Dickens - Great Expectations - An educational journey begins.
Well, thanks to Dr. Bodow and his untiring obsession with turning me on to Benjamin McEvoy -- I'm going to try to get my Oxford University English Literature Degree ... for free.
https://benjaminmcevoy.com/get-oxford-university-english-literature-education-free/
Do click or cut and paste or whatever you do.
Then, in skimming and wandering through this potential project, the first thing I discovered was that I did not know how to read ... so we must digest How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren; (this book must be a read in progress).
And also the You Tube interviews they did (I've done enough work, put it in your search box on You Tube).
I am trying to remember if I ever did read Great Expectations, or if I am a victim of enjoying TV and movie adaptations to the point where I THINK I read it. One gets to the age where the dodges once was wont to indulge in to deceive professors 45 years ago have become accomplished facts. Perhaps one should be kinder to those who self deceive politically; we all do it to a greater or lesser degree (though frankly, most of us don't become cult members in the process).
I am going to TRY to keep these essays under/around 500 words, as Timothy Tosswill demanded, rightly indicating that none of us had anything to say that needed more words. Given he was the only Oxford graduate I ever knew, I think taking his guidance in this case is wise.
About the book ..
One may think 'the clothes make the man' as the Colin Firth's Kingsman instructs us, and humans are deeply appearance driven. The feathers we adorn ourselves with are a multibillion dollar industry after all (and a significant pollutant ... oops, not here).
Joe Gargery’s refined heart and soul is well reflected in his profound discomfort and ill-seeming in anything but his working garb. Pip, no matter how expensive the clothes he dons, or how he tries to reveal himself only to those he may successfully deceive, knows that, far from making the man, clothes are far more likely to reveal his true nature.
The first time the word clothing is used, it is to threaten, and to indicate that clothing is used to hide … (though we don’t use bedclothes and clothes interchangeably anymore – ‘sheets’ are the thing, but I digress) “A boy may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open.” And here is a thread of the entire novel; whenever Pip thinks his future and his present secure and safe, whatever world he builds to house his dreams, the realities of life come softly in and tear his illusions away, leaving him naked to the world, torn asunder.
When the ‘yellowed and withered’ Miss Havisham and the ‘court’ suited Joe Gargery meet, they cannot even interact, and the costumes in their scene make the division between them clear and distinct.
The changes of clothing, the search for the right costume, either to fit in where one does not belong, or to hide from discovery, or to cling to a past reality, provide touchstones for the novel’s greater themes.
No acquisition of wealth, or power, or strength, or nature bestowed beauty changes the essential character of Man. His is either pure and refined steel, (Joe Gargery); rotted, disillusioned and decaying (Miss Havisham), or a struggling work in progress from resentful child to responsible adult (Pip). You can change, but it is not the outward trappings that either makes or catalyzes that change, rather it is the steady work of acknowledgment, repentance and hard work that effect that final transformation. At the close of the novel (we will ignore Dickens’ poor choice to bow to public desire for happy endings) we know Pip waited too long to embark on the work each of us must undertake to pound our misshapen metal into some useful shape. He was unwilling to act on the guilt he felt in how he was treating Joe and Biddy from the first pages of the book … waiting until the last to clear the detritus of his ‘great expectations’ and do the difficult work of building a man.
You could, truly, know the entire story’s most essential parts by looking at the costume renderings for a film of it. From the simplicity of Joe, through the rise and fall - and moral rise again of Pip, the raggedy prison to the ‘shorts disguise of Magwitch, the town and country of Wemmick, the yellowed rot of Miss Havisham, all would be revealed.
It is easy to be angry with, have contempt for, even dislike Pip, but I caution you that in so doing, you are angered and have contempt for yourself; who among us has not lied to protect ourselves? Lied to ourselves to comfort ourselves? Let difficult acknowledgements slide for days, weeks, years, because we were not forced to make them? Do not see Pip as shallow, my friend, for you might find yourself looking in a mirror.
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