The story is that of a boy whose life is changing over the night and he is therefore forced to adapt by himself, because his family isn’t capable of offering him any help or support. Pip is orphan and his sister and brother-in-law (Joe and Joseph Gargery) are taking care of him. Besides the fact that they all live in poverty, Pip is often beaten – sometimes with no reason – by his sister. One night, while taking a walk through the swamp, Pip is caught by an escaped prisoner who asks him for food and for complete discretion. Else, the prisoner said, he’ll hill him. Frightened, the child obeys and brings food to the prisoner, and also tries to protect him and help him to leave the area safely. However, he is traumatized after meeting this man and begins having frequent nightmares with him.
After a while, Pip is invited to be the chatting partner of Miss Havisham, a local widow. For this ‘service’ he is to receive a little money, so he accepts. As he reaches Havisham’s mansion, Pip sees the maid, Estella, and completely falls for her. He is daily humiliated by both women, but his feelings (of love for Estella and respect for Miss Havisham) remain the same no matter what. One day, after more than five years, he receives a letter that announces him that he has inherited a great fortune and that he’ll be able to reach it only if he will never try to find his benefactor. He moves to a big city where he finds himself in the situation of having to deal with some of life’s problems: his sister’s death, the duplicity of people, the unrequited love, the frustrations caused by the impossibility of identifying his benefactor, so on. His condition gets worse when one day he is visited by the prisoner who confesses that he is the one who gave him the fortune. The prisoner lets him know that he had done that out of gratitude for the help he received years ago in the swamp.
The novel is full of unexpected elements. Dickens’ characters had become legends – especially Miss Havisham, whose macabre depravity inspired many directors of movie and theatre. Havisham has been dumped by her husband right in the wedding day, and that was the moment the time had stopped for her. The mansion where the wedding was going to take place stood still forever: the cake and food were forgotten on the table until they have rotted, the decorations remained untouched, the clocks were stopped at the nefarious hour, and Havisham never took her wedding dress off. The only servant still working in the mansion was Estella. The visual image of the mansion, as portrayed by Dickens, is merely taken from a nightmare, and so is the character Miss Havisham.
The novel is not timely for today’s society, if we think about the fact that all the unwritten rules of that old society today seem absolutely out-of-the-way. However, the book is totally worth reading. “The great expectations” is a book that speaks about decadence and evolution, fealty and reward, normal and absurd – all these in bizarre, unexpected and even exaggerated forms.
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