Great Expectations
Not having looked at it since high school, I am now rereading Great Expectations for my book group's December meeting. Not surprisingly, I'm finding much in the text that completely escaped me the first time through — mostly in the realm of the fraught relationships among the characters.
(Jaggers, Pip, and Joe Gargery)
Illustration by H.M. Brock (1903)
Source: www.victorianweb.org
The illustration above refers to this passage:
"My name," he said, "is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in London. I am pretty well known. I have unusual business to transact with you, and I commence by explaining that it is not of my originating. If my advice had been asked, I should not have been here. It was not asked, and you see me here. What I have to do as the confidential agent of another, I do. No less, no more."
Finding that he could not see us very well from where he sat, he got up, and threw one leg over the back of a chair and leaned upon it; thus having one foot on the seat of the chair, and one foot on the ground.
"Now, Joseph Gargery, I am the bearer of an offer to relieve you of this young fellow your apprentice. You would not object to cancel his indentures, at his request and for his good? You would want nothing for so doing?"
"Lord forbid that I should want anything for not standing in Pip's way," said Joe, staring.
"Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose," returned Mr Jaggers. "The question is, Would you want anything? Do you want anything?"
"The answer is," returned Joe, sternly, "No."
I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a fool for his disinterestedness. But I was too much bewildered between breathless curiosity and surprise, to be sure of it.
"Very well," said Mr. Jaggers. "Recollect the admission you have made, and don't try to go from it presently."
"Who's a-going to try?" retorted Joe.
"I don't say anybody is. Do you keep a dog?"
"Yes, I do keep a dog."
"Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. Bear that in mind, will you?" repeated Mr. Jaggers, shutting his eyes and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him something. "Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has Great Expectations."
Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another.
"I am instructed to communicate to him," said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his finger at me sideways, "that he will come into a handsome property. Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that property, that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman — in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations."
You can read the review of Great Expectations published by the Atlantic Monthly in September 1861 here.
Labels: Arts
posted by Karen Nelson @ 11:45 PM
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