Creative Team

Director — Lester Malizia
Set — Lynette Scoles
Lights — Annmarie Duggan
Costumes — Brian O'Keefe

Written by Charles Dickens
Adapted by Barbara Field
Study Guide written by Gary Cadwallader

Cast of Characters

The stage adaptation of Great Expectations at Seaside Music Theater does not include all of the characters in the novel. Here are the characters included onstage:
Pip - full name Phillip Pirrip. Orphan boy, brother to Mrs. Joe.
Abel Magwitch - An escaped convict.
Joe Gargery - Pip's brother-in-law, a blacksmith.
Mrs. Joe - Pip's sister and the wife of Joe Gargery.
Uncle Pumblechook - Joe's uncle, a wealthy seed and corn merchant.
Miss Havisham - A rich recluse.
Estella - An orphan girl adopted and raised by Miss Havisham.
Mr. Jaggers - A London lawyer.
Biddy - A country girl and a distant relation to Uncle Pumblechook.
Herbert Pocket - Pip's London roommate and son of Pip's tutor, Matthew Pocket.
Mr. Wemmick - Mr. Jagger's head clerk.
Aged P (Parent) - Father of Wemmick.
Bentley Drummle - London gentleman and Pip's classmate.
Compeyson - An escaped convict.
Clara - Herbert Pocket's fiancée.
Molly - Jagger's housekeeper.
Miss Skiffins - Friend of Mr. Wemmick.
Also: Lieutenant, Young Pip, Soldier, Young Estella, Tailor, Young Herbert, Porter, Stable Boy, Prison Doctor, The Pockets (Miss Havisham's relations).

The Source

The single most obvious source of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations is the author's own life. Like Pip, Dickens was raised in a rural area and eventually relocates to the large bustling metropolis of London where life was very different.

One of Dickens's earlier books, David Copperfield, is likewise autobiographical, and Dickens did reread it before starting work on Great Expectations just to be sure he did not plagiarize his own work. The difference between the two books is that David Copperfield touches more closely on actual events in Dickens's life, whereas Great Expectations is a more spiritual adaptation of his early years. Pip's journey from orphaned blacksmith's apprentice to London gentleman parallels Dickens's own journey from poor child-laborer to internationally known author.

What are "great expectations"?

"Great expectations" is a particularly Victorian expression, a means of indicating anticipations of wealth from an impending inheritance or marriage.

The History of the Play

Great Expectations was originally published in Charles Dickens's own magazine "All The Year Round." It began in December 1860, and ran in weekly installments throughout 1861. It was an enormous success, selling an average of 100,000 copies per week. It was subsequently published as a three-volume book in late 1861, and later in one volume.

There have been many play adaptations, not only of Great Expectations, but also of many of Dickens's books. Stage versions of Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickelby, and A Christmas Carol have been performed to great acclaim on Broadway and around the world. Seaside Music Theater's production, adapted for the stage by Barbara Field, was first presented at The Seattle Children's Theater in 1983.

Notes on the novel's text

The following plot notes on Great Expectations are drawn from Norrie Epstein's book, The Friendly Dickens.

The Opening — Great Expectations is a brutally honest novel. Like [Dickens's] David Copperfield, it is autobiographical, a first-person account a young man's rise, his fall, and his reintegration with society.

The novel's opening, one of the most famous in literature, is…called a "clincher": a raw December evening in a church graveyard. Behind the gravestones lies a long stretch of flatland, and beyond, the marshes, mysterious and distant.

In a flash a figure leaps from the tombs, seizes the child, and turns him upside down. The man, an escaped convict, demands that the child return the next day with "wittles" and a file. Out of this command springs the novel's action.

The convict, Magwitch, instigates the boy's first crime - he will steal from his own family - and awakens his conscience. In one chapter, Dickens shows how the birth of consciousness is accompanied by an awareness of sin.

Crime and Punishment — The next day - which happens to be Christmas - as he runs to "his convict" with the "wittles" and a file, the marsh mist thickens, causing him to feel that instead of running toward something, everything is running toward him: "The gates and dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, 'A boy with somebody-else's pork pie! Stop him!'"

...[Pip] believes he has committed a crime almost akin to murder: he has stolen from his sister, and worse, he has abetted a criminal to whom he is now bound as if they shared leg irons.

Pip's is one of the most dismal Christmases in all of Dickens: at dinner, his sister…named Mrs. Joe, continually reminds him that he's a burden, unwanted, and unloved.

Instilling in Pip what Holocaust scholars have called "the guilt of the survivor," she treats him as if he remained alive out of some act of stealth or malice. The dinner guests concur: all boys are bad; in fact, they are like "swine."

The Moral Compass — Pip's feelings toward his sister correspond to the earliest stage in a child's moral development. Mrs. Joe is a punitive deity to be feared and obeyed. But his feelings toward her husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery, are deeper, more mature. A crime against Joe awakens true remorse in Pip, because the former embodies values the boy admires and has internalized. Throughout his life, sin will mean a betrayal of Joe, Pip's better self.

That Christmas night Joe, with Pip on his shoulders, accompanies the police as they search for Magwitch. Just before he is taken away, [Magwitch] confesses to his theft of a pie and a file from the Gargerys, thus letting Pip off the hook.

Satis House — Time passes, the event is forgotten.

The sequence of seemingly casual events in this novel is part of a design that is only fully revealed at the end. His sister and the toadying Pumblechook…inform Pip that an eccentric recluse named Miss Havisham has invited Pip to her house "to play."

Upon his arrival there, Pip is greeted by Estella, Miss Havisham's adopted daughter.

The character of Miss Havisham takes the novel out of the province of realism and into the fantastic. Her shadowy room, a monument to stagnation and decay, is filled with relics of a wedding that never took place. Everything remains exactly as it stood at the moment she learned of her lover's betrayal.

Under [Miss Havisham's] tutelage, Estella becomes a heartless beauty. There's nothing romantic or magical about her; she is Miss Havisham's creature, not a princess but a monster.

Feverishly egged on by Miss Havisham, who also urges Pip to love Estella, the girl scornfully calls attention to his rough hands, his clumsy boots, and his lack of sophistication. For the first time in his life, Pip knows shame, an emotion that leads to concealment. Joe and home are now objects that Pip seeks to keep from Estella, whose judging eyes seem to follow him everywhere.

Apprenticeship — Pip's visits to Satis House continue until he is fourteen. Then, after presenting Joe with a handsome sum for the boy's "services," Miss Havisham exiles Pip from Satis House. But the prospect of working with Joe at the forge, once so delightful, has turned repugnant.

Estella's disdain makes Pip want to become a gentleman. To a Victorian, "gentleman" referred to a man of independent means, or at least one who doesn't work.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS — Now eighteen, Pip sits in the local tavern…when Mr. Jaggers, Miss Havisham's lawyer, appears and dryly informs Pip of his "great expectations": he is to be "removed from his present sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman."

Naturally Pip assumes that Miss Havisham has recognized his noble nature and decided to reward him.

The Gentleman — Is being a gentleman, as Pip believes, merely a matter of manners, clothes, and clubs? By snubbing others, Pip believes he elevates himself. In the strict sense of the word, the crass Bentley Drummle is the only gentleman in the novel. According to Dickens's standards, only the lowborn Joe and Magwitch are men of honor, true gentle men.

Desire — Pip arrogantly assumes that Estella is a condition of his inheritance and creates a drama in which he casts himself as the chivalric hero in an old romance: "[Miss Havisham] reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms, set the clocks a-going and the cold hearths a-blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin - in short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knights of romance, and marry the Princess."

But Estella and Pip are Miss Havisham's pawns and must act in accord with her whims.

The return of the repressed — An atmosphere of suspense more fitting to a gothic tale of terror surrounds the appearance of Pip's benefactor. Darkness, tempests, winds and other ominous portents arouse a creeping sense of horror.

A stranger enters [Pip's rooms] and…and identifies himself as his old partner in crime, Magwitch. When he proudly clasps Pip to his breast and calls him "my boy," he claims what seems to Pip an unholy alliance.

But the felon's reappearance is much more than a social embarrassment for Pip. The knowledge that everything he owns is a gift from a criminal shatters his identity, his dreams and expectations. Estella is not his intended bride, nor is Miss Havisham his fairy godmother. In a flash Pip sees through his vanity - everything that gave his life meaning has vanished.

The Final Tests — At this point the novel turns into something of an adventure tale, as Pip and his friends struggle to get Magwitch safely out of England, where his status as a returned exile is like that of an escaped convict. Like a hero in a medieval romance, Pip must undergo a series of ordeals, each with its own moral lesson, before he can find forgiveness for his misguided life.

Pip returns to Miss Havisham's and learns of Estella's betrothal to the odious Drummle. Pip accepts the loss of Estella without ceasing to love her. He learns to love without expectations.

For the first time since her aborted wedding, Miss Havisham feels the weight of another's pain. Pip sees in her all the dangers that rejected love is heir to: isolation, paralysis, self-pity, and greed that feeds on its own misery.

When her bridal dress goes up in flames, Pip struggles to save her, and the two, bound in his greatcoat, struggle "like desperate enemies." In nobly risking his life to save the woman who wronged him, Pip endures the archetypal trial by fire.

Pip attempts to steal away with Magwitch and live with him in exile, but the two are caught by the police. After the convict's death, Pip returns to his old rooms, already sick with brain fever, the stock Victorian metaphor for spiritual rebirth. Unconscious for over a month, he awakens in springtime to find Joe tenderly bending over him. Only then does he learn that Joe has paid his debts.

Having passed through the crucible of self-doubt, Pip achieves self-knowledge, one of the central themes of the book. Alone, poor, and without his old dream to sustain him, he must learn how to live and work like an ordinary man. Unlike any other Dickensian hero, Pip goes abroad to work…with Herbert Pocket.

Thirty something and a bachelor, he had lived frugally, paid his debts, and has methodically risen in the firm. The boy with the unruly heart has grown into a man who has learned to sublimate desire into duty. The question is having done so, should Pip then be rewarded with the object of his desire?

The Two Endings — In the original ending, Pip recounts his final meeting with Estella. Having been beaten by Bentley Drummle, she is greatly altered in appearance. Now married to a country doctor - Drummle having been killed in a riding accident - Estella is a Victorian matron with nothing about her to suggest her fantastic upbringing. The two old friends shake hands and part, and the novel ends…

Dickens…wrote a new conclusion. Restraining his sentimental tendencies, Dickens made the ending as sad as a happy ending could be. In the published chapter, Pip and Estella marry, but their reunion is so restrained and ambiguous that readers might well wonder what exactly took place. If it is read one way, Pip and Estella will never part, read another, they will never really see each other again.

But ultimately it does not matter: married to her or not, Pip can never possess the rare Estella he once worshiped, because that woman never existed. The old Estella's origins were tantalizingly mysterious; the "real" one is the daughter of a felon and a murderess. She is no more a princess than he a gentleman. Thus the dream girl is not the inaccessible Other, but Pip's other half, from whom he is cut off forever.

What's in a name?

Charles Dickens has created some of the most interesting character names in all of literature. His characters all have names that tell us the reader a little something about their personality. Here are a few examples from Great Expectations. Go to the dictionary and research some of the other Great Expectations character's names.

Pip - another word for a seedling of a fleshy fruit such as an apple.

Miss Havisham - having a sham committed against her. Miss Havisham was deceived and used for her money and jilted on her wedding day.

Estella - meaning the brilliant stars in the night sky. Cold, distant, and beautiful.

Magwitch - mag meaning magnitude or great witch, or magus which means sorcerer or magician.

About Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was one of the great literary geniuses of all time and one of the most popular. It has been estimated that one out of ten Britons who could read read his works, and then read them aloud to many others! He was, as he was nicknamed, "The Inimitable" (although innumerable attempts were made to imitate him) and it can be argued that in all of English literature, his creativity is rivaled only by Shakespeare's. He was an enormously complex man, a fact seen by many of the important literary figures of his day who were acquainted with him. Ralph Waldo Emerson attended one of Dickens's public readings in Boston during Dickens's American tour. Emerson laughed, he said, "as if he must crumble to pieces," but afterward he commented that he was afraid that Dickens possessed "too much talent for his genius; it is a fearful locomotive to which he is bound and can never be free from it nor set to rest... He daunts me! I have not the key."

Dickens's genius, his obsession with work, his life-long love affair with his public, and his deep humanity all helped to make him a literary phenomenon. Because his works appealed to people of all conditions, and because he could take advantage of new technological developments, he reached, from the publication of the Pickwick Papers on, an audience of unprecedented size -- an audience which he was able to influence emotionally to an extent never equaled. He was not merely a writer but also a public figure. He was, for example, widely regarded as the best after-dinner speaker, as well the best amateur actor, of his day, and during his own lifetime he became a mythic figure: when he died, a (perhaps apocryphal) little girl cried "Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?" (David Cody, "Dickens's Popularity")

Charles Dickens Chronology

1812 Charles John Dickens born February 7 in Portsmouth, England. Father: John Dickens, clerk in the Navy Pay Office. Mother: Elizabeth Barrow Dickens, daughter of a senior clerk in the Navy Pay Office.

1816 Dickens family moves to Chatham, England.

1821 Reforms in the Admirality lose John Dickens's his job. The family moves to London.

1824 John Dickens financial trouble lands him in prison for debt and Charles is sent to work at a blacking (shoe polish) factory. At the same time, Charles is a day pupil at Wellington House Academy, London.

1827 Charles becomes an office boy in an attorney's office. He also learns shorthand.

1829 Charles becomes a free-lance court reporter and becomes sought after for his amazingly accurate shorthand.

1831 Becomes a shorthand reporter of Parliament proceedings for Mirror of Parliament.

1833 First published story, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk," appears in Monthly Magazine.

1836 Charles marries Catherine Hogarth. Two of his plays, The Strange Gentleman and The Village Coquettes are produced. Charles accepts editorship of monthly magazine, Bentley's Miscellany. Meets John Forster who becomes his close friend and, later, first biographer.

1837 First child, Charles born.

1838 Daughter Mary born.

1839 Daughter Kate born.

1841 Son Walter born.

1842 Charles and Catherine travel throughout the United States and Canada. Details of his trip are published as American Notes.

1844 Son Francis born. Christmas story, "The Chimes", published.

1845 Son Alfred born.

1846 After travelling throughout Italy in 1844 and 1845, Dickens publishes Pictures from Italy.

1847 Son Sydney born.

1848 Christmas book, The Haunted Man, published.

1849 Son Henry born.

1850 Daughter Dora born.

1851 Charles' father, John, and daughter, Dora, die.

1856 Charles purchases Gad's Hill Place, model for Miss Havisham's house.

1857 After house is renovated, Dickens' family moves in. Hans Christian Anderson spends June and July visiting. Charles and his friend, Wilkie Collins, write a play The Frozen Deep which is performed by his amateur theatrical company. It is given a royal command performance for the Queen.

1858 Charles and Catherine bitterly separate.

1859 Charles starts own weekly magazine, All The Year Round.

1863 Mother Elizabeth dies.

1867 Charles health begins to deteriorate as he makes a lecture tour of the United States that lasts into 1868.

1870 Suffers stroke on June 8, and dies June 9 at Gad's Hill Place. Buried at Westminster Abbey.

The Novels of Charles Dickens

Sketches by Boz (1836)
Dombey and Son (1846-47)
Pickwick Papers (1836-37)
David Copperfield (1849-50)
Oliver Twist (1837-38)
Bleak House (1852-53)
Nicholas Nickelby (1838-39)
Hard Times (1854)
Master Humphrey's Clock (1840)
Little Dorrit (1855-56)
The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41)
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Barnaby Rudge (1841)
Great Expectations (1860-61)
Martin Chuzzlewit (1842-43)
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)
A Christmas Carol (1843)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished) (1870)
The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)

The Timeline

GREAT EXPECTATIONS was published in weekly installments in Dickens's own magazine "All The Year Round" from the end of 1860 through 1861. Here are some of the important events that occurred during that time:

— Abraham Lincoln was elected 16th President of the United States. South Carolina secedes from the Union in protest.

— Confederate soldiers fire on Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861) and the Civil War begins.

— Kansas becomes the 34th state.

— The Pony Express begins service between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California.

— Queen Victoria's husband, Albert, dies, leaving Victoria a grief-stricken widow.

— T.S. Mort builds the first machine-chilled cold storage unit in Australia.

— Jean Lenoir constructs first practical internal-combustion engine in France.

— Christopher Sholes, an American inventor, devises a primitive form of typewriter.

— Daily weather forecasts are begun in Britain.

— First horse-drawn trams appear in London.

— The first British Open Golf Championship was played. (Tiger Woods won in 2000)

— Louis Pasteur publishes his germ theory of fermentation.

— Royal Academy of Music founded in London.

— Great writers of the day included Dion Boucicault, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Feodor Dostoevsky, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Victor Hugo, and Ivan Turgenev.

— Famous painters included Edgar Degas, Eduoard Manet, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.

— Famous composers included Hector Berlioz, Guiseppe Verdi, Jacques Offenbach, and Wilhelm Richard Wagner.

Kent Locations in GREAT EXPECTATIONS

The county of Kent, where Charles Dickens' was born and raised, and where Great Expectations is set, is approximately 30 miles east of London. Some famous towns in the county of Kent include Canterbury and Dover. The three major towns in Kent that figure prominently in Dickens's and Pip's life are Chatham, Rochester, and Gad's Hill.

Charles Dickens was born in the southern town of Portsmouth, England, but his family moved to Chatham in 1817 when Dickens was 5. Chatham is an industrial boat-building town on the Medway River (separated from The Thames River by the Hoo Peninsula), and Dickens's father, John, was a clerk in the British Navy pay office. Across The Medway River was Rochester and further into the countryside was Gad's Hill. The countryside near Gad's Hill is the model for Pip's childhood milieu, and Rochester the model for the 'nearest town'.

The model for Joe Gargery's forge, where Pip is brought up, was evidently a forge about 1 or 2 miles from Gad's Hill. The forge, the house adjoining it, and the garden correspond closely to what is found in the novel, and it is documented that the cottage in which Dickens and his wife Elizabeth spent their honeymoon was a few hundred yards from this forge.

The churchyard in which the opening of GREAT EXPECTATIONS is set closely resembles St. Mary's Church, which, like the church in the novel, lies directly on what used to be marshes along the Thames. St. Mary's was the church in which Dickens's daughter Kate was married three years before he started GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

Mr. Pumblechook's home and corn and seed shop is modeled on an establishment in an ancient three-gabled building in Rochester. At the time Dickens was writing GREAT EXPECTATIONS, a corn and seed merchant occupied this house, and examination of the gables confirms that a bed in the attic would cause an occupant to calculate 'the tiles as being within a foot of my eyebrows.

The model for Miss Havisham's house, Satis House, is Restoration House, situated in Crow Lane in Rochester. It even has the huge iron gates, the brewery, and a detached dwelling, Vines Cottage. Built between 1580 and 1600, Restoration House was so called because Charles II slept there on his journey from Dover to London at his Restoration in 1660.

The name Satis House was taken from another dwelling in Rochester, which had belonged to the mayor during the reign of Elizabeth I, Richard Watts. Once, when the Queen had been a guest, Richard Watts apologized for the modesty of the house, and she replied in Latin 'Satis', which means 'it is enough'.

The Victorians: An Overview

The period of 1837-1901 is known primarily as the Victorian age. It was so named after Queen Victoria (1819-1901), Queen of England and Ireland, and Empress of India.

For Britain and Europe the second half of the nineteenth century was a golden age of advancement and prosperity. Electricity and other new forms of energy accelerated man's technological capabilities to produce more goods and raise living standards' transportation and communication networks expanded across continents and oceans and telescoped time-distance relationships; and Europe became the workshop of much of the world. At the same time the earlier fear of class warfare waned as governments showed increasing solicitude for their peoples economic and social needs. Illiteracy was being reduced by the spread of public school systems. The franchise (right to vote) was being broadened; parliamentary government and mass suffrage were crowding out aristocratic plutocracy; political liberty was on the march.

This period was also distinguished by unprecedented scientific advancement. In addition to the work of Charles Darwin and his associates in biology, fundamental discoveries were made in physics, such as in thermodynamics and electrodynamics, in chemistry with the arrangement of the periodic table, and in medicine with the development of the germ theory of disease. A new model of celestial mechanics was provided by Einstein, while Freud delved into hitherto little-understood levels of human consciousness.

In literature, painting, and sculpture, the impact of scientific and technological achievements took the form of realism, later extended into a facts-of-life school known as naturalism. At the same time, an increasing number of writers protested against injustices perpetrated in a society where cutthroat competition was defended and human exploitation excused as immutable elements in the struggle to survive. Still other artists, reacting against the baldly mechanistic view of man, devised new movements in the arts - expressionism and symbolism - each with special techniques for representing the subjective feelings of the individual. (--From T. Walter Wallbank, et al., "Civilization Past & Present")

The Class system and Education in 19th Century England

Much of what passed as education in England in 1800 was - to put it kindly - catch as catch can, as witness the…evening school Pip attends in Great Expectations, "taught" by a woman "of unlimited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven each and every evening, in the society of youth who paid twopence per week each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it," or her real-life counterpart who was appointed parish schoolmaster because "he was past minding the pigs."

There was no national school system at the beginning of the era, and no one cared. The poor were apprenticed at an early age or went to work in the fields, and the rich had a governess for their daughter and a clergyman tutor for their son until he went away to Eton or Oxford.

It was not until members of the Church of England became appalled at the thought of lower-class children growing up in godlessness because they could not read the Bible that things changed. In 1811 those who were worried formed the 'National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church' throughout England and Wales to spread the Word of God by teaching people to read the Bible.

At first the institutions they created were Sunday schools only, but gradually they became weekday elementary schools. They were such a hit that by 1839 Parliament was supporting these "national" schools with an annual grant of 30,000 pounds, a public subsidy of religious education that is not quite so surprising if we recall that the Church of England was the official state church.

In 1862 the government took another halting step toward uniform national education (elementary education was not made compulsory until 1880) by requiring children in subsidized schools to meet a series of standards - the boys and girls being required by the end of the sixth standard (grade) to read and write simple passages and to do arithmetic, and the girls to be capable in needlework, too. As late as 1871 more than 19 percent of the men and 26 percent of the women getting married could only make an "X" next to their name in the parish register. By 1891 these percentages dropped to about 7 each.

The Apprenticeship

In the nineteenth century, the road to success and fortune often lay along the road of apprenticeship. Surgeons, lawyers, milliners, teachers, shoemakers - all underwent a process of training with a master of some kind in order to get experience necessary both practically and legally to practice a craft.

The legal requirement was theoretically in force for a good part of the century. Under the Statute of Apprenticeship passed in 1563 it was made unlawful "to exercise any craft, mystery or occupation" then practiced in England without having served an apprenticeship of seven years or more, and the law was not fully repealed until 1875.

In essence the apprenticeship was a preindustrial means to ensure that people in skilled occupations learned their business thoroughly and that the established members of the field weren't overwhelmed by competition from cheap upstarts who hadn't worked their way up through the system.

To become apprenticed the youth or his parents or guardians found a master willing to take him on and then signed a contract, called an indenture, binding, or "articling," him to the master.

In GREAT EXPECTATIONS, "The Justices were sitting in the Town Hall near at hand, and we at once went over to have me bound apprentice to Joe in the magisterial presence… Here, in a corner, my indentures were duly signed and attested, and I was 'bound.'" In his undertaking to accept Pip as an apprentice, Joe Gargery, as usual, is very generous. When he and Pip give the indentures to Miss Havisham to read, she notes that he has waived payment of the customary "premium," which the parents of the child being apprenticed paid to the master as compensation for training him. (From Daniel Pool, "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew")

Sample Prices of Goods and Services

1 penny = approximately $1 today
1 shilling (12 pennies) = $12 today
1 pound (20 shillings) = $240 today

Typical Annual Incomes in the Victorian Era:

Wealthiest Aristocrats: 30,000 Pounds
Wealthy Merchants, bankers, and manufacturers: 10,000 Pounds
Landed gentry, some clergymen, physicians, and businessmen: 1,000-2,000 Pounds
Middle class: doctors, barristers, solicitors, senior clerks: 300-800 Pounds
Lower middle class: clerks, journalists, highly skilled artisans: 150-300 Pounds
Skilled workers including cabinetmakers, carpenters, senior dressmakers: 75-100 Pounds
Seamen, longshoremen, some domestic servants: 45 Pounds
Farm laborers, soldiers, typists: 25 Pounds
Lowest ranked shop assistants, domestic servants, needleworkers: 12-20 Pounds

The following goods were part of a cotton spinner's weekly budget in 1844. It was for a family of 4. Income was 14 shillings per week (36 pounds/8 shillings per year):

1 ½ pounds butter = 1 shilling, 3 pence
24 pounds flour, yeast, salt = 4 shillings, 6 pence
1 ½ ounce of tea = 4 ½ pence
Half a peck of oatmeal = 6 ½ pence
40 Potatoes = 1 shilling, 4 pence
7 quarts milk = 1 shilling, 9 pence
1 pound meat for Sunday = 7 pence
1 ½ pounds sugar = 9 pence
Soap and candles = 1 shilling
Pepper, mustard, salt, extras = 3 pence
Coals = 1 shilling, 6 pence
Rent = 3 shillings, 6 pence
Schooling for 2 children = 6 pence
Leaves for clothing, sickness = 6 shillings, 2 pence

The Definition of a Gentleman

The following quote is from an 1865 book entitled The Idea of a University, by John Henry Newman. It can be found in the book, Daily Life in Victorian England.

"Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain…. He has eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking, he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for slander or gossip…. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny."

Did you know…?

The country of Australia, used to be a penal (prison) colony where criminals from England were sent? Prior to the American Revolution in 1776, many criminals were sent here to the colonies. After 1788 the convicts were sent to Australia. "Free settlement" of the Australian continent was encouraged in the 1820's, and Dickens was a huge supporter of the poor immigrating to Australia in order to find a better way of life. He even encouraged two of his sons to resettle there. One way of supporting his ideas was to have certain characters in his novels be successful there, including Magwitch, who becomes a very wealthy sheep farmer. Transportation of prisoners to Australia stopped in 1842.

When a prisoner was banished to Australia, he was to never return to England again. If he did, and was caught, all the wealth he accumulated in Australia would have been forfeited to the crown. That is why Wemmick encourages Pip to get hold of Magwitch's "portable property". (See definition below)

That Dickens's wife, Catherine, also wrote a book? It was called What Shall We Have for Dinner? and was a cookbook printed in 1851 with the author's name of Lady Maria Clutterbuck. It contained recipes "to help wives of finicky eaters."

Glossary

Baronetcy - The land owned by a baronet. A baronet ranked just below a baron and just above a knight and was considered a member of the gentry, not the nobility. He was addressed as "Sir" and his title was hereditary. "Bentley Drummle, seventh in line for a small baronetcy." - Narrator.

Beggar my neighbor - A card game where two players divided the deck between them and then took turns turning over the top card. When one of them turned up an ace, king, queen or jack, the other had to give him, respectively, four, three, two or one of his own cards, the winner being the person who ended up with all the cards. Estella: "What do you play, boy." Pip: "Only Beggar my neighbor, miss."

Blacking Factory - Blacking is another name for shoe polish. Dickens worked in a blacking factory at age 12. "Soon as I left the coach, I went straight off to the Blacking Factory warehouse." - Joe.

Broker - A person who acts as an agent or intermediary in negotiating contracts for buying and selling. "…Wemmick had found a worthy young shipping broker named Clarriker." - Narrator.

By hand - A phrase to describe a baby being fed by spoon or cup, rather than breast-fed. Feeding by hand had a high mortality rate. "Be ever thankful to them what has brought you up by hand." - Pumblechook.

Clerk - An office or shop assistant. In England it is pronounced with an 'a', as in "clark".

Counting house - A businessman's office. "Temporarily employed in a counting house…" Herbert.

Covent Garden - The main fruit and vegetable market in London. It was also to haunt of prostitutes. "Pip spent the remainder of the night in a hotel in Covent Garden." - Narrator.

East Indies - Now known as India. India, when under British rule, was called East India and was originally run by a private company, The East India Company. The British government took control of India in 1857. "Trading in the East Indies interests me." - Herbert.

Epsom - Town in Surrey, England, southwest of London and site of Epsom Downs, where the Derby is run. "One day I was lounging about Epsom races…" - Magwitch.

Fetters - A shackle or chain for the feet. "As Pip ran home, he could still hear the file sawing away at the convict's fetters". Narrator.

Furlong - A unit of measure equal to 1/8 of a mile. "…were living within so many miles, furlongs, yards, if you will, of one another." - Jaggers.

Guinea - A coin originally made of gold from Guinea that was worth twenty-one shillings and was last issued in 1813. "I swore that each time I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to Pip." - Magwitch.

Handel - Pip's nickname taken from George Friderek Handel (1685-1759). English composer who was born in Germany. "Would you mind if I called you Handel?" - Herbert.

Hulks - Old ships pressed into use in 1776 as supposedly temporary floating prisons, but not abolished until 1858. They were located at Woolwich, the Medway River (where Dickens and Pip grew up), and Portsmouth. "It comes from the Hulks, old chap." - Joe.

Old Bailey - The site of the main criminal court in London. A bailey is an outside wall or fortress, and Old Bailey used to be next to the ancient wall that surrounded London. "About twenty years ago she was tried for murder at the Old Bailey…" - Wemmick.

Packet - A ship carrying mail regularly and also, sometimes, passengers. "When the time comes, we plan to row you downriver ourselves, and smuggle you aboard a foreign packet." - Herbert.

Portable property - Anything that's easily moved, in this case, money. "Twenty pounds in portable property, yes sir." - Wemmick.

River pilot - a man licensed to direct ships into or out of a harbor through difficult waters. "…where a man dressed as a river pilot was waiting." - Narrator.

Rotterdam and Le Havre - Large European port cities. Rotterdam is in The Netherlands, and Le Havre in France. "Here, at their moorings, were tomorrow's ships for Rotterdam and Le Havre." Narrator.

Sinews - A source of muscular power or strength. Also a tendon. "Few men have the sinews Molly has, see?" - Jaggers.

Smithies - slang word for a blacksmith or a blacksmith's shop. "Out-of-the-way villages, here, I'm told, quaint little-public houses. Smithies, too." - Bentley Drummle.

St. Paul's - St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The original St. Paul's was built in 604 and was ransacked by the Vikings. It has been rebuilt several times throughout the centuries. The St. Paul's that is currently standing was designed by Christopher Wren and built between 1675 and 1710. Its large dome dominates the London skyline and its bells can be heard throughout the city. "St. Paul's had just chimed eleven when…" Narrator.

Vicar - a parish priest in the Anglican Church. In the 1800's, vicars were considered of slightly less status than rectors, who were ministers in charge of the parish. "Given his intimidating manner, we can hardly dress him up as a vicar." - Herbert.

Valise - A piece of hand luggage. "…you brought your adoration with your valise the day you came to London." - Herbert.

Wittles - Actually vittles, but pronounced with a 'w' to create the dialect of Kent. Short for victuals which is food or provisions. "And you know what wittles is?"- Magwitch.

Great Expectations on Film

There are many great stage, film, and television adaptations of Charles Dickens's works. Seek out as many as you can and compare the similarities and differences. Here are some recorded versions of Great Expectations that can be found in the library or video store.

— 1946 film adaptation directed by David Lean and starring Jean Simmons as Estella, Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham, John Mills as Pip, Alec Guinness as Herbert, and Francis Sullivan as Jaggers. Long considered one of the best film adaptations of a Charles Dickens novel.

— 1974 film adaptation directed by Joseph Hardy with Michael York as Pip, Margaret Leighton as Miss Havisham, Sarah Miles as Estella, James Mason as Magwitch, Anthony Quayle as Jaggers, and Robert Morley as Pumblechook.

— 1989 film adaptation from Disney, directed by Kevin Connor and starring Anthony Hopkins as Magwitch, Kim Thomson as Estella, Anthony Calf as Pip, and Jean Simmons (Estella in the 1946 version) as Miss Havisham.

— 1998 film adaptation directed by Alfonso Cuaron and starring Ethan Hawke as Finn (Pip), Gwyneth Paltrow as Estella, Robert DeNiro as Lustig (Magwitch), and Anne Bancroft as Miss Dinsmore (Havisham). The story is relatively similar, but the locations are now Palm Beach and New York.