I haven’t posted in the last couple of days because I was waiting to see if I would find Great Expectations interesting enough to keep reading. I had picked up a very old copy (printed in 1942, with reproductions of what I think are the original illustrations) at my public library, but I didn’t get around to it until last Thursday.
So, here I am, reading Dickens. I have read A Tale of Two Cities, but that book is a outlier from the rest of Dickens’ work–meaning there aren’t any orphans, a surplus of silly names, and is only about 300 pages long. I started Great Expectations because I am curious as to what it’s all about. My only exposure to it so far is from Jasper Ffforde’s books, where Miss Havisham is a character.
One thing I was surprised to find is the humor. It’s funny and, moreover, it’s snarky. Dickens has a really great way of effortlessly skewering his characters and making the reader chuckle at the same time. I wonder, did families reading this book when it first came out snicker like I did when they read:
Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in the society of youth who paid twopence per week each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. (51)
I think I know how I got the wrong impression of Dickens, though: Oliver Twist. Waifish orphans, cruel adults, musical numbers in the film versions, ugh. It all struck me as very…trite, I guess. I may read the book now, to see if it’s as bad as all that, but not any time soon.
Back to GE, I’m enjoying myself so far, even though I don’t have a clue where the plot is going. I love the way Dickens recreates how Pip’s family and their friends talk. (It’s analogous to Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where he wrote dialects as they sounded.) Magwitch has been saved–but recaptured. Miss Havisham and her bizarre habits were introduced. And Pip is in the middle of all these adults, trying to grow up.