The story is divided into three phases of Pip's life expectations. The first

"expectation" is allotted 19 chapters, and the other two 20 chapters each in the 59-chapter work. In some editions, the chapter numbering reverts to Chapter One in each expectation, but the original publication and most modern editions number the chapters consecutively from one to 59. At the end of chapters 19 and 39, readers are formally notified that they have reached the conclusion of a phase of Pip's expectations.

In the first expectation, Pip lives a humble existence with his ill-tempered older sister and her strong but gentle husband, Joe Gargery. Pip is satisfied with this life and his warm friends until he is hired by an embittered wealthy woman, Miss Havisham, as an occasional companion to her and her beautiful but haughty adopted daughter, Estella. From that time on, Pip aspires to leave behind his simple life and be a gentleman. After years as companion to Miss Havisham and Estella, he spends more years as an apprentice to Joe, so that he may grow up to have a livelihood working as a blacksmith. This life is suddenly turned upside down when he is visited by a London attorney, Mr. Jaggers, who informs Pip that he is to come into the "Great Expectation" of a handsome property and be trained to be a gentleman at the behest of an anonymous benefactor.

The second stage of Pip's expectations has Pip in London, learning the details of being a gentlemen, having tutors, fine clothing, and joining cultured society. Whereas he always engaged in honest labour when he was younger, he now is supported by a generous allowance, which he frequently lives beyond. He learns to fit in this new milieu, and experiences not only friendship but rivalry as he finds himself in the same circles as Estella, who is also pursued by many other men, especially Bentley Drummle, whom she favours. As he adopts the physical and cultural norms of his new status, he also adopts the class attitudes that go with it, and when Joe comes to visit Pip and his friend and roommate Herbert to deliver an important message, Pip is embarrassed to the point of hostility by Joe's unlearned ways, despite his protestations of love and friendship for Joe. At the end of this stage, Pip is introduced to his benefactor, again changing his world.

The third and last stage of Pip's expectations alters Pip's life from the artificially supported world of his upper class strivings and introduces him to realities that he realizes he must deal with, facing moral, physical and financial challenges. He learns startling truths that cast into doubt the values that he once embraced so eagerly, and finds that he cannot regain many of the important things that he had cast aside so carelessly. The current ending of the story is different from Dickens's original intent, in which the ending matched the gloomy reverses to Pip's fortunes that typify the last expectation. Dickens was

prevailed upon to change the ending to one more acceptable to his readers'

tastes in that era, and this "new" ending was the published one and currently accepted as definitive.

Dickens has Pip as the writer and first person narrator of this account of his life's experiences, and the entire story is understood to have been written as a retrospective, rather than as a present tense narrative or a diary or journal. Still, though Pip "knows" how all the events in the story will turn out, he uses only very subtle foreshadowing so that we learn of events only when the Pip in the story does. Pip does, however, use the perspective of the bitter lessons he's learned to comment acidly on various actions and attitudes in his earlier life.

 

第二篇：An analysis of Miss Havisham 《远大前程》英文读後感 great expections 书评

An analysis of Miss Havisham’s character and her tragic destiny inGreat Expectations

An analysis of Miss Havisham’s character

and her tragic destiny in Great Expectations

by Mandy Huang

Great Expectations written by Charles Dickens is regarded as a masterpiece of English novels. It narrates the story of Pip, an orphan boy who has good luck and great expectations, and then loses both his luck and expectations. The main characters invented by Charles Dickens in the book have displayed their own charms completely because of the extraordinary wealth of Charles Dickens’ invention as exhibited in the number and variety of the characters introduced into his novels, his amazing keenness of observation and his descriptive power, and also his creative ability of humor.

Sometimes in Dickens’ novel, the protagonist is described comparatively feeble, while some secondary characters, particularly those with strange spirit are portrayed vividly. The female character Miss Havisham belongs to such figures. She is one of the figures portrayed quite successfully in the book. So in this essay,the focus is Miss Havisham’s character and her tragic destiny instead of the hero Pip.In Great

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By Mandy Huang

An analysis of Miss Havisham’s character and her tragic destiny inGreat Expectations

Expectations, Miss Havisham and her strange dress, life style and behavior attract the readers greatly. Most people regard her as a hateful person. However, she is a tragic person worthy of sympathy. And the causes of this tragic character will be analyzed through studying the society, family and Miss Havisham herself. In this way, we can have an objective and all-round understanding of this image.

Born in an aristocratic family, Young

Havisham is very proud and not truly compassionate and charitable who hates her poor relatives .On one hand she retorts those relatives who are fawning, insincere and just in an attempt to cheat her money sarcastically and exposes their lies ironically. On the other hand, she considers her cousin Matthew a man of integrity and honesty and kindness. Therefore Miss Havisham follows Pip’s advice and leaves a large legacy to Matthew and his son as a subsidy. Her life is totally changed by a single tragic event: her jilting by Compeyson on their wedding day. From that moment on, Miss Havisham is determined never to move beyond her heartbreak. With a kind of manic and obsessive cruelty, Miss Havisham adopts Estella and raises her as

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By Mandy Huang

An analysis of Miss Havisham’s character and her tragic destiny inGreat Expectations

a weapon to achieve her own revenge on men. Miss Havisham becomes a rich, eccentric old dowager living in a rotting mansion called Satis House. This not only ruined her normal life, but also ruined her stepdaughter Estella and Pip who loved Estella. Thus it seems that Miss Havisham is a hateful image, but in fact her revenge action cannot hide her kindness. She was very kind to Pip and arranged for his future. All in all, Miss Havisham is a lifelike image because of the complexity and richness of her character.

The social influence on Miss Havisham’s tragic destiny is too apparent to be neglected. Great Expectations is set in Victorian England, a time when great social changes were sweeping the nation. Although the Victorian Age meets a material prosperity, the polarization of wealth is widening and the class contradiction is becoming more serious, and this result in the corruption of money to human’s relationship. Marriage, love, courts, jails are based on this. Also,The Victorian Age is a male-centered society, the idea that women should be subjective to men roots in women’s mind. Miss Havisham is just the victim of this society. She is abandoned on her wedding

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By Mandy Huang

An analysis of Miss Havisham’s character and her tragic destiny inGreat Expectations

day, but she keeps the room like the day she got married, while on the other hand she tries every means to revenge men. Bearing these two conflictive thoughts in mind, Havisham certainly fails to live her own life out of the control or influence from male. She suffered greatly from the pain of love and her quest for revenge. As an ordinary woman, Miss Havisham can’t be independent from men and her fragile souls make her unable to envisage sufferings in life bravely .Thus the tragedy of Miss Havisham is inevitable.

Family also plays a vital role in Great Expectations, Biddy and Joe’ s warm and harmony family, Wemmick’s castle away from the noise of secular and Matthew’s family. Compared with the dark and deserted Satis House of Miss Havisham, this has highlighted Miss Havisham’s miserable fate. For a pretty young lady with high status, her jilting by Compeyson was a dishonored, disgraceful thing and also an unprecedented setback. Therefore the influence of family environment, the social norms have made her unable to bear the lover’s betrayal. In order to avoid worldly disdain, and also because all the illusions that has

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By Mandy Huang

An analysis of Miss Havisham’s character and her tragic destiny inGreat Expectations

shattered, she chose to be self-enclosed and isolated. This is a tragedy caused by society and family as well.

No matter how great the society and

family have influenced Miss Havisham’s destiny, her personality played the most important role in her life. Miss Havisham was a spoilt child; it was the pride that hurt her. Because of her pride, she discarded the advice of relatives and idolized her lover perfectly; and also because of her pride, she could not accept the tragic love. So she refused to accept other people’s sympathy and help, instead, she hid in the darkness of closed minds which cause she can’t cast off her heart shackles. A failure in her life destroys her faith and also arouses her strong desire for revenge. And the fire of revenge is burning, which hurt the others and also make the ultimate destruction of herself.

By describing the image of Miss

Havisham, Dickens has showed us the contradictions and the conflicts of the capitalist society in Victorian era. He has disclosed the corruption of money in the upper-class society. Through the analysis of society, family and Miss Havisham herself, it reveals the weak

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By Mandy Huang

An analysis of Miss Havisham’s character and her tragic destiny inGreat Expectations

position of women. Itsets people thinking that in a male-centered society, women should be self-respective, self-confident, self-reliant and self-developed; otherwise women would be in the subordinate status in perpetuity, or even undergo self-destruction.

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