Name: Great Expectations
Rating: 3.546995377503852 (649 reviews)
ISBN: 9781454901358

Charles Dickens

Sara Singh

The orphaned Pip is serving as a blacksmith's apprentice when an unknown benefactor supplies the means for him to be educated in London as a gentleman of "great expectations."

Great Expectations

Presents the classic story of the orphan Pip, the convict Magwitch, the beautiful Estella, and her guardian, the embittered Miss Havisham

Amelia C 

love love love this book! my darling sister got me a leather bound edition...

Took me almost half a year to finished it! But i must’ve said, it is a good read. 

I quite enjoy all the details that were written from Pip’s Point of View, give me so much new vocabularies to learn! 

But i don’t think i will reread it in any present moment… but it’s a good book!

I’d gave it 4.5/5 for this one 🌟

Sonia Grgas

There's no denying the Dickens is a great writer with a tremendous grasp of human nature. The book was very enjoyable but it was overly descriptive, which doesn't work for me and it loses a star for that.

★★★☆ // it took me a long time to finish this book and would often pause after each part ended. i have to say that i’m not a fan of its prose and i suppose that’s what contributed to my seasonal mood of picking this up to finish. despite that, the core story touched my heart. i often feel like Great Expectations is a really sad story, and Pip was always just sort of floating from one circumstance to another. there are always external events that prevent him from being happy and to really belong to a place. he couldn’t comfortably stay home because his sister was abusive even though he had Joe and Biddy. he was transported to Miss Havisham’s house and fell in love with Estella, but was cruelly disregarded at every turn. he was then in London to be a gentleman, but would later learn that his sponsor is the very threat to the glory he strives for. so, his long journey has always been turbulent but i liked where things ended for him. that end meant a new beginning and going back to the people that held him dear to their hearts even if they didn’t exactly ended on good terms in their last encounter.

for some reason, even though i appreciate the dynamic between Pip and Estella, i didn’t really fall in love with them. i often have this feeling that he idealized her too much. to be honest, from the get-go, i was kind of always rooting for Biddy. she just seems so pure-hearted and supportive of Pip but also never tolerates him when he’s wrong. she’s just so consistently endearing.


  ”Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy today and somebody else tomorrow; she would have derived only pain, and no pleasure, from giving me pain; she would far rather have wounded her own breast than mine.”


Pip’s relationship to Magwitch and Joe are kind of the same in a sense. they just happened to be in different circumstances. i think that ultimately these are two people who cared for him and wanted him to be happy, to be something. his relationship to them were the most touching parts of the book.

finally, there’s this passage in the book that i just loved:


  ”I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob, I broke into tears.”


it perfectly captures the anxiety that one feels of facing a huge change for the first time, of leaving something familiar and comfortable. but it was also exciting and full of hope. it was a reminder that there is really no other choice but to move forward and see how it goes.

Great Expectations, Dickens's funny, frightening and tender portrayal of the orphan Pip's journey of self-discovery, is one of his best-loved works. Showing how a young man's life is transformed by a mysterious series of events - an encounter with an escaped prisoner; a visit to a black-hearted old woman and a beautiful girl; a fortune from a secret donor - Dickens's late novel is a masterpiece of psychological and moral truth, and Pip among his greatest creations.

Benedict Neo

My first ever Charles Dickens novel. I must say it was quite difficult reading some parts of it due to the writing style of the Victorian Era, but with beautiful descriptions that bring inanimate objects to life, along with a mature, well-written story about the life of a poverty-stricken young boy who was lifted from his low social class and transformed into a London gentleman, presented many lessons and caricatures that many can relate till this day.

Perhaps the most important lesson of all being — in the shortness and brevity of our life on the world, loyalty, love, family relations and friendships are the only few things to be appreciated and worth striving than rising in social class and accumulating material grandeur and money, which in the end amounts to nothing but dissatisfaction, ego, and loneliness.

In an overgrown churchyard, a grizzled convict springs upon an orphan boy named Pip. The convict terrifies Pip and threatens to kill him unless the boy helps further his escape. Later, Pip finds himself in a ruined garden where he meets the embittered and crazy Miss Havisham and her foster child, Estella, with whom he instantly falls in love. After a secret benefactor gives him a fortune, Pip moves to London, where he cultivates great expectations for a life that would allow him to discard his impoverished beginnings and socialize with members of the idle upper class. As Pip struggles to become a gentleman, he slowly learns the truth about himself and his illusions, and is tormented endlessly by the beautiful Estella. Written in the last decade of Dickens's life, Great Expectations reveals the author's dark attitudes toward Victorian society, its inherent class structure, and its materialism. Yet it persists as one of Dickens's most popular novels. Richly comic and immensely readable, Great Expectations is a tapestry woven of vividly drawn characters, moral maelstroms, and the sorrow and pity of love.

It took me a while to get through, but I have to say I completely see why this novel has retained popularity over 150+ years. I truly enjoyed it. 

Alissa 

Arjo Gupto

Mr Dickens continues to be the one of the main motivations for my existence as a writer!

Lynn

3.25 ⭐️  I did it! Completed my first Dickens novel (not including A Christmas Carol). I didn’t love this book throughout and quite despised Pip at times, however, I thoroughly enjoyed the second half of the book in which there were some plot twists I hadn’t foreseen and Dickens ties a nice bow on the novel. I will surrender that our dear Charles has a mastery over the English language and I enjoyed learning more about London at that time, yet I can’t say I adored this book as much as most seem to do. Regardless I am happy to have read it and maybe I’ll pick up some other longer classics in the future. Big thanks to the r/bookclub for helping me trudge through this.

Beatrix Haase

I can not remember when I finished this book... So I set a random date

xoxo,
Bebe

Radhika Jones

Written in the last decade of his life, Great Expectations reveals Dickens's dark attitudes toward Victorian society, its inherent class structure, and its materialism. Yet this novel persists as one of Dickens's most popular. Richly comic and immensely readable, Great Expectations overspills with vividly drawn characters, moral maelstroms, and the sorrow and pity of love.

Arianna M

2.5 stars. This could've been three hundred pages shorter with great ease. I kept checking if Dickens had been paid by the word for this (he hadn't! and I knew he hadn't!), because boy does this read like he had! The novel improves in the last quarter—but not enough to make me forget the pain of the first three quarters.
The fact of the matter is, the sensibilities of this book are far too Victorian for me. I understand the context, and I am happy Dickens tried to expose social inequalities with his writing, but this was too long and boring in too many places. Also, there's other Victorian writers who wrote to the same end, that I enjoy more, so it's not just a matter of the novel being a product of its time.

still getting used to dickens' language and writing, so this one took me a bit to get through, but it was a magnificent read. loved the relationships between pip and joe, along with pip and herbert (I still believe they were the ones who were in love, but I digress). truly made me think about women's station in life in these ages, how manipulation can work its terror. I hold a dear place in my heart for pip pirrip; I think he is a sweet boy at heart who just wants to do right, but is easily swayed by the wonders of social advancement due to his inner insecurity. he reminds me a bit of myself, in some ways. (I would also like to add that, although not knowing whether this is an unpopular opinion or not, I actually prefer the original ending to this novel to the new one. it seems more fitting.)

all in all, I'd like to thank my ap lit teacher for assigning this as our summer reading—one of my favorite classics for sure!

nita

still getting used to dickens' language and writing, so this one took me a bit to get through, but it was a magnificent read. loved the relationships between pip and joe, along with pip and herbert (I still believe they were the ones who were in love, but I digress). truly made me think about women's station in life in these ages, how manipulation can work its terror. I hold a dear place in my heart for pip pirrip; I think he is a sweet boy at heart who just wants to do right, but is easily swayed by the wonders of social advancement due to his inner insecurity. he reminds me a bit of myself, in some ways. (I would also like to add that, although not knowing whether this is an unpopular opinion or not, I actually prefer the original ending to this novel to the new one. it seems more fitting.)

all in all, I'd like to thank my ap lit teacher for assigning this as our summer reading—one of my favorite classics for sure!

Great Expectations

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