1. On Great Expectations: Theme and Significance
Nov. 2006

2. Instructor: Dr. Yuan Honggeng
兰州市天水路472号兰州大学柏斋503室　
电话：

3. Analysis of the Theme
Great Expectations is an apprentice novel or an initiation story that revolves around the life of Pip. From the time he was a mere child, probably seven or eight years old, until he was in his mid-thirties, Pip’s life story, the important events as well as trivial episodes, reminds the reader the stubborn fact that life is difficult in more than one way. Along his life journey, he acquires a menagerie of different acquaintances and friends that influence him in his decisions and goals for his life.

4. Analysis of the Theme
Pip’s story has one main point: though people are not always what they seem, he remains who he is inside. Pip does not realize this at first. From the time he met Estella and Miss Havisham, Pip tried to change himself to fit a mold that he thought they desired. He began simply, learning to read and write. As time went on, and his circumstances changed, Pip pulled farther and farther away from where he came from and who he was. Through his story, people see that this type of change brings him no joy but just the opposite , as shown in Pip's case.

5. From Milton’s Paradise Lost
“Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of the forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world….”

6. A Subversion of the Optimistic Pattern
Pip’s story is not about “living happily ever after” with Estella. The title Great Expectations it self is a big irony, as we have discussed before. Dickens never tells the reader what happens, if anything, between them in the end. He leaves it open for the read to imagine.

7. Temptation
The temptation Adam and Eve faced as shown in Masaccio's painting reminds one of Pip’s life story. In a way, one may approach the novel from the archetypal and mythological criticism. Pip is another Adam who never understood women and the concept of happiness. Although a sinner, he has not lost his dignity.

8. The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden
What would be Pip’s Garden of Eden?
Throughout the novel Pip is plagued by powerful feelings of guilt and shame, and everywhere he goes he tends to encounter symbols of justice: handcuffs, gallows, prisons and courtrooms. What is the role of guilt in the novel? What does it mean to be Innocent”?

9. The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden
The end of the novel has two versions In the first version, Pip and Estella meet again, when they are mature and wiser,
only to separate permanently. In the revised version the author leaves it open to the reader to believe whether they will be permanently united or not. Obviously, the author hints at the Biblical scene of Adam and Eve’s Expulsion from the
Garden of Eden.

10. Paradise Regained?

11. Distinction between Story and Plot
E.M. Forster made a helpful distinction between story and plot. A story is ‘a narrative of events in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality.’ A story arouses only curiosity; a plot demands some intelligence and memory. Thus plotting is the process of converting story into plot, of changing a chronological arrangement of incidents into a causal and inevitable arrangement. This functioning of some kind of intelligent overview of action, which establishes principles of selection and relationship among episodes, makes a plot. Surely there must be more than episode, the relation among the episodes must be close, and the selection of episodes must constitute a ‘whole’ action.

12. Distinction between Story and Plot
Therefore plot is an intellectual formation about the relations among the incidents. E.M. Forster made a helpful distinction between story and plot. A story is ‘a narrative of events in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality.’ A story arouses only curiosity; a plot demands some intelligence and memory.

13. Distinction between Story and Plot
Thus plotting is the process of converting story into plot, of changing a chronological arrangement of incidents into a causal and inevitable arrangement. This functioning of some kind of intelligent overview of action, which establishes principles of selection and relationship among episodes, makes a plot. Surely there must be more than episode, the relation among the episodes must be close, and the selection of episodes must constitute a ‘whole’ action.

14. Dickens’ story in question subverts the accustomed familial happiness
Any human retribution is but an expression of the will of the omnipotent being. Dickens’ story in question subverts the accustomed familial happiness that finally brings the suffering protagonist and his sweetheart together, after the young man going through so many vicissitudes, by refusing a psychologically satisfactory ending, as the open and self-willingly ambiguous closure suggests: "…I have been bent and broken, but--I hope—into a better shape” and “ I saw no shadow of another parting from her."

15. Roland Barthes' argument on Oedipus the King's archetypal significance
We find that Great Expectations once more supports Roland Barthes' argument on Oedipus the King's archetypal significance as a universal narrative pattern, especially that of a detective narrative. "Isn't every story a form of the Oedipus story? Isn't all narrative a search for one's origins, an expression of one's encounters with the Law, an involvement in the dialectic of tenderness and hate?" (“每一个故事不都是俄底浦斯故事的一种形式吗？所有的叙事不都旨在寻根、都表达了人与规训对抗时的心境、都反映了爱与恨的纠葛吗？”)

16. The appreciation of the novel is multi-folded
As a masterpiece written in the last stage of the writer’s literary career, the novel is abundant in the significances it conveys, admits different or even controversial interpretations; moreover, its intricate plot enables it to be pigeon-holed or associated with several subgenres. Accordingly, the appreciation of the novel is multi-folded.

17. The appreciation of the novel is multi-folded
First of all, it certainly could be read as a fable, repeating the Oedipean tragedy when man tries to challenge his fate. Then it is an apprentice novel, or a Bildungsroman, telling the ever repeated but never tiring theme of a young man covets, gets and losses happiness embodied in wealth, social position and above all, sexual love but became mature, stronger and wiser at the end.

18. The appreciation of the novel is multi-folded
It could be read as a realistic social satire, too, ridiculing prejudices and human follies that corrupt the young. It could be read as a touching romance, relating how a noble-minded forlorn lover painstakingly pursues his sweetheart in spite of all the obstacles, tenderly indulges in the most beautiful and noblest feelings that a lover could possess, and bravely faces his frustrations.

19. The appreciation of the novel is multi-folded
Moreover, it would not be far-fetched or absurd to say it is also a Gothic story and a detective story as well for characteristics of these two genres are respectively betrayed in its setting, the weaving of the plot and characterization. Moreover, it would not be far-fetched or absurd to say it is also a Gothic story and a detective story as well for characteristics of these two genres are respectively betrayed in its setting, the weaving of the plot and characterization.

20. A Bibliography for the Course Fiction in English
Baldick, Chris ed., A Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms, Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2000.
1. Drabble, Margaret, The Oxford Company to English Literature, London, Oxford University Press, 1985.
2. W·C·布斯：《小说修辞学》（华明等译），北京大学出版社，1987。
(Booth, Wayne C., The Rhetoric of Fiction, University of Chicago Press,, 1983 [first published in 1969].)
3. Warren, Robert Penn, “Why Do We Read Fiction?” (handout)

21. 4. 爱·莫·福斯特：《小说面面观》（苏炳文译），广州：花城出版社，1984。
(Forster, Edward Morgan, Aspects of the Novel, London, Edward Arnold, 1927.)
5. 侯维瑞：《现代英国小说史》，上海外语教育出版社，1985。
6. 瞿世镜等：《当代英国小说》，北京：外语教学与研究出版社，1998。
7. 伊恩·P·瓦特：《小说的兴起》（高原等译），北京：三联书店，1992。
(Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.)