Great Expectations by Charles Dickens | Summary & Analysis

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Course Hero Literature Instructor Russell Jaffe explains the plot, characters, symbols, and themes of Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations.

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Charles Dickens's beloved bildungsroman Great Expectations traces the youth of Pip, a young orphan. He is living in relative poverty in early 19th century England, but is drawn into the parallel universe inhabited by the upper classes.

After helping an escaped convict, he receives a mysterious invitation from the reclusive Miss Havisham. She wishes for him to provide companionship to her young ward Estella. Though the girl is cold and often to cruel to him, he grows to love her and resolves to join the upper classes so that he might win her hand.

When he reaches schooling age, an unknown benefactor offers to pay for his education, putting him closer to his goal of becoming a gentleman. Casting off his lower class manners and habits, he joins the gentry, all the while maintaining his love of the unattainable Estella.

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations was first published in 1860-6. The novel, teeming with the peculiar characters for which Dickens is known, is both a piquant illustration of the class struggles of the era and a timeless parable of unrequited love.

The novel explores many powerful themes including social class, guilt, and uncertainty and deceit. Other symbols include tears representing honesty and heartfelt sympathies, Satis House symbolizing the refusal to change and grow, and money symbolizing pretense and disappointment.

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