Great Expectations

In my spare time, I read a book called Great Expectations , it was written by Charles Dickens, one of the most famous English writers. He wrote lots of wonderful novels. This book is one of his compositions. People always like to compare with their friends. It is a big foible of all the people. If other people have a lot of money, we also want to be rich. If all the people around us are poor , we never mind that we are very poor, too. we will not ashamed because of our folly. This is a social problem. If we never possess anything, we will not mind we lost something. Since we don’t want to be very rich ,we will not feel despond because poor. The protagonist of this novel is Pip (Handel). His parents died when he was a baby. His sister had brought him up ‘by hand’. His sister married to Joe Grapery, the village blacksmith. They didn’t have much money, and Pip never went to school to study. But he was often very happy .Because all of his friends are like him. It isn’t very unfortunate to them, this is their lives. But by a chance, Pip helped a convict; he gave much food to him. Then he met Miss Havisham, a very strange old woman and she was very rich. Four years later, Miss Havisham wants Pip to be removed from his home and educated as a gentleman who expects inherit a fortune when he grow up. After hearing that . Pip started to despise his poor friends. He even feel ashamed because he live with the poor man . Pip’s ‘great expectations’ destroyed his life. This novel told us that we cannot compare with others .Don’t feel envy at the others money. And if one day you be very rich , please don’t despise your poor friends.

 

第二篇：远大前程英文读后感

Women’s inferior state

—— thoughts on Great Expectations

Dickens is not a writer disdaining women. Instead，he loves， respects and takes care of them. However, in his novels, he unconsciously degrades women and puts them inferior to men. Great Expectations is evidence to my thesis.

There are three aspects in this novel that I believe this kind of thought of Dickens is revealed.

The first one is that women are fragile. That is not because those women are in lack of will, but that they need surviving abilities and that of self-survival and struggle against destiny. They always turn to men. That can be called “hero saving the beauty”. This notion originated in the Greek tales but is still adopted successively. The only difference between them lies in the plot and structure. Estella is adopted and trained to break men?s hearts by Miss Havisham. Havisham revenges men and marries Estella to an unworthy guy though Pip deeply loves Estella. Nothing can be bitterer than see his lover married to another guy for a man. Pip really fell into the despair of losing Estella. However, Estella suffers a lot and begins to regret for her initial choice for her spouse and begins to treasure

Then comes my second point. Facing destiny, women are physically and intellectually inferior to men. Actually it does not mean they have an inferior intelligence, but that it seems so. Or we can say that both men and women have the same potential of intelligence, but women never show a lot. God creates everyone equally, but not everyone is granted the same approaches to success or achievements. Women are restricted to families, which restricts them from showing a lot. They can cook food well, which is one standard for their excellence but not the one for male. The novel goes this way since it implies the male consciousness. The ordinary intelligence of women in marriage and love is exposed completely. Havisham is abandoned on her wedding 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.

The discipline for women is my third point. A feminist De Bufuwa says: “One is called woman because she is ?made? not ?born?.” Culturally woman is the product of society and the result of its strict restrictions. Those women who do not obey the disciplines are not regarded as gracious or good women by social criteria, which emphasizes on families, the responsibilities for their husbands and their dependence on men. In Great Expectations, Estella and Havisham?s misfortunes are closely

attached to love and marriage. They try to revenge men and but they cannot leave men. Estella leaves Pip, but at last she comes back to him. And Havisham keeps thinking about her marriage day and her husband. So in Dickens?s novel, women are decent on surface, but failed in heart. Every period has an outstanding feature, which make descendants linger in mind. To learn this novel can help us in understanding better women?s efforts to stand up. Society presses public to believe that male plays a dominant role. Havisham can symbolize a feminist but what then? She needs a male accompany. Her ending somewhat is tragic but Estella harvests through a long time, but anyway she wins in depending man and leading a pleasant life.

The above is what I get from the novel in the textbook. And to conclude my opinion in one sentence, I should say：women depend on men. That is not my opinion, but what I get. I have to mention that again since I myself is one part of that group and I am not willing to take a subordinate role in both family and society.