Notes
1. Quoted in Stephen Wall, p. 285
2. See e.g. Willoughby Matchett's passionate defence in
'The Strange Case of Great Expectations', The Dickensian 3 (1913),
33-36, and John Lucas, p. 288.
3. Dickens, His Character, Comedy and Career (London, 1949), p. 295.
4. The World of Charles Dickens, p. 271.
5. See letter to Bulwer Lytton, 24 june 1861 and to
John Forster of 1 July 1861.
Nonesuch Letters, III, p. 225-226 and the minor changes between
MS, Houshold Words, and subsequently revised editors.
6. Stephen Wallp. 294.
7. To mention a few: Q.D. Leavis in Dickens the Novelist;
James Reed, 'The Fulfilment of Pip's Expectations',
The Dickensian 55 (1959); A.O.J. Cockshut in
The Imagination of Charles Dickens (London, 1961);
Martin Meisel, 'The Ending of Great Expectations', Essays in
Criticism 15 (1965); George Gissing expounds on 'Lytton s imbecile
suggestionin Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (London, 1898), p. 179.
8. Garis, p. 206.
9. Or, alternatively, he may feel with Ross Dabney, that 'Pip deserves no more
than the chance he earned with his one act of disinterested generosity
when he was rich, the chance to work for his keep in kindly surroundings'.
Love and Property in the Novels of Dickens, p. 148.
10) For all her grotesquenessMiss Havisham is very 'real' because of Pip's
remarkably detached observation of her. This detachment may have been
enhanced by Dickens having based his portrait on a character called
'Miss Mildew' in a fairly unknown playlet he is supposed to have seen,
and partly on two well-known London eccentrics, also dressed in white.
See Martin Meisel's persuasive study: 'Miss Havisham Brought to Book',
PMLA 81 (1966) and Harry Stone, 'The Genesis of a Novel: Great Expectations',
Charles Dickens 1812-1870: A Centenary Volume, edited by E.W.F. Tom!in,
(London, 1969)
11) The novel is deeply concerned with the question of resposibility for one's
fellow. Joe and Biddy take up their responsibility as a matter of course
Pip's progress is really one towards accepting his responsibilities,
as is Miss Havisham's. See also John Lucas, pp. 297-9.
12) Mordecai Marcus suggests that the death-scene 'is probably designed to
suggest the existence of a decent authentic self in Mrs. Joe, a self which
has been corrupted by forces about which we learn nothing'.
'The Pattern of Self-Alienation in Great Expectations',
Victorian Newsletter 26 (Fall 1964)p.11
13) 'The Hero's Guilt: The Case of Great Expectations', Essays in Criticism 10 (1969)
See also Karl P. Wentersdorf, 'Mirror-Images of Great Expectations',
Nineteenth Century Fiction 21 (1966-7), p.203ff.
He sees Bentley Drummle as another spiritual doppelganger
14) Signif icantly, only Biddy seems to manage without. It shows how much
Dickens still needed to believe in the irrepressible source of love in his
domestic angel, the motherly sister.
15) 'I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget", I never can forget,
that my mother was warm for my being sent back". Life, p.32.
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