Charles Dickens: Great Expectations

Aims of the course

This course aims to: 
1. Explore Dickens’s novel through class discussion. 
2. Engage with the novel’s meaning through the detail of its text 
3. Discover how the depiction of an older society can bear upon the life we have today. 

Content 

Great Expectations, published as a serial between 1860 and 1861, was the thirteenth of Dickens’s fifteen novels. Widely regarded as one of his masterpieces, it is arguably his most accomplished book. 

Great Expectations is what critics call a bildungsroman or a ‘coming-of-age’ novel. That is to say, it is in the broadest sense about the education of the book’s protagonist and the growth of his moral awareness. Like one of Dickens’s earlier novels, David Copperfield (1849-50), the story is narrated by the protagonist himself, whose name is Pip and whom we understand to be growing and learning as the novel proceeds. Pip, like the heroes of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist (1837-38), is an orphan growing up in deprived circumstances, and the first third of the novel is devoted to his childhood. 

To be an orphan is to be deprived to begin with, but Pip, brought up by his unloving elder sister and her kindly blacksmith husband, is deprived in other ways too. They live in the desolate marshland of Kent in the south-eastern corner of England in impoverished circumstances. Introduced early on to the weird and wealthy Miss Havisham and her adopted daughter Estella – another orphan but self-assured, heartlessly arrogant and (for Pip) irresistibly beautiful – Pip is made to feel inferior, so much so that he longs for the life of a gentleman and, as if by magic, as he approaches manhood, he is mysteriously offered such a life.  

So Great Expectations is partly a novel about class and status and the power those things confer. It is also about other kinds of power – sexual attraction, brute force, institutional authority – and the closeness of established power to criminality. For though it is very much a novel of consciousness, we are constantly made aware (as we read) how the interior life is moulded by its larger social context. 

The course director will provide some social, literary and historical background, but the bulk of our time in the classroom will be devoted to a discussion of Dickens’s text with close readings of specific passages. 

Presentation of the course 

The classes will be based on close examination of the novel’s text, almost as if it were a series of poems. Members of the class will be expected to know the book well and engage in discussion. There will be no power-point and few handouts (if any), but we shall look at a few extracts from the 1946 film of the novel, directed by David Lean. 

Class sessions 

1. The orphan on the marshes  
2. Joe Gargery and Miss Havisham  
3. Pip’s expectations  
4. Estella grown up   
5. Magwitch  

Learning outcomes

The learning outcomes for this course are: 

1. A deeper understanding of Dickens’s novel;  
2. The ability to read and understand Victorian fiction;  
3. Critical and exegetical skills.  

Required reading 

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Edited by Charlotte Mitchell, with an Introduction by David Trotter. London: Penguin Classics, 2004. ISBN 9780141439563  
This is the edition that will be used in class. Please buy this edition, read ALL of it – including the excellent introduction and notes – and bring it to Cambridge for the course. Other editions will have textual variants and will be differently paginated.  

Typical week: Monday to Friday

Courses run from Monday to Friday. For each week of study, you select a morning (Am) course and an afternoon (Pm) course. The maximum class size is 25 students. 

Courses are complemented by a series of daily plenary lectures, exploring new ideas in a wide range of disciplines. To add to the learning experience, we are also planning additional evening talks and events.

Evaluation and Academic Credit 

If you are seeking to enhance your own study experience, or earn academic credit from your Cambridge Summer Programme studies at your home institution, you can submit written work for assessment for one or more of your courses. 

Essay questions are set and assessed against the University of Cambridge standard by your Course Director, a list of essay questions can be found in the Course Materials. Essays are submitted two weeks after the end of each course, so those studying for multiple weeks need to plan their time accordingly. There is an evaluation fee of £75 per essay.

For more information about writing essays see Evaluation and Academic Credit.

Certificate of attendance

A certificate of attendance will be sent to you electronically after the programme.