"
Great Expectations" represent the genre of bildungsroman,
a
book about the development of an individual, in which at first a
character lives in a stable environment but quickly experiences some
form of discontent that sets him in motion. This is what happens to
Pip, the main character of the book. Pip lives in a village in Kent
with his authoritarian sister and her husband Joe, the blacksmith. One
day he is invited to Miss Havisham''s to keep company to the elderly
lady. Miss Havisham is a gothic character clad in
yellowish wedding dress who keeps all the windows blinded and all the
clocks stopped. She lives with Estella whom she brought up in hatred to
men, in revenge for her own unhappy relationship. Pip falls in love
with Estella immediately and wants to aspire to her hand. However, he
becomes an apprentice to Joe but, his development having been
initiated, concentrates on personal improvement and education. One day
he learns there is a secret benefactor who wants him to go to London
and become a gentleman. Pip hopes the benefactor to be Miss Havisham
and is convinced he has been chosen to marry Estella. After numerous
comic and tragic events it turns out that the secret benefactor was a
convict, Magwitch, whom Pip helped when he was a child. The answer to
the main question of the book if the great expectations are fulfilled,
is no. Magwitch''s expectations to make Pip a gentleman fail because it
is impossible to buy yourself a gentleman. Pip''s expectations to marry
Estella also don''t come out as Estella marries two other men and she
and Pip finally part (in the original ending; the ending suggested by
the readers of "All the Year Round" in which the book was first
published in monthly installments is a happy-ending). The book is an irony on the Victorian pursuit of social status and money.
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