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Great Expectations was Charles Dickens thirteenth novel. It is a masterpiece, perhaps the author's best work in terms of structure and organization. It is a psychological novel, one of the greatest in all fiction, and it is much more, for it gives us plenty of comedy, tragedy, murderous violence, gentle benevolence, and sociological commentary.
The tale of how the book came to be written is well worth telling, for it demonstrates Dickens's amazing energy, versatility, and adaptability to circumstance. Besides being England's greatest novelist, Dickens was a fine actor: a stage performer and reader of almost unparalleled virtuosity, as well as a theatrical producer and director. He was also a great editor, one of the best and most diligent ever. It was his lifelong ambition to promulgate his ideas of social justice: to improve education for the common people and their health, morale, and general welfare.
During the last two decades of his life, which ended at age fifty-eight in 1870, Dickens edited and completely controlled two weekly magazines: first, Household Words from 1850 to 1859; and then All the Year Round from 1859 until his death. He gave boundlessly of his time and enthusiasm, vetting carefully every word that was printed on the nonfiction side to make sure he agreed with what was said. He published articles on subjects he cared about, written by himself and by staff members and stringers, and long and short works of fiction that he solicited from other authors and often contributed himself.
A Tale of Two Cities, the novel that directly preceded Great Expectations, appeared weekly in All the Year Round from April 30 to November 26, 1859, and cemented the successful establishment of the new magazine. The successor serialization was Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, which also hit the jackpot. In an editorial announcement, Dickens had said, "It is our hope and aim, while we work hard at every other department of our journal, to produce, in this one, some sustained works of imagination that may become a part of English Literature." So far, so good.
The Collins work was followed by Charles Lever A Day's Ride, a Life's Romance. Lever had had considerable novelistic success, but this effort was a turkey, and a damaging blow. Sales of the magazine plummeted. Dickens owned the publication and could not watch its value decline with equanimity. He acted at once. "I called a council of war at the office. It was perfectly clear that the one thing to be done was, for me to strike in" ( EJ964). He had originally planned Great Expectations as a monthly serial, to be published in twenty thirty-two-page instalments, but now he had to compress everything in order to fit the weekly format of All the Year Round. The instalments had to be brief and crisp, the overall length curtailed.
Dickens bounced the Lever work to the back of the book, and Great Expectations became the opener of each issue, beginning December 1, 1860, and ending August 3, 1861. It accomplished its intended goal. All the Year Round thrived for the rest of his life, its 300,000 circulation substantially exceeding that of the London Times. At the core of the novel is a twist on the Horatio Alger theme, popular in all ages, of the poor boy who makes good. Pip (Philip) Pirrip is an orphan, raised harshly by his much older sister and benignly by the gentle giant, his brother-in-law. Unlike Alger's heroes, however, his translation to a higher sphere occurs through no effort of his own. He seems intended to be the prince and to marry the princess. Hubris sets in. Catastrophe follows. Humiliation leads to humility and thus to humanity. Debtor's prison threat ens. The gentle giant is his rescuer. He gets a job and works for his living. At the end of the novel, he appears likely to get the girl after all. . .
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