I am proud to say that I intend to read all of Dickens' books! I absolutely love this outstanding novel which took me by surprise many times. I have been meaning to read this book, and have had my blinders on for quite a while, not wanting to know anything about the book before I read it. So when I first started the book and read about Pip, an orphan raised by his abusive sister, getting accosted by a convict while he was out visiting his parent's graves, I had no clue that multi-layer wonders were waiting for me, and that adorable, if not peculiar characters will soon be haunting my mind for days: Miss Havisham, a mysterious woman in white who is suspended in time, Estella, her adopted daughter who totally beguiles Pip, Mr. Jaggers, a successful lawyer who reveals Pip's great expectations, Joe, Pip's kind and simple brother-in-law, and Herbert, Pip's foe who becomes his true friend. Subtle life lessons and comical dialogues perfectly mix in with dark, dramatic and poignant heart-tugging scenes in a plot thick with twists and turns. And I actually like that both the original and revised endings are included in this book.
'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 come to be called Pip.'(opening lines)
'In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. I had no intercourse with the world at that time, and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in this manner.'(42)
'It was then that I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.'(61-62)
'My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive.'(64-65)
"There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip," said Joe, after some rumination, "namely that lies is lies. Howsoever they come, they didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em, Pip. That ain't the way to get out of being common, old chap. And as to being common, I don't make it out at all clear. You are oncommon in some things. You're oncommon small. Likewise you're a oncommon scholar."(73)
'It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be a black ingratitude in the thing and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved, but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.'(112)
"I am instructed to communicate to him," said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his finger at me sideways, "that he will come into a handsome property. Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that property that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman -- in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations."(146)
'Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried than before -- more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle. '(169)
"No; the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the castle behind me, and when I come home into the castle, I leave the office behind me.'(219)
'According to my experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot always be true. The unqualified truth is that, when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.'(245-246)
"I'll tell you," said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, "what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the sinister -- as I did!"(254)
'As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me. Their influence on my own character I disguised from my recognition as much as possible, but I knew very well that it was not all good. I lived in a state of chronic uneasiness...'(289)
'"Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip," returned Wemmick, "and take a walk upon your bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames over the centre arch of your bridge, and you know the end of it. Serve a friend with it, and you may know the end of it too -- but it's a less pleasant and profitable end."(309)
'And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a mastermania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world?'(423)
a Bantam Book Classic edition June 2003
518 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: Victorian Challenge
100+ Reading Challenge
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