Background

Published in December 1860, Great Expectations is one of Charles Dickens’ most widely read books. A canonical work of the Victorian era, Great Expectations is essentially a bildungsroman. It is a coming-of-age story that details the journey of Pip, the protagonist, from a selfish youth to a grateful and humble gentleman. Set against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution, the novel employs tropes and symbols such as the prison system and steamboats to introduce the reader to the sociopolitical context of Victorian England; Dickens also uses these tropes to comment on the differences between the lives of the rich and the poor in nineteenth-century England.

Great Expectations is not just a commentary on England’s legal and educational systems but also a novel that focuses on the particularities of its characters, utilizing the conventions of Gothic romance. The characters that Dickens sketches, along with the milieu in which he wrote, commands readers’ attention. The novel, however, has been criticized for its two-dimensional portrayal of female characters.