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Great Expectations
Great Expectations
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GE, Chapters 01-02
The child's bogeyman is good. The entire scene lends itself to a child's imagination run wild by fear. Pip could as easily have met the convict under his bed in the darkness as in the marshes. That is if Pip has a bed. It's a creepy scene, and not the only one.I have no idea about the 1st person narration, but I will miss the omnipresent and all knowing narrator.
I feel for Pip's sister and her plight. Unlike Pip she is old enough to have felt the sting of the loss of her parents and at least some of her brothers and sisters. And her lot in life is pretty much determined. Her husband is a nice enough Joe (haha) if not the sharpest knife in the drawer or the most motivated worker.
It's been ages since I read Copperfield, so I was struck by the first person narrative, and how quickly we jumped into the meat of the story. I prefer it. While Dickens is a master of description and setting, sometimes - for me - it just goes on too long. I'm impatient and much prefer getting on with things. I'm always struck by Mrs. Joe's temper and cruelty, and wonder why she's that way. She may, indeed, harbor resentment that she's been saddled with Pip, but he seems to be a nice enough little fellow. Granted, we're hearing it all from his point of view, but I like to think that his observations are fairly accurate. Mrs. Joe is her own worst enemy, and with a pleasant, if unambitious, man like Joe, she could have a happy enough home, if she wasn't always feeling so put-upon and making herself out to be a long-suffering victim.
As horrible as this opening was, Dickens and, by extension, Pip tempers it with humor, making it not only tolerable, but fun to read.
I was surprised, after having read so much about nutmeg graters in The Battle of Life, that Dickens, again, refers to the tool here in GE:
My sister... had such a prevailing redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap.
Having never seen a nutmeg grater -- or a nutmeg for that matter (thank you, McCormick!) -- this was too much to skim over, so I looked nutmeg graters up. I was surprised to see that they could be beautiful little items. I think of Clemancy's as being a lovely, silver, hinged grater. We know it had engraving. Somehow, though, I picture that of Mrs. Joe being an unattractive, rusty metal thing.
Here's a selection: https://www.google.com/search?q=antiq...
Mary LouFirst, I never, in my wildest imagination, knew that there could be so many forms of nutmeg grinders. Thank you for the link. Going to our shelf and reaching for the McCormack's jar will never be the same.
If you want an idea of where these opening scenes take place, search an atlas or Bing or Google maps for Cooling, Kent, England, and find St. James's Church. That is purportedly the setting for the grave sites of Pip's parents and siblings, where some graves of a family are colloquially known as Pip's graves. Rochester is the town where Pip goes to meet Miss Havisham, and where Mr. Pumblechook lives. Dickens knew this country well. Although he was born in Portsmouth, his father moved to Chatham, only two miles or so from Cooling, and near where the hulks were moored; when convicts escaped, Chatham would have been one of the areas at risk of their presence. As a boy, living there from ages 5 to 11, he would have explored this landscape and known it well. After he became successful, he bought a house, Gad's Hill, between Chatham and Gravesend there in the marsh country, in September 1860; he started writing GE in October, 1860. As a famous walker, surely Dickens walked all over the region where these early chapters of GE took place as he was writing them, just as he walked the streets of London while writing the earlier books set there.
(The house is now a school. The marshes have been partially drained and turned to farmland, but there are still marshes as they would have been in Pip's day if you ever want to go there to explore them.)
This map locates many of the locations in the Rochester area from GE, Pickwick Papers, and Edwin Drood.
http://charlesdickenspage.com/dickens...
the map, however, does not locate Joe's forge. I haven't yet found a source that locates where it is believed that the forge stood, perhaps closer to Cooling, but certainly within walking distance for a boy from Rochester.
Ah, Great Expectations. I agree with Tristram. It is one of Dickens's masterworks. The fact that it is in the first person makes it intriguing as well. Will it, like David Copperfield, run close to Dickens's own life? Will its style, the Bildungsroman, rival David Copperfield in its personal intensity? Time will tell.The setting of the first 2 chapters is powerful. As noted by Tristram the marshes with their muted, misty ambience coupled with the loneliness of the churchyard, create a Turner-like feel, where the image is only faintly projected, but not really seen. This is much like Pip's own life, and the history Pip tries to conjure up as he gazes upon the graves of his parents and five of his siblings. Nothing is defined. The only certainty at the beginning of the novel is that of death.
The fact that Dickens sets our opening chapters at Christmas is both curious and strange. Why set the initial part of this novel during a time of celebration and joy and yet paint its initial events in mute tones and graveyard locations?
Pip's sister, Mrs Joe is, quite literally, a striking woman. Twenty years Pip's senior, we learn that she claims to have raised Pip "by hand" and the reader is told this is the literal truth. We learn that her physicality leads to her doing such actions as knocking Joe's head against the wall or banging Pip's head like a tambourine with her thimble. These actions, while perhaps meant for some slight humour are, I believe, essential to a major arc of narrative that will weave its way through the entire novel.
As you all know, I generally latch on to a name such as Esther's various nicknames in BH, or creatures - generally birds - again from BH, and question how and why Dickens went to excess with them. In Great Expectations may I appoint myself the collector of images of violence. No spoilers, obviously, but I do predict that some very interesting patterns may well unfold, and some essential themes evolve from the thumps, bumps and lumps that we will encounter throughout the novel.
The early encounter with the convict is the catalyst that plunges us into the heart of action. Since this novel was published weekly, we should perhaps expect the story - like that of Hard Times - to move quickly, and the opening events of GE do come both fast and furious. Who is this convict? Where does he come from? How much has he frightened Pip? It seems that he has frightened Pip so much that Pip is willing to risk the thumps and bumps of Mrs Joe in order to steal for this yet unnamed criminal.The criminal threatens Pip with physical harm and, quite literally, turns Pip's world upside down. Here is violence. At the forge is the threat of corporal punishment from Mrs Joe. More violence. Violence and pain. These are the central initiating events of the novel. How long will the violence continue? What will be the cost of such violence on Pip?
Time will tell.
Chapter 1I thought this first chapter was full of moving parts that are the beginnings of a very plot driven novel. Identity, or lack there of, is a key player in the development of Pip, as it felt like he was grabbing for scraps to define himself. His idea of his existence is very out of body, unfamiliar and dejected, as he's being questioned by the mystery man. In addition to the passage you quoted Tristram, the sentence preceding it, I would like to make note of because it also gives the notion of a vastness associated with Pip...
My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening.Pip only seems to be aware of himself through the existence of fear and isolation. I loved this moment because it is so much more than the introduction of new hero, Tristram...It is a moment that alludes to a young life void of a real identity. Granted, his parents have passed, yet their absence seems to weigh heavy on this child's development.
Chapter II
Pip encounters a most menacing character near the marshes escaping this man on the contingency Pip return with a file and food. However, as scary as that incident is for Pip, his home life rivals the frightening interaction with the convict because Mrs. Joe Gargery is unrelenting of her little brother. This particular section, as abusive as the sister is, read to me with a sarcastic slant (perhaps, it is only me)? Pip says of his sister, She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand maybe shedding a humorous light on an unsavory situation?
I love how the Gargery's are essentially a juxtaposition of one another. The words used to describe both characters are most deliberate and have a life of their own while creating two robust and full-bodied character. Compared to Joe Gargery who
was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with his eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet tempered, easygoing, foolish, dear fellow-a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness,Pip's sister is described having
black hair and eyes...redness of skin (the nutmeg grater association)...She was tall and bony...wore a corse apron with a bib that was stuck with pins and needles...She made it a powerful merit of herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so much.Mrs. Joe Gargery appears to be a prickly woman!
Ami wrote: "Chapter 1I thought this first chapter was full of moving parts that are the beginnings of a very plot driven novel. Identity, or lack there of, is a key player in the development of Pip, as it fe..."
Yes. A wonderful couple of opposites live at the forge. Joe and Mrs Joe. I think you are also right in the fact that, from our very first encounter with Pip, he is striving to identify himself, to find a place and a context for his life. This search is then literally turned upside down by the convict. What grand style and writing.
Yes, the first chapter throws us right into what must end up with a life changing course for Pip. What will happen when he meets up with that rogue? How will his sister, not to nice from the sounds of things, react when she discovers the theft?
Re-read these chapters, and this time I wasn't persuaded that a boy of Pip's age could actually pull off all the things he pulled off in these chapters, or that he would. But maybe boys were more independent then and more capable.
Everyman wrote: "Re-read these chapters, and this time I wasn't persuaded that a boy of Pip's age could actually pull off all the things he pulled off in these chapters, or that he would. But maybe boys were more i..."Everyman, how old should he be, I was wondering myself.. Technichally? There's a twenty year difference between brother and sister, but I must have missed his age if it was mentioned.
Everyman wrote: "Re-read these chapters, and this time I wasn't persuaded that a boy of Pip's age could actually pull off all the things he pulled off in these chapters, or that he would. But maybe boys were more i..."Pip's age will be mentioned soon ... :-))
About Pip's sister, who was already called a striking and a prickly woman by Peter and Ami here - qualities that she indubitably possesses: I was actually wondering why Mrs. Joe - it's also quite conspicuous that she does not get any name of her own but is referred to by Pip through her husband's name, although she is not dominated by him but rather the other way round; so that, maybe, the masculine tag is meant to imply that she is not living up to the Victorian standards of humility, tenderness and submission - I was wondering, I say, why Mrs. Joe does not have any children of her own. Is this also a slight hint at what Dickens might have wanted to understand as a lack of female qualities in Mrs. Joe? Be that as it may, I think that this might be a key to her bitterness: Maybe she wants children of her own, and maybe her having to look after Pip makes it impossible for them to have any children of their own, Mr. Gargery's income preventing an enlargement of the family? It is also quite obvious that Mr. Gargery is more like a boy than a man - playing his "who can eat the slice of bread more quickly" game with his nephew, and allying himself with him against his sister. This lack of manliness in Joe might explain why Mrs. Joe feels that she has to run the household and take care of its worldly affairs, and that's why she feels she can never take her apron off.In many Dickens novels, self-sacrifice is presented as a female virtue, but strangely, Mrs. Joe, who obviously devotes herself to her family (even though she does not show a lot of tenderness) is not given any merit for self-sacrifice. Instead, her efforts are satirized by the narrator, who presents her as an unpleasant and menacing, but also slightly ridiculous - cf. the nutmeg grater - character. She is, in a way, the only real adult in the house - just consider how many time the narrator intimates that he regarded Joe as being in the same position of awe and domination than he was.
The prickly quality of Mrs. Gargery is enhanced when the narrator tells that sometimes some of her pins and needles get into the bread she cuts for Joe and him. So whatever she gives to them, is mixed with little bits of steel, and steel reminds me a bit of Miss Murdstone.
The question remains whether Mrs. Joe will be presented as a caricature all through the novel or whether she will get more depth and dimension.
About Pip's struggle for identity: I was quite impressed with the way the narrator describes the marshy landscape here, and I quoted the ending of Chapter 1, where everything, the marshes, the river and the sky, is described as a pattern of horizontal lines, which is quite an estranging way of describing landscape, or maybe just hints at the general voidness of the landscape of anything that gives distinction and individuality to a place. There are only two exceptions to this rule of horizontal lines, namely the gallows and the beacon. The gallows clearly represent death and maybe also shame (because it is not exactly an honorable death to be hanged), and the fact that the convict makes for the gallows, apparently to string himself back up there, links him with death and shame. The beacon might stand for guidance, hope and salvation - and hope, the title of the novel suggests it, will play at least as large a role as death and shame in the course of events.It's quite impressive how at the end of the first chapter, in a rather rapidly-moving narration, Dickens sets the frame of the whole story.
About the nutmeg graters: I'll definitely get my wife one for her birthday - although I hate nutmeg nearly as much as caraway.
Tristram wrote: "About the nutmeg graters: I'll definitely get my wife one for her birthday - although I hate nutmeg nearly as much as caraway."Just as long as she doesn't wash herself with it...
Tristram wrote: "About Pip's struggle for identity: I was quite impressed with the way the narrator describes the marshy landscape here, and I quoted the ending of Chapter 1, where everything, the marshes, the rive..."Yes. I think the two images of the gallows and the beacon set against the flat bleak landscape will find their way, in various forms or concepts, into the novel repeatedly. The fact that the convict is seem heading towards them does suggest he is linked somehow to both goodness and evil.
I enjoyed your comments on Mrs Joe. She does seem to wear the pants in the family ( or would that be the apron at the forge? :-)) and is in the constant process of raising one child and one man-child. As to why she does not have a child of her own with Joe. Wow! That question could take us down some interesting paths of speculation. I would say that she is a steely, flinty woman who sees herself as a martyr to humanity. As one of only two living Pirrip's, and the eldest, she has chosen to wear the coat of self-imposed self-sacrifice. There are those people who enjoy being a martyr; I think Mrs Joe is one of them.
About the illustrations which I think I have finally found them all, there are many, many illustrations made by many many artists. While some artists only made two or three (I think) illustrations, other artists had made up to 40, perhaps more than 40, I haven't counted them all yet. This seems like an awful lot of illustrations that will take up an awful lot of space, so I may skip some of them, we'll see. Before we start there is this commentary on our first illustrator (he's the one with the 40) John McLenan:"McLenan's series of forty plates in Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization — volume IV: 740 through volume V: 495 (for 24 November 1860 through 3 August 1861) — was not subsequently reproduced in its entirety in either American or British editions. As Edgar Rosenberg notes in the Norton Critical Edition of the novel (1999), although the first installment, containing Chapters 1 and 2 and the first half of Ch. 3, appeared on Saturday, 24 November 1860, in Harper's Weekly, that same installment did not appear in Dickens's own weekly, All the Year Round, until the following Saturday (1 December 1860). The American periodical remained a week in advance of the British until 26 January 1861, when (owing to the long passage on the trans-Atlantic route, which prevented the publishers from getting the advance proof-sheets to the artist in time for him to execute the necessary illustrations) Harper's decided not to run the tenth installment (Chapters 15 and 16). Until this point, the American version, amply illustrated by American artist John McLenan, was certainly "the first edition" of the novel, although lacking half-a-dozen of the early, small-scale illustrations issued between 24 November 1860 and 16 February 1861. As of 2 February 1860, installments in All the Year Round were slightly ahead of those in the New York periodical.
Despite the [British] copyright laws, which forbade prior publication in foreign countries, the serial began with a week's head start in Harper's Weekly: "Splendidly Illustrated by John McLenan. Printed from the Manuscript and early Proof-Sheets purchased from the Author by the Proprietors of 'Harper's Weekly'." The tight schedule to which Dickens was thus forced to work no doubt accounts for the many textual changes he introduced after sending advance proof to New York. Harper's would no doubt have maintained its timetable and beaten All the Year Round to the finishing line if it hadn't been for the omission of the number for January 26....
Typically, McLenan created two very different types of plates to accompany the new Dickens novel, of which he may well have been among the first readers on the American continent: roughly square designs of approximately 11 cm occupying two columns (often in the bottom right section of a page) and small rectangular designs of approximately 5.5 cm wide (in other words, the width of a single column on the four-column page) by 8.5 cm high, often in the bottom left quadrant. The presence of so many smaller illustrations combined with an absence of any illustration in five installments (the 24th, 25th, 26th, the 32nd, and 34th) undermine the veracity of the statement appearing at the head of each installment: "Splendidly Illustrated by John McLenan".
Edgar Rosenberg's "Launching Great Expectations" in the Norton Critical Edition of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (1999) is the best source of information about the circumstances surrounding the initial trans-Atlantic publication of the novel in serial form.
McLenan's series of forty plates in Harper's Weekly was not subsequently reproduced in British editions, although there was in fact a proto-paperback issued in 1861 with these rare plates:
. . . two editions published by the reprint house of T. B. Peterson & Brothers, Philadelphia, who had bought the rights from Harper: a one-volume edition based on Harper's Weekly and issued in wrappers, which sold for a staggering twenty-five cents--the first paperback of Great Expectations--and a slightly later hardcover, priced at $1.50, featuring McLenan's illustrations from Harper's. [Rosenberg, 423]
The first American edition in book form was published by T. B. Peterson (Philadelphia, 1861) by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York. The book is unusual in that it gives pseudonym ("Boz"), which Dickens dropped in Britain in the early 1840s, last using it for Martin Chuzzlewit. The book's title page, which mentions "thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan," indicates that its double-columned text (the format used by All the Year Round in Britain) has been "printed from the manuscript and early proof-sheets purchased from the author, for which Charles Dickens has been paid in cash, the sum of one thousand pounds sterling."
The Gibbet on the Marshes
Chapter 1
John McLenan
1860
Dickens's Great Expectations,
Harper's Weekly 4 (24 November 1860)
Not reproduced in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition of 1861
You young dog!" said the man, licking his lips at me, "What fat cheeks you ha' got!
Chapter 1
John McLenan
1860
"Pip, old chap! You'll do yourself a mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed it, Pip."
Chapter 2
John McLenan
1860
Text Illustrated:
Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, which he didn’t seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite, and had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread and butter was gone.
The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape my sister’s observation.
“What’s the matter now?” said she, smartly, as she put down her cup.
“I say, you know!” muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very serious remonstrance. “Pip, old chap! You’ll do yourself a mischief. It’ll stick somewhere. You can’t have chawed it, Pip.”
“What’s the matter now?” repeated my sister, more sharply than before.
“If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I’d recommend you to do it,” said Joe, all aghast. “Manners is manners, but still your elth’s your elth.”
By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind him, while I sat in the corner, looking guiltily on."
"And you know what wittles is?"
Chapter 1
F. A. Fraser. c. 1877
An illustration for the Household Edition of Dickens's Great Expectations
The Terrible Stranger in the Churchyard
F. W. Pailthorpe
c. 1900
Etching
Dickens's Great Expectations, Garnett edition
Kim wrote: ""And you know what wittles is?"Chapter 1
F. A. Fraser. c. 1877
An illustration for the Household Edition of Dickens's Great Expectations"
My favorite pic so far!
Pip and The Convict
Sol Eytinge
First illustration for Dickens's Great Expectations in the single volume A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations in the Ticknor & Fields (Boston, 1867) Diamond Edition.
Commentary:
In this first full-page dual character study for the second novel in the compact American publication, a bearded Magwitch confronts the small boy sitting on the enormous tombstone in the churchyard, exactly as in the memorable opening chapter of the novel. This somewhat static illustration conveys a good sense of the initiating incident in terms of setting, particularly in terms of the weed-infested graveyard, but not in terms of the terror that the protagonist experienced as Magwitch seemed to rise from the graves at the side of the church porch moments before.
Mesmerised by the ragged felon, the boy sits atop a mouldering gravemarker, the words "Sacred to the Memory of" barely decipherable. Thus, the precise passage illustrated would seem to be this, even though the convict is not yet eating the boy's heel of bread:
When the church came to itself — for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet — when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously. [[Chapter One, 1 December 1860, All the Year Round]
In "Pip and the Convict," a full-page dual character study in the compact American publication, a bearded Magwitch, faithfully depicted as "A fearful man, all in grey, with a great iron on his leg" and a rag tied about his head in lieu of a hat, and "broken" shoes, confronts a boy in short jacket and trousers. The one illustration to which Eytinge would have access in preparing this composition, John McLenan's "You young dog!" said the man, licking his lips at me, "What fat cheeks you ha' got!" in the 24 November 1860 number of Harper's Weekly, is more vigorous in its sense of the convict and the setting, although McLenan's Pip is rather too big for the "undersized" boy of the text. In McLenan's middle-distance picture, the convict is indeed ragged, torn by weeds, and voracious; in Eytinge's close-up the salient feature is the boy's expression of amazement.
Joe and Mrs. Joe Gargarey
Sol Eytinge
Second illustration Dickens's Great Expectations in the single volume A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations in the Ticknor & Fields (Boston, 1867) Diamond Edition.
In this second full-page dual character study for the second novel in the compact American publication, the belligerent Mrs. Joe, Pip's surviving sibling, scolds her affable husband in the parlor. Although Harper's illustrator John McLenan provided an ample series of forty plates for Eytinge's study, the 1860-61 magazine serialization offers no precise equivalent for the scene that Eytinge has given us since McLenan does not show the couple together, characteristic as the poses in Eytinge's illustration may be. Much "given to government" (i. e. despotism), Mrs. Joe under Eytinge's hand is an angular, waspish, domineering woman of middle-age (although in the text she is likely in her late twenties only). As in the text, Mrs. Joe is a harridan — "not a good-looking woman" (ch. 2), but as "tall and bony" as Joe is mild and good-natured. Her flaxen-haired husband, the village blacksmith, is a solid, well-built, rotund man — in Eytinge's illustration apparently somewhat younger than his shrewish wife. Seated at the kitchen table, a large mug in his right hand, Joe leans slightly back as his wife in "a coarse apron" upbraids him. Thus, the precise passage illustrated would seem to be this:
By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind him: while I sat in the corner, looking guiltily on.
'Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter,' said my sister, out of breath, 'you staring great stuck pig.' [Chapter Two]
Kim wrote: "John McLenan 1860"Joe seems overdressed in McLenan's drawing, for a blacksmith after a day's work, doesn't he? Have they no table? This illustration just seems wrong to me, though I like McLenan's Pip much better than the others that seem to take the convict's comments about Pip's cheeks very seriously.
What is the convict in the Pailthorpe illustration wearing?! I know it says 1900, but he looks like somebody off Soul Train in the 1970s. I'm pretty sure that hat and suit are purple.
Kim wrote: "Chapter 1
John McLenan
1860"
Wow, this is not how I pictured the convict at all...Did you? The Sol Etynge piece looks more like what I perceived him to appear as.
Pip's Struggle with the Escaped Convict
Harry Furniss
1910
Dickens's Great Expectations, Vol. 14 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition
Text Illustrated:
"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with, — supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
"My sister, sir, — Mrs. Joe Gargery, — wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir."
"Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to be let to live. You know what a file is?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you know what wittles is?"
"Yes, sir."
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.
"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me wittles." He tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted me again. "Or I'll have your heart and liver out." He tilted me again.
I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more."
He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms
— [Chapter One]
Commentary:
"Despite the importance of the opening scene to the novel as a whole, surprisingly not all the illustrators of Great Expectations have attempted it — and none with the intense emotion and energy of Harry Furniss. Although he may not have had access to them, the American illustrations of Pip and the convict in the 1860s by John McLenan in Harper's Weekly and Sol Eytinge, Jr., in the Diamond Edition are useful reference points for Furniss's kinetic description of that fateful meeting on the marshes.
The illustration, occupying a whole page some five pages after the moment occurs in the letterpress, is vignetted rather than framed, its jagged edges complementing the violence of the illustration and the indistinctness of the background, full of menace as objects familiar to Pip in daylight become unrecognizable in the growing darkness. The full-page illustration, conveying Pip's remembered emotion starkly, elaborates upon the visual theme of the man running through the graveyard, a thumbnail vignette in the upper right-hand corner of Characters in the Story on the title-page.
Although the scene is set at dusk in the early winter, the dark background, imitative of the dark plates by Phiz in Bleak House, also reflects the haziness of memory. Seen in the shaded area behind the dynamic figures of Pip on a gravestone and Magwitch, forcing him back, are the static church, its porch, and various gravestones and monuments. The scene is generalized, and does not reflect the particulars of the churchyard at Cooling, Kent, the actual scene that Dickens, then living at nearby Gadshill, Rochester, had in mind. Compared to earlier versions by F. W. Pailthorpe, F. A. Fraser, and Charles Brock, Furniss's interpretation of the dramatic meeting of the blacksmith's boy and the felon in the highly atmospheric setting of the churchyard before sunset is particularly baroque in capturing a precise moment in action, as well as impressionistic in its rendering of the figures, the tangle of weeds in the foreground adding significantly to the mysterious and malevolent atmosphere of the accompanying text. Charles Green in the Gads hill Edition (Chapman and Hall, 1898) does not deal with the churchyard scene, and therefore offered Furniss no precedent, and it is unlikely that Furniss would have been able to study the early American illustrations for the novel by John McLenan and Sol Eytinge, Jr.
Working in the visual tradition of the novel established in 1862 by Marcus Stone, Dickens's chosen artistic partner for the Illustrated Library Edition, Furniss would have had to consult three subsequent British illustrated editions for comparable scenes, namely F. A. Fraser's 1876 Household Edition illustration "And you know what wittles is?", capturing a far less violent moment in Pip's first meeting with escaped convict Abel Magwitch; F. W. Pailthorpe's 1885 illustration from the Robson and Kerslake edition, The Terrible Stranger in the Churchyard, a caricature in the Cruikshank-Phiz tradition rather than an attempt at the new realism, but with some admirably realized background details; and H. M. Brock's 1903 "Imperial Edition" pen-and-ink drawing I made bold to say 'I am glad you enjoy it.'. By the time that the reader encounters the illustration facing page 8 in the first chapter, Pip is still too terrified to eat his slice of bread since he is convinced that he "must have something in reserve for [his] dreadful acquaintance" (8). Thus, Furniss must have felt that only such violence as he has depicted would convince the reader of the boy's continuing to be terrified at the prospect of meeting Magwitch again, "and his ally the still more dreadful young man"
Mrs. Gargery on the Ram-page
Felix O. C. Darley
c. 1861
Dickens's Great Expectations, Garnett edition
It doesn't tell me where the illustration was in the text, so since it appears that Mrs. Gargery is always on the rampage I'll put it here.
I think I'm done for now, I'll share my thoughts on the illustrations once I get rid of this headache I get every time I'm on the computer. (sigh) My neurologist wants me to stop going online for awhile, or anywhere near a computer, but as you can see I haven't done it.....yet anyway. I told her the only thing I ever do online is come to Pickwick. She gave me a funny look and I didn't explain my head hurt too much for long explanations. :-)
From The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster:GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
The Tale of Two Cities was published in 1859; the series of papers collected as the Uncommercial Traveller were occupying Dickens in 1860; and it was while engaged in these, and throwing off in the course of them capital "samples" of fun and enjoyment, he thus replied to a suggestion that he should let himself loose upon some single humorous conception, in the vein of his youthful achievements in that way. "For a little piece I have been writing—or am writing; for I hope to finish it to-day—such a very fine, new, and grotesque idea has opened upon me, that I begin to doubt whether I had not better cancel the little paper, and reserve the notion for a new book. You shall judge as soon as I get it printed. But it so opens out before me that I can see the whole of a serial revolving on it, in a most singular and comic manner." This was the germ of Pip and the convict, which at first he intended to make the groundwork of a tale in the old twenty-number form, but for reasons perhaps fortunate brought afterwards within the limits of a less elaborate novel. "Last week," he wrote on the 4th of October 1860, "I got to work on the new story. I had previously very carefully considered the state and prospects of All the Year Round, and, the more I considered them, the less hope I saw of being able to get back, now, to the profit of a separate publication in the old 20 numbers." (A tale, which at the time was appearing in his serial, had disappointed expectation.) "However I worked on, knowing that what I was doing would run into another groove; and I called a council of war at the office on Tuesday. It was perfectly clear that the one thing to be done was, for me to strike in. I have therefore decided to begin the story as of the length of the Tale of Two Cities on the first of December—begin publishing, that is. I must make the most I can out of the book. You shall have the first two or three weekly parts to-morrow. The name is Great Expectations. I think a good name?" Two days later he wrote: "The sacrifice of Great Expectations is really and truly made for myself. The property of All the Year Round is far too valuable, in every way, to be much endangered. Our fall is not large, but we have a considerable advance in hand of the story we are now publishing, and there is no vitality in it, and no chance whatever of stopping the fall; which on the contrary would be certain to increase. Now, if I went into a twenty-number serial, I should cut off my power of doing anything serial here for two good years—and that would be a most perilous thing. On the other hand, by dashing in now, I come in when most wanted; and if Reade and Wilkie follow me, our course will be shaped out handsomely and hopefully for between two and three years. A thousand pounds are to be paid for early proofs of the story to America." A few more days brought the first installment of the tale, and explanatory mention of it. "The book will be written in the first person throughout, and during these first three weekly numbers you will find the hero to be a boy-child, like David. You will not have to complain of the want of humour as in the Tale of Two Cities. I have made the opening, I hope, in its general effect exceedingly droll. I have put a child and a good-natured foolish man, in relations that seem to me very funny. Of course I have got in the pivot on which the story will turn too—and which indeed, as you remember, was the grotesque tragi-comic conception that first encouraged me. To be quite sure I had fallen into no unconscious repetitions, I read David Copperfield again the other day, and was affected by it to a degree you would hardly believe."
It may be doubted if Dickens could better have established his right to the front rank among novelists claimed for him, than by the ease and mastery with which, in these two books of Copperfield and Great Expectations, he kept perfectly distinct the two stories of a boy's childhood, both told in the form of autobiography. A subtle penetration into character marks the unlikeness in the likeness; there is enough at once of resemblance and of difference in the position and surroundings of each to account for the divergences of character that arise.
The opening of the tale, in a churchyard down by the Thames, as it winds past desolate marshes twenty miles to the sea, of which a masterly picture in half a dozen lines will give only average example of the descriptive writing that is everywhere one of the charms of the book. It is strange, as I transcribe the words, with what wonderful vividness they bring back the very spot on which we stood when he said he meant to make it the scene of the opening of his story—Cooling Castle ruins and the desolate Church, lying out among the marshes seven miles from Gadshill! "My first most vivid and broad impression . . . on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening . . . was . . . that this bleak place, overgrown with nettles, was the churchyard, and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea. . . . On the edge of the river . . . only two black things in all the prospect seemed to be standing upright . . . one, the beacon by which the sailors steered, like an unhooped cask upon a pole, an ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate."
Peter wrote: "I enjoyed your comments on Mrs Joe. She does seem to wear the pants in the family ( or would that be the apron at the forge? :-)) ."
I don't see Joe as emasculated, but as much more laid back and accommodating, a peaceful man who married a shrew and accepts her shrewishness with grace and a degree of amusement. He has his domain in the forge; she has hers in the house.
I do wonder a bit about what Mrs. Joe was like while she was being courted -- what it was that made Joe choose to marry her (or maybe she was the one who chose him because a blacksmith has a good profession and would be a good provider.)
Blacksmiths have to have considerable strength, so he clearly could dominate her physically if he chose to. That he doesn't choose to is admirable. Also admirable is his willingness to take on the responsibility of his wife's brother.
All in all, he's my favorite character so far.
Kim wrote: "Joe and Mrs. Joe GargareySol Eytinge."
That is not at all the way I see Joe.
Kim wrote: "About the illustrations which I think I have finally found them all, there are many, many illustrations made by many many artists. While some artists only made two or three (I think) illustrations,..."Kim
Thank you so much for this information. While we did learn over Christmas that George Silverman's Explanation was first published in the United States, I never knew that Great Expectations in its parts was published for a time in the States prior to the English publication.
This raises so many questions in my mind. Given the fact that the part was complete why did it not appear in England first? Was this due to other material being published in All the Year Round? Was it strictly a financial decision? How long was the sea voyage to North America? How did the publishing evolve and be completed in the States? So many questions ...
Kim wrote: "Pip's Struggle with the Escaped ConvictHarry Furniss
1910
Dickens's Great Expectations, Vol. 14 of the Charles Dickens Library Edition
Text Illustrated:
"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "..."
To me, Furniss captures the early chapters best. There is a stark violence in this illustration. Pip, pulled over the gravestone, his hand up to try and hold off the much stronger and more desperate criminal. And there is, in this illustration, echoes of Browne's dark plates a la Bleak Bouse. And what better place to exhibit a dark plate illustration than a graveyard at dusk with overtones of threatened violence?
Oh my. For 14 pages, there are a lot of posts to read!Well, initial thoughts, I loved being back in Dickens' worlds that he creates. Because of the first person narrative of a child, I was immediately taken back to David Copperfield. Slowly seeing who is kind and who is not so kind to Pip is interesting, and there are already villians worrying poor Pip. I was saddened to see that his actual sister was the not-so-kind one, but at least he seems to have a friend in Joe. I don't know how old Pip is at this point, but I thought it was cute how he said that he speaks to Joe as a "larger species of child, and as no more than my equal". I wonder if it is because Joe is kind to Pip, or he is much younger than Mrs. Joe?
Random observations and thoughts...
I wonder how The Tickler got its name? The actual usage does not fit its name!
I liked the wording that Dickens uses to create the image of the "five little stone lozenges" lined up to describe Pip's siblings small graves, even though it is a sad image.
I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what "wittles" were until the end of the chapter when Pip said he would retrieve some food. Ah....he meant "vittles", then!
I don't know what tar-water is, but it certainly sounds horrid.
Unless I've missed it, I don't remember coming across any of Peter's aviary friends yet, but I'm keeping an eye out. :)
OK, back to read posts!
Tristram wrote: "She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand."Oh yes, that was a great quote! I giggled at that after all the "by hand" talk. :)
Mary Lou wrote: "As horrible as this opening was, Dickens and, by extension, Pip tempers it with humor, making it not only tolerable, but fun to read."You're right, Mary Lou, this was a fun couple of chapters to read even though Pip is describing some awful occurrences in his life. I almost felt bad for enjoying it, yet I did enjoy it and giggled quite a few times.
Mary Lou wrote: "I was surprised, after having read so much about nutmeg graters in The Battle of Life, that Dickens, again, refers to the tool here in GE:"Oh yes, the nutmeg grinders! I did not reread The Battle of Life with the group as I read it maybe 3 years ago. However, I remember looking up nutmeg grinders then and was surprised by the variety. Wasn't there a shop at the end of The Battle of Life named after a nutmeg grinder?
Peter wrote: " In Great Expectations may I appoint myself the collector of images of violence. No spoilers, obviously, but I do predict that some very interesting patterns may well unfold, and some essential themes evolve from the thumps, bumps and lumps that we will encounter throughout the novel"Good to know, Peter! As this will be my first read, I will keep my eyes open in this regard.
Tristram wrote: "There are only two exceptions to this rule of horizontal lines, namely the gallows and the beacon. "Oh, I didn't realize this other object was the gallows. I wonder how I missed that.
Mary Lou wrote: "though I like McLenan's Pip much better than the others"I like the McLenan's Pip the best out of all of them too.
Ami wrote: "Wow, this is not how I pictured the convict at all...Did you? The Sol Etynge piece looks more like what I perceived him to appear as."Oh, I think the Sol Etynge convict looks like a zombie/Frankenstein combo! But not a convict.
I like the Fraser convict. He looks realistic to me.
Oh I like the nicely shaded Darley illustration of Mrs. Joe. Even all the animals are fearful of her. (and I spy a chicken!)
Linda wrote: "Ami wrote: "Wow, this is not how I pictured the convict at all...Did you? The Sol Etynge piece looks more like what I perceived him to appear as."Oh, I think the Sol Etynge convict looks like a z..."
It's the only one I found menacing enough to strike fear in a child... Strike fear in "me!" :P
Ami wrote: "It's the only one I found menacing enough to strike fear in a child... Strike fear in "me!" :P"Well, I don't know as I have not read this book before. Perhaps we will find out that he is, in fact, a convict/zombie. Double the fear!
Linda wrote: "Ami wrote: "Wow, this is not how I pictured the convict at all...Did you? The Sol Etynge piece looks more like what I perceived him to appear as."Oh, I think the Sol Etynge convict looks like a z..."
It does! Look like a zombie that is. :-)
Everyman wrote: "Kim wrote: "Joe and Mrs. Joe GargareySol Eytinge."
That is not at all the way I see Joe."
Me either. Both illustrations - I think there was only two, I dont think either one looks like Joe.
The Pickwick Club
Books mentioned in this topic
David Copperfield (other topics)Great Expectations (other topics)
The Battle of Life (other topics)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (other topics)
Here we are at last – starting our read of Great Expectations, one of Dickens’s masterworks. In 2017 I have decided to keep my recaps comparatively short and maybe to think of some leading questions for each week instead. Let’s see if I manage.
In Chapter 1 we are plunged right into the middle of the story, i.e. after a short introduction in which the hero presents himself as Pip, which is short for Philip Pirrip, an orphan who is, as we learn in the second chapter, brought up by his sister. We learn that Pip’s parents and his five brothers are lying on a village churchyard and that the setting is “the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea.” And that Pip’s “first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things” seems to have been awakened one evening – later, we learn it to be Christmas Eve – on the very churchyard where most of his family are resting:
His crying is harshly interrupted by the appearance of an escaped convict, who is rather a sorry sight, shivering from cold and dampness, and being haunted not only by his pursuers but also by hunger. The convict intimidates Pip and threatens to set a young man, his companion, on him and to make him cut out his heart and liver unless he brings him something to eat and a file. Unlike Pip, who is so afraid to promise that he will do as he is bid, the reader notices that this companion does not exist but is just a bogey the convict uses to prevent the boy from betraying him. The chapter ends in the following impressive scene:
In the Second Chapter, we get to know Pip’s family – his bully of a sister, who is twenty years older than he, and her husband Joe Gargery, the village smith, a very good-tempered, slightly naïve man who is clearly under his wife’s thumb. Pip presents his situation at home in a rather humorous light although he lives in awe and fear of his sister:
It is in this chapter that we learn that the story begins on Christmas Eve, which I found quite strange because Christmas Eve is a very special night, and so it is odd for Pip not to have mentioned this circumstance before. Maybe, this tells us that Pip’s fears of his environment, especially of the convict and of his sister Mrs. Joe – what is her first name, by the way? –, are so great that they make him forget everything else. During their meal, Pip stows away his slice of buttered bread for the convict, but he also knows that he will have to rifle the larder later on. In the course of the evening, they hear the sound of canons, and Pip learns that they are shot as a warning to make people aware that yet another convict has escaped from the Hulks that are mooring in the estuary of the river.
Some questions:
Great Expectations is the second Dickens novel written exclusively in the first person point of view, the other being David Copperfield. What can we make of this? We know that David Copperfield is partly autobiographical, sometimes even to the point of Dickens divulging his most traumatic childhood experiences. Does Great Expectations also tell us more about Dickens himself?
How does the first person point of view work in this story? I mean Pip is obviously a small boy who does not know a lot about the world. How does the narrator make us share this naïve point of view, allowing us to partake in Pip’s feelings at the time, and yet convey to us a sense of an older, more mature person telling this story? Just consider the following quotation from the end of Chapter 2:
I find Mrs. Joe an interesting character: Obviously, she is one of the childhood terrors of Pip, constantly threatening and sometimes even beating him. But is she really such a monster, or can we understand her bitterness, e.g. her reproaches towards her husband of her never being allowed to doff her apron, in a way?
How is the convict presented? Is he only a bully, a child’s bogeyman, or do we get an impression of his sufferings and his fears, too?
As usual, and this goes for all the questions I may come up with, these points are just meant as potential starting-points for discussions, and you are, of course, also welcome to present your own ideas rather than stick to questions.