Traditions and innovations:

Charles Dickens

Dickens is the first 19th century English writer who visibly moves from the social phase, in the
development of the novel, to the more sophisticated psycholgical and phenomenological phases. His
originality derives at least from three major innovations of his epic:
a) the investigation of the human nature
b) the perception of reality in the novel
c) the ironic construction of his dramatic plots

a) Dicken’s breaks up with the classical prejudice according to which characters should embody
principles and, therefore, be unidirectional. The traditional literature divides characters into positive
or negative and, thus, gives them symbolic masks which typify them and include them into a fixed
category such a perspective over characters is limitative and anti-realistic. Huan nature is
contradictory, being impossible to fit in one unidirectional typology only. In reality, people are
morally ambiguous, psychologically unpredictable and structurally dual, swinging between good and
evil. Dickens is one of the first European writers too understand this natural phenomenon and the
first Victorian artist to integrate it into his fictional work.
b) The author of Great Expectations gives up the use of an omniscient perspective in his novels in
favour of the first person narrative the use of a narrator who sees reality through his/her own eyes,
according to his/her own eyes, according to his/her subjectivity, degree of knowledge, sensitivity,
sensibility and strategies.
c) Irony can be defined as a conflict between appearance and reality. His dramatic plots rely
fundamentally on a ironic design. Consequences of his irony are the humour, the satirical, critique
the grotesque characters. The novel can be also regarded as a Bildungs-roman, since the character’s
initiation represents an important segment of the epic development. The unreliability in Great
Expectations. Nicholas Nickleby creates types-visible, too, in Dicken’s later work: Uncle Ralph (villain),
Nicholas (innocent, like Pip), Mrs. Nickleby (submissive), Smike (mental defective), Mr. Squeers
(sadistic and rapacious).
This is the novel in which-by means of a first person narrator-Dickens announces the beginning
of a new form of epic that can be easily characterized as modernist. The text is partly autobiographic
and has the elements of a Bildungs-roman behaves exactly like a narrator, displaying an acute
subjectivity. He filters reality through his own consciousness and everything we “sees” and
“interprets” for us. Nothing is properly “objective” , since it is adapted to Pip’s subjectivity. The
narrative strategy becomes obvious at the very outset of the story when the reader gets introduced
to the narrator of the text. Pip is just a five year old boy in this introductory scene and he observes
things according to his age. The readers seem to know more than the narrator. The boy spends time
in the churchyard, watching the graves of his parents and brothers. We understand he is an orphan
living with his older sister. At one point, Pip encounters a strange man (we, the readers, realize easily
he is an escaped convict) who asks for some food and a file to get rid of his chains. In order to make
the child respond to his request he scares him by pulling him by one of his legs and turning him
upside down. Interesting is what the boy observes at this moment. He confesses he sees the church
turning upside down. The remains a highly metaphorical scene. It has a double significance. On the
one hand, it anticipates the evolution of facts in the novel (the convict will turn Pip’s life upside
down, indeed). One the other hand and more importantly, it suggests to us that Pip is the
independent narrator of the novel. We are going to see reality through his eyes only.
The narrator of the novel is interested here with full authority over the narrative. This novel of
formation develops at similar turning points in the life/experience of the narrator:
1. The first turning point is Pip’s experience in the house of Ms. Havisham. Ms. Havisham is a very
rich old lady who has the reputation of an insane person. Nobody is accepted in her privacy except
for her personal lawyer, Mr. Jaggers. In her youth, Ms. Havisham was abandoned by her husband in
the very day of their wedding. Under shock, she stopped practically her life at the point she got the
news. She is still dressed the way she was then, wears one once only and behaves strangely. Pip is a
perfect victim. He becomes an instrument of his weird educational process. Interestingly, in spite of
all the humiliations he suffers in Ms. Havisham’s house, he fails desperately in love with Estella.
2. The second turning point in Pip’s formations is his meeting with Jaggers, Ms. Havisham’s lawyer. As
an adolescent now and ucenic boy in Joe Gargery’s work-shop, the narrator receives the visit of Mr.
Jaggers. Mr. Jaggers gives him incredible news. He is the beneficiary of a fortune, offered to him by
an unknown person. The money is supposed to be used for Pis’s education and the only conditions of
the generous act is Pip’s acceptance of the given terms. He must never try to find out the identity of
the benefactor. His only concern should be his education. Despite the oddity of the offer Pip takes it
right away and, consequently, we assume he thinks his benefactor to be Ms. Havisham. He has two
elements at his disposal to support this hypothesis: a) Jaggers (the lawyer will be the administrator
of hi fortune and Pip knows already he works for Ms. Havisham)
b) Estella (pip loves her desperately and
therefore believes Ms. Havisham wants to transform him in to a gentleman in order to be fit for the
young woman and to marry her one day). Pip demonstrates he has all the shortcomings of an actual
narrator he cannot be objective and has limited information.