Charles Dickens and hisGreat Expectations

Background Notes

Charles Dickens

Born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, England

Died June 9, 1870 buried in Westminster Abbey

Early life’s struggles

Charles Dickens’ father, John Dickens was a naval clerk who dreamed of striking it rich

Dickens’ mother, Elizabeth Barrow, aspired to be a teacher and school director

Despite his parents best efforts, they remained poor

The family moved to Kent when Dickens was 4 and he and his siblings ran around the countryside and explored the old Rochester castle

When Dickens was 10, the family moved to a poor neighborhood in London

By this time John Dickens had acquired extensive debt and was imprisoned – Charles was 12 years old

Following his father’s imprisonment, Charles Dickens was forced to leave school to work at a boot-blacking factory alongside the River Thames.

Dickens was permitted to go back to school when his father received a family inheritance and used it to pay off his debts.

But when Dickens was 15, he had to drop out of school and work as an office boy to contribute to his family’s income.

Just a few years later, he was reporting for two major London newspapers.

At the age of 21, he began submitting story “sketches” to various magazines and newspapers under the pseudonym “Boz.”

In 1836 at the age of 26, he married Catherine Hogarth whom he met at work at The Morning Chronicle.

Early adult and marriage

In 1837, the first of 10 children were born.

Dickens grew unhappy with Catherine and his marriage.  He resented the fact that he had so many children to support. 

(Somehow he saw this as Catherine's fault and he feared he would follow in his father’s financial owes.)  And he did not approve of  Catherine's lack of energy. 

He began to indicate that she was not nor had ever been his intellectual equal.

They were legally separated in 1858

Days later Dickens published a notice in the London Times and Household Words that tried to explain the separation to the public.

While an announcement of this sort seems extreme Dickens was motivated to do so by some of the rumors circulating about the breakup.  There was some gossip about an actress and some stories even suggested that Dickens was having an affair with his sister-in-law, Georgina. 

In the notice he stated, "Some domestic trouble of mine, of long-standing, on which I will make no further remark than that it claims to be respected, as being of a sacredly private nature, has lately been brought to an arrangement, which involves no anger or ill-will of any kind, and the whole origin, progress, and surrounding circumstances of which have been, throughout, within the knowledge of my children.  It is amicably composed, and its details have now to be forgotten by those concerned in it."

His WritingIn the same year that Sketches by Boz was released, Dickens started publishing The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.

The stories or “sketches” were published in monthly installments.

People couldn’t afford to buy a large novel, but they could afford to buy a monthly magazine and look forward to the continuation of Dickens’ stories.

Around this time, Dickens had also become publisher of a magazine called Bentley’s Miscellany.

It is here that he starts publishing his first novel, Oliver Twist (The story was inspired by how Dickens felt as an impoverished child)

Dedicated readers of Oliver Twist eagerly anticipated the next monthly installment.

This monthly installment publishing is one of the reasons Dickens’ novels tend to be so long with many chapters.

During his first U.S. lecture tour in 1842, Dickens designated himself as what many have deemed the first modern celebrity.

During these U.S. tours he earned no less than $95,000, which, in the Victoria Era, amounted to approximately $1.5 million in current U.S. dollars.

During the 1850s, Dickens suffered two devastating losses: the deaths of his daughter and father and the separation from his wife Catherine

Consequently, his novels began to express his darkened worldview

After his “dark novel” period, Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities and began publishing the periodical All The Year Round

His next novel, Great Expectations (1860-1861), focuses on the protagonist’s lifelong journey of moral development. 

It is widely considered his greatest literary accomplishment.

In the endIn 1865, Dickens was in a train accident and never fully recovered. 

Despite his fragile condition, he continued to tour until 1870.

On June 9, 1870 Dickens suffered a stroke and died in his Gad’s Hill home in Kent

He was 58 years old.

He was buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey

His final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was left unfinished.

Great ExpectationsDickens’ 13th novel

I deliberated with an aching heart whether Iwould not get down when we changed horses andwalk back, and have another evening at home,and a better parting. We changed, and I had notmade up my mind . . . . We changed again, andyet again, and it was now too late and too far togo back, and I went on. And the mists had allsolemnly risen now, and the world lay spreadbefore me. —Pip (Chapter 19)

These words reveal the thoughts of one of Dickens’s most famous characters as he starts a new life with great expectations as well as doubts

It traces the life and experiences of Philip Pirrip, or Pip, as he comes of age in the early- to mid-nineteenth century

Pip tells his own story as an adult looking back on his younger years. When the novel begins, Pip is a poor orphan who seems destined to become a blacksmith like his brother-in-law and live out his life in the marsh area of Kent, England.

An unexpected chain of events, however, thrusts him into a completely different world and way of life.

Over time, Pip’s new life becomes much more complicated than he imagined it would be, and he is forced to reevaluate his values and the values of the society in which he finds himself

In Great Expectations, as in his other novels, Dickens dramatizes the moral struggles and faults of the Victorian age.

Dickens implies that a society fascinated by wealth

and power is too far removed from basic moral values.

The story begins in the early 1800s, in the marsh area of Kent, England. (an area Dickens is familiar with from his childhood)

Later in the novel the scene shifts to busy, industrial London.

The novel shifts back and forth between these two locations as events unfold.

As you read the novel, think about the values that the people in each setting hold.

Social Satire

Satire is literature that uses humor or sarcasm to ridicule human vices or follies.

Dickens was interested in social reform, and passages of the novel often reflect his feelings toward people and institutions in nineteenth-century English society.

Dickens’s satire emerges in his colorful descriptions of characters, places, and events. Sometimes even the names of Dickens’s characters are satirical.

Setting: Kent and London, EnglandEarly 1800s

Kent County

London

Images

One of Dickens’ homes in London

Down the street from his home is door number 11 – this is the original

doorknocker that inspired the haunted doorknocker in A Christmas Carol

London’s Piccadilly Circus Square – 1896

Piccadilly Circus 2013

Dickens’ London office and apartment 1800s 201

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One of the plaques in Shakespeare’s home reads…