1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Meet Mr. Dickens
Historical Context
About the Novel

2. “The spokes- man of London’s poor and plain people.”
Meet Mr. Dickens
“The spokes- man of London’s poor and plain people.”

3. Meet Mr. Dickens Born in England in 1812 (Landport, England)
His father (and the rest of his family) was sent to a debtor’s prison in 1824

4. Meet Mr. Dickens
At the age of 12, Dickens was sent to work in a shoe polish factory; he was part of an assembly line.
This affected his outlook toward wealth, class, and social status (common topics in his novels)

5. Meet Mr. Dickens
He wrote 14 novels in his lifetime. Other familiar titles:
A Christmas Carol
David Copperfield
A Tale of Two Cities
Oliver Twist
Everyone read his work because he spoke to everyone
His novels were published in serial form in the newspaper
He was a social critic for his time. He commented on:
The child labor practices
The hypocrisy of the court system
The inhumanity of the penal system
The widespread alcoholism and prostitution by London’s poor

6. Meet Mr. Dickens “It is a miserable thing to be ashamed of home”
Great Expectations (thirteenth novel; 1860)
Setting is England between
His most unified novel
Emotionally autobiographical
Presents a harsh critique of :
The Victorian ideal of gentility
The value system of the middle class
“It is a miserable thing to be ashamed of home”

7. Meet Mr. Dickens
While working on his fourteenth novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, he died; he left the mystery of the novel unsolved.
Died in 1870; he is buried in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

8. Victorian England
Queen Victoria has been on the throne since 1837.
England is a productive and powerful nation.
A middle class has emerged.

9. Victorian England
England’s population is growing rapidly, and this leads to poverty.
Available housing is scarce; slums are common

10. Victorian England
Children are used in factories and mines; most children did not have any formal education.

11. Industrial Revolution
A period of time in the late 18th and 19th century when there were major changes in:
Agriculture
Manufacturing
Production
Transportation
A trend towards machine-based economics
A move away from manual labor

12. Industrial Revolution
Factory system was responsible for the rise of the modern city
Factories were not regulated, so pollution was not regulated.
Working conditions were miserable. Workers put in long hours for low pay.
Children of poor families began working at the age of five and often worked 16 hour a day.

13. Industrial Revolution

14. The Novel Written in installments to be published serially
Many chapters are cliffhangers
Unabridged version is 59 chapters; abridged version contains less description and subplot
A moralistic novel: good characters have good endings and bad characters have bad endings
Is a bildungsroman, also called the developmental novel, which traces the life of a young person growing up

15. Stages of the Novel Three stages Chapters 1-19 Childhood and innocence
Chapters Adolescence, sin, and experience
Chapters Adulthood, redemption, and self-knowledge

16. Themes of the Novel
Happiness comes not from money but from one’s inner self and the love of others
Wealth and position are corrupt and corrupting
Imprisonment can be mental, physical , and emotional

17. Motifs in the Novel
A motif is a situation, incident, idea, image, or character type that is found in many different literary works
Orphans
Food
Characters with more than one name

18. Symbols in the Novel A symbol evokes an image in the reader’s mind
A symbol is an object that stands for or represents something else
The forge represents integrity
London represents decadence

19. Social Criticism Prison system Education system Legal system
Society that judges people by wealth

20. Time line for Pip's life Chapter One—about age 7
Visited Satis house for 8-10 months
Two years later, Mrs. Joe is attacked
Apprenticeship to Joe last s 4 years
Goes to London at about age 13
Receives allowance of 500 pounds at age 21
Convict reappears when Pip is 23
Eleven years later, Pip returns to the forge, and in the second ending, reunites with Estela