I've got a task about "Great Expectations" of Charles Dickens. I have to describe this book as a novel of social ascension. Could anyone help me? I can't find this thread in the book. There is no information on the Internet, as well. I don't want the full answer, but only general ideas.
Thanks!
Last edited by Christian96; 03-18-2016 at 11:38 AM.
Hi Christian,
Maybe you just need to follow Pip's trajetory, writing down what his "great expectations" are, which people and facts help him or hinder him in achieving his goals, how his love story fits in with the rest and if he ultimatelly succeeds or fails in his expectations and why. If there is still room for it you can also compare the main story with some of the stories of the secondary characters.
Last edited by Danik 2016; 02-29-2016 at 03:36 PM.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Does anyone have other ideas? Please, help me!
In random order
Pip believes that only by becoming a gentleman can he win Estella.
Pip deceives himself as to the source of his money.
Pip learns to despise his humble background.
Magwitch sees his own common background as the reason he was more harshly treated than Compeyson.
Magwitch determines that if he can never be a gentleman he will make one.
In the process of being made a gentleman Pip loses virtuous elements from his character.
Pumblechook is a snob from the lower middle-class.
Estella, the daughter Magwitch believed he had lost, is a lady but she has had an upbringing that has twisted her better affections.
Dickens, as he often does, contrasts subtle social snobbery with simple social satisfactions.
I like that, ennison. All good points.
A just conception of life is too large a thing to grasp during the short interval of passing through it.
Thomas Hardy
Thank you!I have one more question. Is there any other name for "novel of social ascension" in English?
A rags to riches story maybe? I don't think there is an accepted literary term.Originally Posted by Christian96
Thank you!
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
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