“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
– Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Great Expectations was Dickens’ penultimate novel, and was published in October 1861. Great Expectations is narrated in the first person by the main protagonist, Philip “Pip” Pirrip. Set in Kent, Pip is an orphan who is looked after by his abusive elder sister and her kind-hearted husband. He gets taken on by a wealthy widow as a playmate for her young niece, who Pip ends up falling in love with. The story charts his rags to riches story, and we meet some of Dicken most iconic characters on the way, including the sinister widow Miss Haversham, and the scary convict Abel Magwitch. The novel received almost universal acclaim after it was published.