Life of Lydia

Dear readers, my mother who is in her forties, is into reading obscure works by C.S. Lewis and friends. Her latest author is George McDonald, who was a favorite of C.S. Lewis. According to my mother George McDonald is “Only the most influential Victorian writer.” A very small percentage of the population has ever heard of him, and an even smaller has read read any of his writings. My mother has begun a great quest of reading obscure books that influenced C.S .Lewis.

Sometimes I feel guilty because I am not beginning this quest. I haven’t read Phantasies , The Fairy Queen, The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, or The Odyssey in the Original Greek. (All I’ve read is a translation) But I did read Great Expectations, so that’s something. I have to remind myself that the age of sixteen is a time of life when it’s appropriate to just read normal, everyday classics.

Great Expectations was my third full length Dickens novel, and was another step in my great quest to read all the normal classics. Although, somehow, it feels strange to classify it as “normal”, because parts of it are just plain weird. I had to accept that although Miss Havisham’s lifestyle would not be plausible in real life, it is in the book and I was just going to have to live over it. Everything about Miss Havisham felt more Charlotte Brontë than Charles Dickens.

Great Expectations was dark, but a different flavor of dark than A Tale of Two Cites (TOTC). TOTC is written from a zoomed out perspective, switching around between places and characters. The world of TOTC is one of mass death and terror, so naturally the book is going to feel dark. Great Expectations on the other hand, has a much more zoomed in perspective. Written in first person it tells of the life of one boy, Pip, and his slow decay into idle self-centered apathy, and finally his gradual rise out of it. Readers painfully watch as he is led astray by Miss Havisham and Estella. The further he gets into his wealth the more depressed and unhappy he becomes. So naturally, Great Expectations is also going to be dark.

Charles Dickens seems to have a way of writing books that are depressing, but at the same time worth reading. Great Expectations is no exception.