Great Expectations Charles Dickens THE EMC MASTERPIECE SERIES Access Editions SERIES EDITOR Robert D. Shepherd EMC/Paradigm Publishing St. Paul, Minnesota Staff Credits: For EMC/Paradigm Publishing, St. Paul, Minnesota Laurie Skiba Eileen Slater Editor Editorial Consultant Shannon O’Donnell Taylor Jennifer J. Anderson Associate Editor Assistant Editor For Penobscot School Publishing, Inc., Danvers, Massachusetts Editorial Design and Production Robert D. Shepherd Charles Q. Bent President, Executive Editor Production Manager Christina E. Kolb Diane Castro Managing Editor Compositor Sara Hyry Janet Stebbings Editor Illustrator Allyson Stanford Editor Sharon Salinger Copyeditor Marilyn Murphy Shepherd Editorial Advisor ISBN 0-8219-1641-6 Copyright © 1998 by EMC Corporation All rights reserved. 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Published by EMC/Paradigm Publishing 875 Montreal Way St. Paul, Minnesota 55102 Printed in the United States of America. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 xxx 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 Table of Contents Illustration . v The Life and Works of Charles Dickens. vi Time Line of Dickens’s Life . viii The Historical Context of Great Expectations .............x Characters in Great Expectations . xvi Echoes . xix Chapter 1. 1 Chapter 2 . 6 Chapter 3 . 15 Chapter 4 . 20 Chapter 5 . 29 Chapter 6 . 39 Chapter 7 . 43 Chapter 8 . 54 Chapter 9 . 66 Chapter 10 . 73 Chapter 11 . 80 Chapter 12 . 94 Chapter 13 . 100 Chapter 14 . 111 Chapter 15 . 114 Chapter 16 . 126 Chapter 17 . 131 Chapter 18 . 140 Chapter 19 . 153 Chapter 20 . 170 Chapter 21 . 179 Chapter 22 . 184 Chapter 23 . 197 Chapter 24 . 206 Chapter 25 . 213 Chapter 26 . 224 Chapter 27 . 232 Chapter 28 . 241 iii Chapter 29 . 248 Chapter 30 . 261 Chapter 31 . 270 Chapter 32 . 279 Chapter 33 . 285 Chapter 34 . 292 Chapter 35 . 298 Chapter 36 . 306 Chapter 37 . 313 Chapter 38 . 323 Chapter 39 . 336 Chapter 40 . 348 Chapter 41 . 362 Chapter 42 . 368 Chapter 43 . 375 Chapter 44 . 383 Chapter 45 . 391 Chapter 46 . 399 Chapter 47 . 407 Chapter 48 . 414 Chapter 49 . 421 Chapter 50 . 432 Chapter 51 . 436 Chapter 52 . 444 Chapter 53 . 450 Chapter 54 . 462 Chapter 55 . 476 Chapter 56 . 485 Chapter 57 . 491 Chapter 58 . 502 Chapter 59 . 510 The Revised Ending of Great Expectations . 512 Plot Analysis of Great Expectations. 517 Creative Writing Activities . 520 Critical Writing Activities . 522 Projects. 524 Glossary . 526 Handbook of Literary Terms . 000 iv GREAT EXPECTATIONS Miss Havisham ILLUSTRATION v THE LIFE AND WORKS OF Charles Dickens Charles Dickens (1812–1870). Charles Dickens was born at Portsea near Portsmouth, England, the second of eight children. His early childhood seems to have been a happy one. Charles’s father, however, was unwise with his money and went deeply into debt. The family moved to London when Charles was eleven, and soon after, his father was sent to debtor’s prison. At that time Charles had to leave school and support himself working at a factory labeling bottles for four months before his father was released and the family reunited. Afterward, Charles Dickens never spoke of this experience, but the pain of it shaped his writing, particularly Charles Dickens in his descriptions of the sufferings of poor children, orphans, and other victims of injustice. This experience also created in Dickens a grim determination to succeed. After leaving school again at age fifteen, Dickens worked as a clerk in the law firm of Ellis and Blackmore at Gray’s Inn. His diligent study of court matters and of shorthand soon led to a career as a journalist, which Dickens began by reporting on events in criminal court. By 1832 he was a general reporter for the True Sun and a parliamentary reporter for the Mirror of Parliament. In his free time, he began to write short fictional character sketches, which he published in various magazines under the pseudonym Boz. After attract- ing considerable attention for their lively humor, these early writings were published in book form in 1836 as Sketches by Boz. The following year proved pivotal for Dickens. Just weeks after Sketches by Boz was issued, the first monthly installment of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, appeared. At this time Dickens also married Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of the editor of the Evening Chronicle. His much beloved sister-in- law Mary Hogarth came to live with the young couple, but contracted a sudden illness and died in Charles’s arms. Her loss was a deep blow from which Dickens does not seem to have ever recovered. Nearly all of Dickens’s major works of fiction were first published in serial form, appearing in weekly or monthly magazines, sometimes with hundreds of thousands of readers waiting eagerly for each new installment. The Pickwick Papers had a slow start but quickly became a publishing phenom- enon, and Dickens enjoyed a lavish social life and friend- ships with many celebrities of the day. However, his social life did not keep him from writing prodigiously. In the fol- lowing twelve years, his major works included Oliver Twist, vi GREAT EXPECTATIONS A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Dombey and Son. During this time, Dickens’s writings moved from humor to increasingly complex social criticism of a world ruled by the business interests of the industrial revolution rather than human feeling. David Copperfield, published in 1849, was Dickens’s most autobiographical novel, marking the point in his career at which he had come to a more mature view of himself and the intricate workings of society. In the next decade, he published some of his greatest works, including Hard Times, Bleak House, and A Tale of Two Cities. During this time Dickens also founded and edited two magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round, in which he serialized some of his essays and fiction. In 1859, after years of increasing marital tension, Dickens separated from his wife and moved with most of his ten chil- dren to a country house at Gad’s Hill, near his childhood home in Chatham. There he wrote Our Mutual Friend and Great Expectations. In 1867 he left England for a successful reading tour of the United States. The traveling took a tremendous physical toll on him and he returned to England the following year in declining health. Even so, he insisted on making a tour of England in 1869. A physical collapse forced him to suspend the tour, but did not keep him from giving a farewell series of lectures in London in the winter of 1870. On June 8, after a full day of work on his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens had a fatal stroke and died the following day. In addition to his novels and work as an editor, Dickens loved the theater, and led an amateur company for many years. His enthusiasm for amateur theater is reflected in the.