble blacksmith Joe, the husband of Pip’s sister, already at the age of 40 marries the young girl Bidda and this marriage turns out to be happy; Charles Dickens himself cherished a similar hope. In 1857, already in adulthood, he also fell in love with a young 18-year-old actress Ellen Terman.

In conclusion, I would like to say that Charles Dickens’s novel is not just great, but the greatest work of all time! Reading the life story of a poor boy and experiencing all the ups and downs with him, we cannot contain our emotions. Although life is sometimes cruel and unfair to the heroes of the work, they manage to overcome all adversity and achieve their goal. Turning page after page, we cannot tear ourselves away from the book, and now, at first glance, a voluminous novel is already lying on our table, read.

N.L. Potanin

“- Well, shut up! - a menacing shout rang out, and among the graves, near the porch, a man suddenly grew up. “Don’t yell, little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!” “A scary man in rough gray clothes, with a heavy chain on his leg! A man without a hat, in broken shoes, his head tied with some kind of rag” and “a small trembling creature crying with fear” - this is how the main characters of Charles Dickens’ novel “Great Expectations” (1861) first appear before the reader: the village orphan Pip and escaped convict Abel Magwitch.

“A menacing shout” is the first thing Pip hears from his future benefactor. Magwitch meets Pip on one of the hardest days of his life, and the little boy is the only one who takes pity on him. This meeting remained in Magwitch's memory for a long time. In gratitude for his participation, he decides to make Pip a gentleman by transferring to him the fortune accumulated in exile. Proud of his new position, Pip does not even suspect that he owes his unexpected happiness to a terrible acquaintance he half-forgotten. Having learned the truth, he comes to despair: after all, his benefactor is a “despicable shackler.”

It will take a long time before the young man begins to understand Magwitch. A feeling of deep affection arises between a person who has experienced a lot and is just beginning to live. For the first time in his life, Magwitch will feel happy, but happiness is not destined to last. Magwitch is wanted by the police for escaping from the place of life imprisonment. He should be tried again and hanged.

The motive of imminent death arises in connection with the image of Magwitch even in the first pages of the novel. This is not old age or illness, this is the death penalty. Watching Magwitch leave, little Pip sees “a gallows with fragments of chains on which the pirate was once hanged.” Magwitch "stumbled straight to the gallows, as if the same pirate had risen from the dead and, having strolled, returned to hang himself again in his old place." This image foreshadows the fate of the unfortunate Magwitch: his life (like the life of many English poor people) was, in essence, a movement towards the gallows.

The prophecy comes true. Shortly after the death sentence is announced, Magwitch dies in the prison infirmary. This is the only thing that saves him from the gallows. Remembering the day the verdict was announced, the hero of the novel writes: “If this picture had not been indelibly preserved in my memory, then now... I simply would not have believed that before my eyes the judge read this verdict to thirty-two men and women at once.”

“Great Expectations” embodied Dickens’s thoughts about the state of modern society and the pressing problems of the era. The problem of crime and punishment in its social and moral aspects, while continuing to remain relevant, greatly occupied the writer. At the same time, his increased skill contributed to a new artistic understanding of the material traditional in his work.

The novel begins in the 1810s and ends in the 1830s. For the reader of the 1860s, this is already history. But the problem of the past was projected in the novel onto today. The first-person narrative form allowed the author to replace his hero where his experience was not enough to evaluate what was being depicted, and to judge what was happening from the point of view of a person in the second half of the century.

Dickens was born a few years after Secretary of State Samuel Romilly began a parliamentary campaign to repeal the most brutal provisions of British criminal law. In 1810, S. Romilly publicly stated that, probably, nowhere in the world are so many crimes punishable by death as in England. (By 1790, there were 160 crimes punishable by death in the English criminal code). Twenty years later (that is, just when the hero of Great Expectations first arrived in London), Secretary of State Robert Peel still had to note with regret that the criminal legislation of the kingdom as a whole was more severe than in any other state. peace. The death penalty, R. Pil emphasized, is the most common measure of criminal punishment. For a long time, almost all criminal offenses were punishable by death, not counting petty theft. In 1814, a man was hanged in Chelmsford for cutting down a tree without the necessary permission. In 1831, a nine-year-old boy was executed there for unintentionally setting fire to a house. True, since 1820, the number of crimes subject to capital punishment has decreased significantly. In 1820, decapitation of corpses after hanging was prohibited. In 1832, the barbaric custom of dismembering the bodies of those executed was eradicated. The legislative act of 1861 fixed four types of crimes punishable by death: murder, treason, piracy, arson of shipyards and arsenals. However, the death penalty was still carried out in public, awakening the barbaric instincts of the crowd who contemplated it.

The public thought of England constantly returned to criminal problems and therefore it is not surprising that Dickens early felt an interest in them. Some critics see this as a manifestation of the writer’s peculiar craving for the mysterious and terrible, which originated in childhood, under the influence of the stories of Mary Weller (Dickens spoke about his nanny in the series of essays of the 1860s, “The Traveler Not on Trade Business”). According to D. Forster, Dickens admitted that he owed much of his interest in the mysterious to the novels of Walter Scott. “Dickens was drawn to the terrible,” writes O.F. Christie, - that’s why he loved to watch executions, and in Paris he even visited the morgue.” Popular literature and theater played a significant role in the formation of the writer, primarily Gothic novels and melodrama. “In all Dickens’s novels, even in Hard Times,” notes K. Hibbert, “there is an atmosphere of Gothic literature. The plots of many of them revive traditional fairy tales.” Angus Wilson sees the reason for his interest in crime in the circumstances of the life of the Dickens family. Throughout his youth, the writer lived under the fear of ruin and poverty, and therefore, under the fear of finding himself on the same rung of the social ladder with the outcasts.

Dickens's attraction to crime themes did not diminish at the end of his life; this gave grounds for a number of foreign critics to argue that during these years the writer was far from the problems of his time and was looking for oblivion in the depiction of crimes, violence and all sorts of subconscious impulses of the human psyche.

Meanwhile, it is the latter works that make it possible to speak with the greatest justification about Dickens as a writer who used the crime theme to pose an important social problem and considered crime as an essential feature of modern life. At the same time, when portraying criminals, he set as his goal the study of human nature - a nature corrupted by circumstances, but not criminal from the very beginning.

Dickens considered the attitude towards crime and punishment to be one of the most important indicators of the moral state of society. It was not so much the crime itself, but its moral consequences that were the subject of reflection by the mature writer. According to Dickens, the punishment of a criminal should not awaken animal instincts either in himself or in those who observe this punishment. “I am accustomed to come into contact with the most terrible sources of filth and corruption that have gripped our society,” Dickens wrote, “and there is little in London life that can amaze me. And I assert with all solemnity that human imagination is incapable of inventing anything that could, in such a short period of time, cause as much evil as one public execution causes. I don’t believe that a society that tolerates such terrible, such immoral scenes can prosper.”

In Great Expectations, Dickens described the “vile Smithfield Square,” which seemed to envelop the person who entered it with “its mud, blood, and foam.” Smithfield Square was the largest meat market in London at the time. But Smithfield gained its terrible reputation earlier, when this square served as a place for the public execution of heretics. (The leader of the peasant revolt of 1381, Wat Tyler, was killed here by the mayor of London). Dickens's hero, who first came to this London square, might not have known its history. But behind Pip there is always an author. And where the hero’s experience is not enough to assess what is happening, the voice of Dickens himself sounds. Therefore, in the description of Smithfield Square, and then of what Pius saw in Newgate prison, Dickens’s aversion to excessive cruelty, already expressed more than once in journalism and novels, appears.

“In Newgate, “some rather tipsy minister of justice” ... kindly invited Pip into the courtyard and “showed where the gallows were removed and where public lashings took place, after which he led him to the “debtors' door,” through which the condemned were taken to execution, and, in order to increase interest in this terrible place, he said that the day after tomorrow, at exactly eight o’clock in the morning, four criminals would be taken out of here and hanged next to each other. It was terrible,” Pip recalls, “and filled me with disgust for London.”

In the article “Public Executions” (1849), Dickens expressed the idea of ​​the corrupting effect of such spectacles. He told the readers of The Times about the depressing impression that the spectacle of the raging crowd of onlookers made on him: “I think no one is able to imagine the full extent of the immorality and frivolity of the huge crowd that has gathered to see today’s execution ... Both the gallows and the very crimes that brought these notorious villains to her faded in my mind before the brutal appearance, disgusting behavior and obscene language of those gathered.” Five years earlier, in his article “On the Death Penalty,” Dickens described the process of turning an ordinary Sunday school teacher into a murderer. “To show the effect of public executions on spectators, it is enough to recall the execution scene itself and the crimes that are closely connected with it, as is well known to the main police department. I have already expressed my opinion that the spectacle of cruelty breeds disregard for human life, Dickens wrote in the same article, and leads to murder. After this I made inquiries about the most recent trial of the murderer, and learned that the youth awaiting death at Newgate for the murder of his master in Drury Lane had been present at the last three executions and had watched the proceedings with all his eyes.” Soon after starting work on the novel “Great Expectations,” the writer again witnessed a similar spectacle. On September 4, 1860, he “met on the way from the station a crowd of curious people returning after the execution of the Waltworth murderer. The gallows is the only place from which such a stream of scoundrels can pour in,” Dickens wrote to his assistant for the magazine All the Year Round, W.G. Wils. The pages of Great Expectations seem to recreate peeps from such a crowd.

One of them is a prison servant, dulled by the constant spectacle of cruelty. For him, executions and torture are an additional source of livelihood, because they can be shown to the curious. Both the “formidable arbiters of justice” and the torment of the condemned make no more impression on him than the spectacle of wax figures in a panopticon. The other is a clerk at Wemmick Law Firm. The corner of the office assigned to him is a kind of museum: the exhibits in it are disgusting masks of the hanged. Wemmick collects offerings made to him by those sentenced to death. The spectacle of human suffering and the opportunity to arbitrarily decide human destinies give him, as well as his patron, the famous lawyer Jaggers, the necessary grounds for narcissism. Wemmick's conversation with a Newgate prisoner is a clear illustration of the memoirs of prison chaplain D. Clay, published in 1861, who spoke about the outrageous riots that reigned in old English prisons, about the possibility of avoiding punishment or using bribes to achieve its mitigation. “Listen, Mr. Wemmick,” one of the prisoners turns to the clerk, “how does Mr. Jaggers intend to approach this murder on the embankment? Will it turn so that it was unintentional, or what?” Subsequently, the reasons for the possible “turn” in Mr. Jaggers’ decision become clear: numerous relatives of the prisoners are waiting for him near the office, not without reason hoping to bribe the famous lawyer.

Public executions were only prohibited by law in 1868. Dickens spoke about the need for such a prohibition twenty years earlier (for the first time - in 1844) and throughout the 40s and 50s he never tired of reminding the public of the existence of this blatant evil. The Newgate Pages of Great Expectations are another reminder of a pressing social need. But it's not just that. For Dickens, attitudes toward crime and punishment were the measure of a person's moral character. The “Newgate Pages” in the novel not only have an independent meaning: they serve as a characteristic of the hero, allowing him to reveal his ability to compassion - a quality characteristic of all Dickens’ good heroes. It was not even the execution itself, but the sight of its terrible attributes that evoked a feeling of deep disgust in Pip’s soul. The novel does not depict the execution itself. The problem was stated, and readers clearly understood what was at stake.

An important problem that worried the public and was touched upon in the novel “Great Expectations” was the possibility of moral improvement of criminals in prison conditions. The prison in the novel bears no resemblance to the model prisons that appeared in England later, in the 1840s. She could not have been like this either in terms of the time of the novel, or in terms of the tasks the solution of which was associated with her portrayal by the author. According to Dickens, the moral in a person awakens not under the influence of religious sermons or solitary confinement, and, especially, not under the influence of hearty poverty. The seed of kindness, if it exists in a person, grows in response to the kindness of others. This happened in the novel with Magwitch. The darkest prisons he had visited did not erase the good beginnings from Magwitch. The first chapter of the novel describes the prison in which Magwitch ended up after meeting Pip: “In the light of the torches, we could see a floating prison, blackened not very far from the muddy shore, like Noah’s Ark cursed by God. Compressed by heavy beams, entangled in thick chains of anchors, the barge seemed shackled, like prisoners.” The comparison of the prison to Noah's Ark is telling. Noah's family was saved from the flood by divine providence. Dickens's "Noah's Ark" is "cursed by God"; there is no salvation for it in the sea of ​​human filth. Perhaps that is why, instead of the biblical righteous, it is inhabited by villains and criminals?

At the beginning of the last century, the vast majority of English criminal prisons could be called the prototypes described in Great Expectations. With the exception of a few royal prisons (Tower, Milbank), most of them were under the control of local authorities, which means they were completely dependent on their arbitrariness. Like many other aspects of the UK legal system, the principles of punishment were not worked out. The possibility of unfair punishment was extremely high. At the same time, there were many ways to avoid punishment or make your stay in prison as comfortable as possible. In this case, the prisoner could rely on both his financial resources and physical strength. Anyone who had neither one nor the other led a most miserable existence. “Senseless cruelty was combined in the old English prisons with destructive licentiousness.” Created in 1842 in London, the Pentoville Model Prison, although distinguished by its strict organization, operated according to the so-called “Pennsylvania system”.

Dickens could not accept the lawlessness and arbitrariness that reigned in the old English prisons. He also did not accept the system of solitary confinement, which was terrible in its cruelty. But while protesting against excessive cruelty towards criminals, he could not agree with the criminal connivance into which the desire to alleviate the lot of prisoners resulted in the 1850-1860s. The writer reflected on this on the pages of the novel “Great Expectations,” where he called the situation created during these years “an extreme tilt, which is usually caused by social abuses and serves as the most severe and long-lasting retribution for past sins.” In an article (1850), Dickens noted the “colossal contradiction” that the “Pennsylvania system” gave rise to in English conditions: “we mean,” Dickens explained, “the physical condition of the prisoner in prison, compared with the condition of the working man or the poor outside its walls. .. In 1848, almost thirty-six pounds were allocated for the food and maintenance of a prisoner at the Pentonville Model Prison. Consequently, our free worker... supports himself and his whole family, with a sum of four or five pounds less than that which is spent on the food and protection of one person in the Model Prison. Of course, with his enlightened mind, and sometimes low moral level, this is a remarkably convincing argument for him to try not to get there.” It must be said that Dickens was alone in his indignation. A few years earlier, The Times had written in an editorial that the prisoners at Pentonville were “daily supplied with an ample supply of nutritious food, and it is to be hoped that this humane arrangement will soon be extended to all the prisons of Great Britain.”

In the novel Great Expectations, it was no accident that Dickens compared the state of prisons in the past and present. For him, excessive cruelty towards those who broke the law was the same evidence of social and moral illness as excessive mercy.

The spread of various penitentiary systems in England contributed to the fact that criminal punishment began to be rightly considered from a scientific point of view. “Belief in the scientific approach to punishment was very strong...” writes F. Collins. “This led to a deeper study of the individuality of the criminal, his psychophysiological characteristics.” Many of Dickens' articles and letters appear in this regard as sketches of characters subsequently depicted in his novels ("American Notes" - 1842, "On the Death Penalty" - 1844, "Crime and Education" - 1846, "Ignorance and Crime" - 1848 , “Paradise in Tooting”, “Farm in Tooting”, “The Verdict in the Drusus Case”, “Public Executions” - 1849, “Pampered Prisoners” - 1850, “Habits of Murderers” - 1856, speeches - in Birmingham, January 6, 1853 year, in the Association for the Reform of Governments of the Country on June 27, 1855). Dickens could also obtain interesting material of this kind from his acquaintances - police detectives who, at Dickens’ invitation, often visited the editorial office of the magazine “Home Reading”, and subsequently the magazine “Round the Year”. The writer's many years of observation of the peculiarities of the behavior of convicts and the behavior of people in extreme situations should have contributed to the growth of artistic skill in depicting character.

“The first thing I remember,” Magwitch says about himself, “is how somewhere in Essex I stole turnips so as not to die of hunger. Someone ran away and left me... and took away the brazier, so I was very cold...” The character of Magwitch differs significantly from the characters of criminals created by Dickens in his previous novels. A hungry child stealing turnips from a vegetable garden, or a hunted convict who more than once had to “get wet in water, crawl in mud, knock and wound his feet on stones, who was stung by nettles and torn by thorns” - of course, could not cause that horror and the delight evoked by the romantically gloomy figures of Monks and Fagin, Quilp and Jonas, created by the imagination of the young writer.

At the beginning of his work, Dickens was undoubtedly seduced by the spectacularity of such characters. It is no coincidence that one of the first writers mentioned in Dickens's correspondence (October 29, 1835, January 7, 1836) was W. G. Ainsworth, whose novels, depicting the life of criminals in a romantic light, enjoyed great success in the 30s and 40s of the past century. Dickens was extremely flattered by Ainsworth's opinion of A Visit to Newgate Gaol (Boz's Sketches). At the same time, in letters to the publisher of “Boz’s Sketches,” John Macrone, the young writer talked about the special appeal of “prison essays” to the public. He emphasized that the success of this kind of work is higher, the more dramatic the events described in them: “A prison sentence of one year, no matter how severe it may be, will never arouse the keen interest of the reader that a death sentence does. The prison bench cannot capture the human imagination to the same extent as the gallows" (December 9, 1835). During those years, Dickens lived on Doughty Street, not far from Coldbutt Fields prison, where prisoners sentenced from one week to three years were kept. There were terrible rumors about Coldbutt Fields. Described by Coleridge (1799), this prison must have excited Dickens's imagination. The writer's friend, the outstanding English director and actor W.C. Macready noted in his diary for 1837 that Dickens invited him to visit Coldbath Fields. From here, says MacReady, Dickens went with him and Forster to Newgate Prison. Impressions from these visits formed the basis for the story “Hounded,” written twenty years later, and “The Newgate Episodes” in the novel “Great Expectations.”

The works of E. Bulwer, W.G. had a certain influence on Dickens. Ainsworth and C. Whitehead. In the 1930s, E. Bulwer’s novels “Paul Clifford” (1830), “Eugene Aram” (1832), and “Ernest Maltravers” (1837) were published, in which the crime was interpreted as a romantic protest against bourgeois civilization. Having published the novel Jack Sheppard (1839), in which the hero was a robber, W.G. Ainsworth became one of the most popular English writers of his time. In 1834, Whitehead published The Autobiography of Jack Ketch, followed by Lives of Thieves. All this gave rise to critics talking about the “Newgate school of novelists,” which includes Dickens as the author of “The Adventures of Oliver Twist,” the creator of the images of the keeper of the den of thieves Fagin, the adventurer Monks and the murderer Sikes.

The figures of Fagin, Monks and Sykes are surrounded by an atmosphere of ominous mystery; they have a certain charm. The romantic accessories in the depiction of these characters are not accidental. The conspiracy between Monks and the watchman Bumble is mysterious: they meet in a gloomy abandoned house; their terrible deeds are accompanied by flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. The criminals in the novel “Oliver Twist” are figures raised above everyday life, significant even in their cruelty. Many contemporaries perceived Dickens's Oliver Twist and the works of Ainsworth and Bulwer as phenomena of the same order. Even W. Thackeray put Dickens on a par with the named novelists. As for the general public, they perceived Oliver Twist as a fascinating, sensational read. One of the police reports from this time states that “playing cards and dominoes, as well as reading Jack Sheppard and Oliver Twist,” were extremely popular among the common people.

The aspiring writer was flattered by comparison with seasoned novelists. He admired “Paul Clifford” and was friends with Bulwer and Whitehead. In 1838, Dickens, Forster and Ainsworth formed the so-called “Three's Club” and were inseparable at that time. However, Dickens soon realized that his aesthetic goals were significantly different from those pursued by the novelists of the “Newget School” and, first of all, by Ainsworth. In this regard, Dickens felt the need to publicly declare his differences with the “Newgate school.” It was not easy to separate himself from Ainsworth, since both “Jack Sheppard” and “Oliver Twist” were simultaneously published in Bentley’s Almanac and were illustrated by the same artist, D. Cruickshank.

In the preface to the third edition of Oliver Twist (1841), Dickens stated his determination to expose the evil embodied in the characters of criminals and to combat the romanticization of crime. Despite the fact that Ainsworth's name was not mentioned here, Dickens's polemic was directed primarily against the novel Jack Sheppard.

In the novel “Great Expectations,” the image of a criminal loses the aura of unusualness and selectivity characteristic of previous figures of criminals. At the same time, his role in the plot increases. It acquires an important ideological load, embodying the idea of ​​​​the depravity of bourgeois society. In Dickens's earlier novels, there was always a mystery associated with the criminals, which made the plot entertaining. The writer was interested not so much in the identity of the criminal as in the mysterious circumstances associated with it. In "Great Expectations" the main emphasis is shifted from the eventual side of the plot to the character. The author seeks to explore the reasons that gave rise to a person’s ability to violate the laws of humanity, to reveal the social, moral and psychological roots of crime. By realistically motivating the essence of criminal consciousness, Dickens thereby deprives it of its mystery and romance.

In this regard, the images of Magwitch and Compeson are of great interest. “From prison to freedom, and from freedom again to prison, and again to freedom, and again to prison - that’s the whole point,” - this is how Magwitch’s whole life went. A homeless orphan, he began to steal so as not to die of hunger. Since then, “... whoever does not meet this boy Abel Magwitch, ragged, hungry, immediately gets scared and either drives him away, or grabs him and drags him to prison.” In prison they hypocritically tried to correct him with books of religious content, as if faith in God's mercy could replace a piece of bread for a hungry person. “And everyone used to talk to me about the devil? What the hell? Should I have eaten or not? - Magwitch told Pip. The story of Magwitch's fate was prepared by many of Dickens' observations. “I read about one boy - he is only six years old, but he has already been in the hands of the police twelve times. It is from such children that the most dangerous criminals grow up; in order to eradicate this terrible tribe, society must take minors into its care.” These are words from a speech given by Dickens in 1853 in Birmingham. A few years earlier he wrote: “Side by side with Crime, Disease and Poverty, Ignorance roams England, it is always near them. This union is as obligatory as the union of Night and Darkness.” All this is in direct accordance with the description of Magwitch's life path.

Closely associated with Magwitch is the gentleman criminal Compeson. This image is in many respects similar to the real-life murderer William Palmer, whose trial attracted widespread attention in 1855. W. Palmer poisoned his friend J.P. Cook and probably poisoned his wife, who was insured in his favor for £13,000. During the trial, Palmer behaved completely calmly, which was written about with pleasure in numerous reporters' reports. In an effort to dispel the heroic aura created by the press for “the greatest villain that was ever tried at the Old Bailey,” Dickens published an article, “The Habits of Murderers,” where he traced the path of the man’s moral decay.

In the novel, Compeson is a smart and resourceful adventurer. Taking advantage of his education and reputation as a gentleman, for many years he committed the most risky frauds with impunity and always got away with it. Having met Magwitch, Compeson forced him to work for himself. When their crimes were revealed, the brunt of the punishment fell on Magwitch's shoulders. Recalling the past, Magwitch said with bitterness that Compeson’s charm and education misled the judges and became the reason for his sentence to be commuted: “When we were brought into the hall,” Magwitch said, “the first thing I noticed was what a gentleman Compeson looked like - curly-haired, black suit, with a white scarf...” This discrepancy between the outer appearance of the criminal and his inner essence was characterized by Dickens in the article “The Habits of Murderers”: “All the reports we have seen agree that the words, looks, gestures, gait and movements of the defendant, described with such care, are almost worthy of admiration, so they do not fit with the crime charged to him.” Dickens especially emphasized in the article the complexity of the relationship between the moral essence and the external appearance of the hero. (In his novels of the 30s and 40s, the appearance of the villain, as a rule, fully corresponded to his inner ugliness: Fagin, Monke, Quilp, Jonas Chuzzlewit). In later novels, the villain acquired the features of a respectable gentleman, and only a few features of his appearance betrayed his moral essence (Carker’s teeth, Rigo’s clawed fingers, Laeml’s hooked nose and white spots on his face, etc.). In an article about Palmer, Dickens wrote: “Nature’s handwriting is always legible and clear. With a firm hand she imprints it on every human face, you just need to be able to read. Here, however, some work is required - you need to evaluate and weigh your impressions.”

Dickens portrayed Compeson from two points of view, using the same technique that he had used four years earlier when characterizing Palmer. Like Palmer, Compeson is portrayed both in the minds of the public and in the eyes of the man who understood him well, Magwitch. The positions of observers in both cases turn out to be directly opposite. The villain appears to those around him as a completely respectable person, which is greatly facilitated by his external charm. “This Kompeson,” says Magwitch, “pretended to be a gentleman, and indeed, he studied at a rich boarding school and was educated. He knew how to speak as if it were written, and his manners were the most lordly. Besides, he was handsome.” This is how Compeson seemed to others. And only Magwitch knew that Compeson “had no more pity than a file, his heart was cold as death, but his head was like that of that devil.” Compeson even studied at school, and his childhood friends held high positions, witnesses met him in aristocratic clubs and societies, no one heard anything bad about him.

The same is said in the article about Palmer: “He killed, committed forgeries, while remaining a nice fellow and a lover of horse racing; During the inquiry, he made his best friend out of the investigator, and... the stock exchange aristocracy placed large bets on him, and, finally, the famous lawyer, bursting into tears,... ran out of the courtroom as proof of his belief in his innocence.” In fact, the graceful and charming Palmer was living proof of the depravity of the gentleman's world. In the novel "Great Expectations", the image of Compeson unites two worlds - the world of gentlemen and the world of criminals. In fact, it turns out that the first is just as vicious as the second.

Dickens associated the vicious properties of people with the morality of the environment in which they were formed. “We do not sufficiently imagine the sad existence of people,” he noted in one of his letters, “who make their earthly journey in darkness...” D. Raskin also called his era gloomy. “Our time,” he wrote in 1856, “is much darker than the Middle Ages, which are usually called “dark” and “gloomy.” We are characterized by lethargy of mind and disharmony of soul and body.” T. Carlyle noted the destructive immorality of bourgeois existence: “Man has lost his soul... people wander around like galvanized corpses, with meaningless, motionless eyes, without a soul...”. Commenting on the book by D.S. Mill “On Freedom” (1859), A.I. Herzen noted: “The constant decline in personalities, taste, tone, emptiness of interests, lack of energy horrified Mill... he looks closely and clearly sees how everything is becoming smaller, becoming ordinary, ordinary, erased, perhaps “more respectable,” but more vulgar. He sees in England (what Tocqueville noticed in France) that general, herd types are being developed, and seriously shaking his head, he says to his contemporaries: “Stop, come to your senses! Do you know where you are going? Look - the soul is decreasing."

Dickens saw this along with the philosophers, historians and economists of his time. Therefore, he could not help but turn to the question of the moral essence of the bourgeois individual, of the spiritual impoverishment that gives rise to crime. The writer's interest in criminal topics is explained not by a desire for sensational effects, but by the desire to understand human character in its complexity and contradictory nature, in its social conditioning.

Increased attention to the category of character was associated with the psychologization of European narrative art in the second half of the 19th century. Realist writers, following Dickens, will introduce new features into the traditions of the realistic novel. The analysis of a person’s mental movements will become more subtle, and in Meredith’s works the psychological motivation for the hero’s actions will be improved. To a certain extent, these changes were outlined in Dickens's late work, in particular in the novel Great Expectations.

Key words: Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations", criticism of the work of Charles Dickens, criticism of the works of Charles Dickens, download criticism, download for free, English literature of the 19th century.

Philip Pirrip or Pip lives in a marshy area with his older sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, the wife of a blacksmith. She runs everything in the house, including her husband.

On Christmas Eve, the boy meets an escaped prisoner in the cemetery, who orders him to bring food. In the morning, Pip steals supplies from the storeroom and takes them to the convict. The psalm-reader Wopsle, the wheelwright Hubble and his wife, and Uncle Joe, Mr. Pumblechook, come to the Gargery family for Christmas dinner. Lunch is interrupted by the arrival of soldiers looking for an escaped prisoner. Pip and Joe take part in the raid. The captured convict defends Pip, saying that it was he who stole food from the blacksmith.

At the suggestion of Pumblechook, Pip is sent to Miss Havisham. The latter turns out to be an old lady in a wedding dress, yellowed with age. Miss Havisham forces Pip to play cards with Estella, a proud, beautiful girl his age. Estella's contemptuous attitude brings tears to Pip's eyes. After meeting Mrs. Havisham, he decides to “get out into the world.”

At the Three Jolly Sailors inn, where Pip goes to pick up Joe, the boy meets a convict who, at the request of his cellmate, gives him a shilling wrapped in two pounds.

Pip spends 8-9 months with Miss Havisham. He fights with a boy his own age, gets a kiss from Estella, and pushes Miss Havisham around the house in a lawn chair. Having learned that Pip wants to be a blacksmith, the old lady gives Joe 25 guineas and sends the boy as an apprentice. After training with Miss Havisham, Pip begins to feel ashamed of his home and blacksmithing.

Mrs. Joe is attacked. Due to a severe blow to the head, she remains confined to the bed. She is taken care of by Biddy, who moved in with the blacksmith's family after the death of Wopsle's great-aunt. One evening, Pip confesses to Biddy that he wants to become a gentleman.

London solicitor Jaggers informs Pip that he will become the owner of a considerable fortune. He will receive money and education only if he keeps the name Pip and never finds out who his benefactor is. Mr. Matthew Pocket is chosen as Pip's mentor.

After receiving the money, Pip begins to change. The tailor and Mr. Pumblechook fawn over him. The boy moves away from Joe and Biddy.

A week later Pip leaves for London. Claire Wemmick accompanies Pip to Mr. Pocket Jr., who turns out to be the boy with whom the main character once fought in Mrs. Havisham's garden. Herbert Pocket tells Pip about how Miss Havisham was abandoned on her wedding day.

The main character constantly lives and studies in Hammersmith - with his father Herbert. He becomes close friends with clerk Wemmick, who outside the office is a kind and honest person.

In London, Pipa visits Joe and informs him of Estella's arrival. Before leaving for his hometown, Pip encounters convicts on the street. One of them is a man who once gave him two pounds.

Estella became a wonderful lady. She confesses her heartlessness to Pip and says that she has never loved anyone.

Pip tells Herbert about his feelings for Estella. Together with a friend, Pip becomes a member of the Finches in the Grove club and begins to waste money. Young people are falling into debt.

Pipa's sister dies. The funeral reminds the young man of a farce.

On the day he comes of age, Pip receives 500 pounds and learns that this is how much he can live on per year. With Wemmick's help, Pip arranges Herbert's future by paying the merchant Clarriker to take him on as his partner.

During one of his visits to Miss Havisham, Pip observes a scene of a quarrel between the old lady and Estella. Miss Havisham wants to receive love from the girl, which Estella is not capable of.

In London, Pip quarrels with Bentley Drumle, a former “classmate” who decided to drink to Estella’s health at the club.

At the age of 23, Pip learns that he owes his education and fortune to an escaped convict whom he pitied as a child. The young man is plunged into a state of shock.

Convict Abel Magwitch served his time in America, but returning to England faces the death penalty. Pip feels an insurmountable disgust for him, but still tries to help him settle in London. Herbert is initiated into the secret of Pip's inheritance.

Magwitch tells Pip and Herbert the story of his life. Abel knew Compenson and Arthur. Compenson is the man who abandoned Miss Havisham. Magwitch and Compenson were convicted together of fraud, but the latter blamed all the blame on an uneducated convict and received a much shorter sentence.

Pip learns of Estella and Drummle's engagement. Herbert, on Wemmick's advice, hides Magwitch in the house that his fiancée Clara shares with her disabled father.

At Mr. Jaggers's dinner, Pip sees a clear resemblance to Estella in the lawyer's housekeeper Molly. The young man decides that Molly is the girl's mother. Wemmick tells him that Molly was tried for murder and Jaggers got her acquitted.

Miss Havisham gives Pip 900 pounds to arrange Herbert's fate. When Pip comes in to say goodbye, he sees the old lady begin to burn. He saves her from death, but she dies some time later from her burns.

From Provis's story to Herbert, Pip understands that Magwitch is Estella's father. Mr. Jagger confirms Pip's version.

Joe's former apprentice, Orlik, lures Pip to the swamps in order to kill him. Herbert saves him.

Magwitch's escape, planned by Pip and Herbert, ends with the latter's arrest and the death of Compenson, who betrayed his former accomplice to the authorities. The court sentences Magwitch to death. In the last month of his life, Pip visits him every day in prison. Before his death, Magwitch learns that his daughter is alive.

The novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1812-1870), published week after week in the Home Reading magazine from December 1860 to August 1861 and released as a separate edition in the same year, is still popular throughout the world. world. Translations into all languages, many film adaptations dating back to 1917, stage plays and even a cartoon... “Great Expectations turned out to be the most complete of all Dickens’s works, clear in form, with a plot that matches the depth of thought with the remarkable simplicity of presentation,” - wrote the famous English novelist and scholar of Dickens's work, Angus Wilson. It’s rare that any of the readers and viewers of “Great Expectations” - even in Russia, which is so different from Victorian England - did not try on the story of the ordinary boy Pip, who, by the will of fate, turned into a gentleman and was conquered for the rest of his life by the cold beauty Estella. Deep penetration into the inner world, into human psychology, a fascinating plot, a fair amount of humor - there is no doubt that this famous book will always be read and re-read. Accompanying article by Leonid Bakhnov Leonid Vladlenovich Bakhnov (born 1948) - prose writer, critic. Graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. Worked for Teacher's Newspaper, Literary Review, Izvestia. From 1988 to 2017, he headed the prose department at the Friendship of Peoples magazine. Member of the Moscow Writers' Union, member of the Academy of Russian Contemporary Literature (ARS "S").

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"Great Expectations" - plot

A seven-year-old boy, Philip Pirrip (Pip), lives in the house of his older sister (who raised him with her own hands) and her husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery, a simple-minded, good-natured man. The sister constantly beats and insults the boy and her husband. Pip constantly visits the grave of his parents in the cemetery, and on Christmas Eve he meets an escaped convict who, threatening him with death, demanded that he bring “grub and filing.” Frightened, the boy brings everything secretly from home. But the next day the convict was caught, along with another whom he tried to kill.

Miss Havisham is looking for a playmate for her adopted daughter Estella, and Uncle Joe, Mr. Pumblechook, recommends Pip to her, who then visits her many times. Miss Havisham, dressed in a wedding dress yellowed with age, sits in a dark, gloomy room. She chose Estella as an instrument of revenge on all men for her groom, who, having robbed her, did not show up for the wedding. “Break their hearts, my pride and hope,” she whispered, “break them without pity!” Pip finds Estella very beautiful, but arrogant. Before meeting her, he loved the craft of a blacksmith, and a year later he shuddered at the thought that Estella would find him black from rough work and would despise him. He is talking about this with Joe when lawyer Jaggers from London comes to their house, who reports that his client, who wished to remain anonymous, wants to provide Pip with a “brilliant future”, for which he must go to London and become a gentleman. Jaggers is also appointed his guardian until the age of 21 and advises him to seek guidance from Matthew Pocket. Pip suspects that the anonymous benefactor is Miss Havisham and hopes for a future engagement to Estella. Shortly before this, Pip's sister was severely shell-shocked by a terrible blow to the back of the head from an unknown person; the constables tried unsuccessfully to find the attacker. Pip suspects Orlik, the blacksmith's assistant.

In London, Pip settled in quickly. He rented an apartment with his friend Herbert Pocket, the son of his mentor. Having joined the Finches in the Grove club, he recklessly squanders his money. As he lists his debts “from Cobs, Lobs, or Nobs,” Pip feels like a first-class businessman. Herbert is only “looking around”, hoping to catch his luck in the City (he “caught” it only thanks to secret financial help from Pip). Pip visits Miss Havisham, she introduces him to the adult Estella and privately encourages him to love her, no matter what.

One day, when Pip was alone in the apartment, he was found by former convict Abel Magwitch (who had returned from Australian exile despite fears of being hanged). So it turned out that the source of Pip's gentlemanly life was the money of a fugitive, grateful for the old mercy of the little boy. Hopes about Miss Havisham's intentions to benefit him turned out to be imaginary! The disgust and horror experienced at the first moment were replaced in Pip's soul by a growing gratitude towards him. From Magwitch's stories it was revealed that Compeson, the second convict caught in the swamps, was the same fiance of Miss Havisham (he and Magwitch were convicted of fraud, although Compeson was the leader, he exposed Magwitch as such at the trial, for which he received a less severe punishment). Gradually, Pip realized that Magwitch was Estella's father, and her mother was Jaggers's housekeeper, who was suspected of murder, but was acquitted through the efforts of a lawyer; and also that Compeson is pursuing Magwitch. Estella married for convenience to the cruel and primitive Drumle. The depressed Pip visits Miss Havisham for the last time, inviting her to contribute the rest of the share to Herbert's business, to which she agrees. She is tormented by severe remorse for Estella. As Pip leaves, Miss Havisham's dress catches fire from the fireplace, Pip saves her (sustaining burns), but she dies a few days later. After this incident, Pip was lured by an anonymous letter to a lime factory at night, where Orlik tried to kill him, but everything turned out okay.

Pip and Magwitch began to prepare for a secret escape abroad. Sailing to the mouth of the Thames in a boat with Pip's friends to transfer to the steamer, they were intercepted by the police and Compeson, and Magwitch was captured and later convicted. He died from his wounds in the prison hospital (having received them when Compeyson was drowned), his last moments were warmed by Pip's gratitude and the story of the fate of his daughter, who became a lady.

Pip remained a bachelor and eleven years later he accidentally met the widowed Estella in the ruins of Miss Havisham's house. After a short conversation, they walked away from the gloomy ruins, holding hands. “Wide open spaces spread out before them, not darkened by the shadow of a new separation.”

Criticism

The novel "Great Expectations" belongs to the mature period of Dickens's work. The target of the author's criticism is the empty and often dishonest (but wealthy) life of gentlemen, which is contrasted with the generous and modest existence of ordinary workers, as well as the stiffness and coldness of aristocrats. Pip, as an honest and unselfish person, does not find a place for himself in “secular society,” and money cannot make him happy. Using the example of Abel Magwitch, Dickens shows how the burden of inhuman laws and unjust orders established by a hypocritical society and applied even to children leads to the gradual downfall of man.

In the story of the main character, autobiographical motives are felt. Dickens put a lot of his own tossing, his own melancholy into this novel. The writer's original intention was to end the novel tragically; however, Dickens always avoided heavy endings to his works, knowing the tastes of his audience. Therefore, he did not dare to end “Great Expectations” with their complete collapse, although the whole plan of the novel leads to such an end. N. Michalskaya. Dickens's novel "Great Expectations" / Charles Dickens. Great Expectations

Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations was first published in 1860 and became one of the writer's most popular works.

The first publication took place in the magazine “Round the Year,” which was published by the author himself. The chapters of the novel were published over several months: from December 1860 to August 1861. In the same 1861, the work was translated into Russian and published in the magazine “Russian Bulletin”.

A seven-year-old boy named Pip (full name Philip Pirrip) lives in the house of his cruel sister, who constantly mocks him and insults him in every possible way. The grumpy woman haunts not only her tribesman, but also her husband, blacksmith Joe Gargery. Pip's parents died long ago, the boy often goes to the cemetery to visit their graves. One day Philip met an escaped convict. The man, intimidating the boy, demanded to bring him food. Pip was forced to follow the order and secretly bring from home everything that was required of him. Luckily for Pip, the convict was caught.

Woman in a wedding dress

The spinster Miss Havisham wants to find a friend for her adopted daughter Estella. Many years ago, this woman was deceived by her groom, who robbed her and did not show up at the altar. Since then, Miss Havisham has been sitting in a gloomy room in a yellowed wedding dress and thirsting for retribution for all men. She hopes to achieve her goal with the help of Estella. The adoptive mother teaches the girl to hate all males, to hurt them and break their hearts.

When Miss Havisham recommended Pip as a playmate, the boy began to often visit the old maid's house. Pip really likes Estella. He thinks the girl is beautiful. Estella's main flaw is arrogance. She was taught it by her adoptive mother. Philip used to enjoy blacksmithing, which he learned from his uncle. Now he is embarrassed by his hobby, afraid that his new girlfriend will someday find him doing dirty work in the forge.

One day, the capital's lawyer Jaggers comes to Joe's home and says that his anonymous client wants to take care of Philip's future and do everything possible to arrange his fate. If Philip agrees, he will have to move to London. In this case, Jaggers himself will be appointed Philip's guardian until he is 21 years old. Pip is sure that the client who is going to become his benefactor is Miss Havisham, and that if the outcome is favorable, he will be able to marry Estella. Meanwhile, Pirripa's sister was attacked by an unknown person, hitting her on the back of the head. The culprit was never found. Philip suspects Orlik, who worked as an assistant in a forge.

In the capital, Pip rents a place with his friend. The young man quickly got used to the new place, joined a prestigious club and spends money without looking. Herbert, the friend he lives with, is more cautious. Pip goes to visit Miss Havisham and meets the now grown-up Estella. The old maid is left alone with the young man and asks, no matter what, to love her adopted daughter.

Unexpectedly, Pirrip meets Abel Magwitch, the same escaped convict whom he tried to help against his own will many years ago. Pip is horrified by this meeting, fearing that Abel will try to kill him. The fears were unfounded. Magwitch turned out to be the mysterious benefactor who hired the lawyer Jaggers and decided to take care of Pip. The convict escaped from Australia, where he had been sent into exile, and returned home, despite the fact that such an act threatened him with hanging.

Magwitch talks about his comrade Compeson, with whom he “went to work”, and then tried to escape and was sent to Australia. Compeson was the old maid's fiancé, Havisham. Magwitch is Estella's father. Pip soon learns that his beloved married Drummle, who was reputed to be a cruel man. Philip visits Miss Havisham. The old maid's dress accidentally catches fire from the fireplace. Pirrip saved the woman, but a few days later she still died.

Philip is sent an anonymous letter in which an unknown person demands a meeting at the lime factory at night. Arriving at the factory, Pip sees the blacksmith's assistant Orlik, who tried to kill the young man. However, Pip managed to escape. Pirrip is forced to prepare to flee abroad. Magwitch also wants to run away with him. The attempt failed: the friends were intercepted by the police. Magwitch was convicted and later died in a prison hospital.

Together forever

11 years have passed since the events described. Philip decided to remain a bachelor. One day, while walking near the ruins of Miss Havisham's house, he met Estella, who had already become a widow. Pip and Estella leave the ruins together. Nothing stands in the way of their happiness anymore.

Frustration

Dickens made Philip Pirrip his literary counterpart. In the actions and moods of the hero, the author depicted his own torment. The novel "Great Expectations" is partly autobiographical.

Author's purpose

One of Dickens's original intentions was a sad ending and a complete collapse of hopes. The reader should see the cruelty and injustice of reality and, perhaps, draw a parallel with his own life.

However, Dickens never liked to end his works tragically. In addition, he knew too well the tastes of the public, who were unlikely to be happy with the sad ending. In the end, the writer decides to end the novel with a “happy ending.”

The novel was written at a time when the writer's talent had reached its maturity, but had not yet begun to fade or dry up. The writer contrasted the world of wealthy gentlemen leading a far from righteous lifestyle with the wretched existence of ordinary workers. The author's sympathy is with the latter. Aristocratic stiffness is unnatural and not inherent in human nature. However, numerous rules of etiquette require false cordiality towards those who are unpleasant and coldness towards those who are loved.

Pip now has the opportunity to lead a decent life, to enjoy everything that is available to the wealthiest segments of the population. But the young man notices how insignificant and pitiful are the substitutes for genuine human happiness, which cannot be bought even by a millionaire. Money did not make Philip happy. With their help, he cannot return his parents, receive warmth and love. Pip was never able to join the aristocratic society, turn into a secular person. For all this you need to become false, to abandon the most important thing - your essence. Philip Pirrip simply cannot do this.