The Classics Challenge: "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens

I had been meaning to read more Dickens for a while. Prior to this, I had only read Oliver Twist and The Christmas Carol. So as part of my classics challenge for this year, I picked up Great Expectations. 

It took me a little while to get into the book. The first half of the novel was pretty slow and a lot of narrative was basically a set up for a rapidly developing chain of events in the second half. Overall, I ended up really liking this book. It had a lot of unexpected depth and examination of human motives.

Our main character Pip gets pulled from poverty into riches by a mysterious benefactor whose identity is not revealed until much later in the novel. Pip, driven by ambition and "great expectations," easily abandons the family he grew up in and throws himself into the life of wealth and leisure. He also forms some unreasonable ideas about the source of his wealth and his own future as it relates to a certain young lady whom he met when quite young in the house of a rich gentlewoman.

However, despite his seeming ungratefulness towards Joe, the blacksmith who raised him, Pip is not a bad person. The unselfish way he assists his roommate Herbert and the role he plays in Matthew Pocket's fortune definitely raise him in the eyes of the reader. Furthermore, the trials and heartbreak he goes through make him stronger and develop his character. He really is quite a likable character by the end of the novel.

I, unfortunately, cannot say the same about Estella, the young woman Pip falls madly and unhappily in love with. She behaves like a spoiled and heartless brat towards everyone including the woman to whom she owes her position in life. It was really hard for me to understand Pip's misplaced fascination with such an unlikable young lady. That's the one thing I believe Victorian novels sometimes suffer from: as long as a woman is pretty, our character will fall in love head over heels with her no matter how flawed her personality is. Overall, even though Estella's and Pip's stories ares somewhat similar, and both of them in the end realize their mistakes, Pip's character is much better fleshed out and nuanced, whereas Estella's remains just a sketch, almost a caricature.

4 out 5 stars. I will definitely read more Dickens.