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Journey Into Dickens

Before I picked up Great Expectations, I was excited, because although I’d stopped myself from watching the TV adaptation at Christmas, I’d caught glimpses of grey houses and dreary rooms and thought “that’s right up my street”. I’d imagined something akin to Jane Eyre and Northanger Abbey and I decided that Great Expectations ought to be my first Dickens novel, whenever I finally read him.

Before I picked up Great Expectations I was unsure. This was a Victorian novel, and while I love Victorian novels, I’ve never read one by a man. This one was written by a man. I was apprehensive because I knew the writing style was likely to be different and that the handling of female characters might not be as favourable. In short I was afraid of the male-dominated society.

When I first picked up Great Expectations the first chapter completely threw me, and I wondered if I was too tired to comprehend it, even though it was early morning and I was totally awake. But I got through it and was able to understand it from the second chapter.

When I first picked up Great Expectations I really wasn’t sure I’d made the right choice, either of novel or writer. I looked to the internet for an explanation of the wordy writer, I accepted that perhaps he really would fulfil my assumptions.

When I later picked up Great Expectations I fell in love. Truly the story was rather strange, the sister awful, the lady crazy, and the child sometimes irritating. But I started to appreciate Dickens’s writing, his humour, and his characters.

When I later picked up Great Expectations I never put it down. Like Pip I had never had great expectations, until now.

 
 

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