A model midterm essay, Part IV: Dickens

Nat Iosbaker has generously agreed to let me post his answer to the Dickens question on the midterm. Nat’s answer is fascinating on several counts. Most noticeably, his first paragraphs eschew the question posed by the prompt: though he later engages with the logic of Great Expectations, he begins his argument by building from Larry’s notes during lecture about the context of the novel’s production. Nat’s analysis is closer to the work you would find in a history class than in a literature class, though it clearly borrows from both disciplines.

This is a daring move, particularly as a by-the-books-ier grader could have slammed him for not directly answering the question. But this intellectual bravura also means that his essay is likelier to succeed big if it succeeds at all: he is writing in a way drastically different than the other 60-odd essays I graded last week, and that distinction from the crowd looks really good.

Note also that when Nat gets into the close reading of the two endings, he refers closely to psycho-social and thematic patterns that emerge over the course of the novel. He doesn’t quote from the text or engage with the details of its language—my only significant problem with his answer—but he engages closely with what the text is about.

Here is the question he was answering:

Referring to the organic logic of Great Expectations, argue for the effectiveness of the second ending (pp. 481-484). Then, in the same essay, argue for the effectiveness of the first ending (pp. 508-509).

And here is Nat’s answer:

The alternate endings of Great Expectations change the marketability of the book and allow Dickens to continue pleasing audiences and publishers.

Dickens wrote serial novels. Novels created over the span of a year or so that published chapters or sections of the story at intervals. Great Expectations was written in between 1860 and 1861. Common characteristics of serial novels included: having small climaxes in every chapter, so that the audience would read the next published chapter; having plot twists towards the very end of the chapter, once again for the readers benefit; and the chapters could not be extremely long, because of space and printing constraints for the publisher, too much writing for the reader, and not enough time for the writer, Dickens, to produce an extensive amount of material in the time needed to write, edit, and send in the chapter to the publisher. Every aspect of the serial novels, like Great Expectations, was for the entertainment of the reader. The deep analysis that so many scholars work on is worthwhile and obviously needed. But such critical readings were likely overlooked by most readers, unable to analyze the traits of one chapter and contain it until the next section published and then add that to previous readings. Whatever Dickens did was most likely influenced by his editors, publishers, and readers.

Dickens’ first ending to Great Expectations is not made for fairy tales. It is slow and fairly uneventful. The first ending benefits reality. Joe and Biddy are married and have children. Satis house is destroyed and most likely to be sold. Estella’s relationships, created under the pretense to destroy the men in them, were abusive and are over. Everything is as expected. The first ending does not make the assumption that things always work out. This is seen earlier in the book as well, with Magwitch’s capture and death, the loss of Pip’s inheritance, the life of Miss Havisham, and the death of Mrs. Joe. The book follows a pattern of reality; a pattern of hopes and disappointments, much like life.

The second ending is brief, condensed, full of assumptions (hopes), and has a happier ending. The length of the alternate ending would indicate that initial ending is what Dickens put more time and analytical thinking into, because he is not one for brevity or light language.* The stages from Pip’s stay at his original home, to his journey to Satis house, to his meeting Estella, to his leaving with Estella is the condensed version where the reader does not have to arrive at many conclusions, but just has to read and let the mysteries come to them. This can be seen even in Estella coming to Pip and not making the reader go through a journey to reach a conclusion. This ending is also full of assumptions by both characters and readers. Estella assumes Pip has a child and the reader is lead to assume that the two eventually get married and live a fairly peaceful life. The quickness of the writing and the pace at which conclusions are arrived at only add onto the fact that the alternate ending was rushed to get to press.

Though both endings are in the style of realism, Dickens completed and sent in an alternate ending to be published to cheer the audience up. The endings only difference is which makes the audience read Dickens’ next book and which would make the publisher print the next book. There is a reason Dickens [ac]cumulated a wealth of what would now be six and a half million dollars, he knew exactly what twist needed to happen where, when a character would die, when a character would live, and when a happy ending is necessary.

* Editor’s note: in fact, it is the published ending—Dickens’s second—that is the longer of the two.

What is analysis?

In the instructions for answering the Dickens midterm essay, we wrote

Support [your essay's] thesis by closely reading (see “How to Close Read Fiction”) several SHORT, important quotations. Remember that close reading (focusing on the significance of details, words, images) is not the same as translating (recounting the story in your own words).

Many writers succeeded wonderfully in using the language of Great Expectations to develop a close reading of the text, but not all did. Here, then, is a short primer on the difference between textual analysis and illustrative quotation.

Illustrative quotation:

At the end of GE, Pip marries Estella: “I saw the shadow of no parting from her” (484).

This kind of bald quotation doesn’t help your reader understand where the evidence for this argument comes from: how do you read marriage implied here?

Textual analysis:

The last line of GE—”I saw the shadow of no parting from her”—suggests at least three readings.

First, Pip sees—though only in a shadowy way—that he and Estella are unlikely to separate again: this may imply marriage, though it more likely implies a lifelong friendship, as that between him and Biddy. We should note that it is not quite sufficient that Pip sees no shadow parting: Pip has a history of not seeing things of consequence until rather too late. Second, he perhaps sees “the shadow of ‘No’ parting from her”: he proposed marriage to her and she answered in a way consistent with the Estella we have known since Chapter 8.

A third reading, however, seems most likely. The “shadow of no parting” alludes to Pip’s Chapter 38 epiphany that Estella has been raised “to wreak Miss Havisham’s revenge on men”: “I saw in this, the distinct shadow of the darkened and unhealthy house in which her life was hidden from the sun” (302–03). In the last line of the novel, Pip sees not “the shadow of no parting” but “the shadow of no parting”: sitting in the ruins of Satis House, Estella has finally lifted from herself the shadow of Havisham’s vengeance. Estella may never marry Pip, and, indeed, she may part from him two minutes after the last scene concludes; however, we know that she has at least and at last parted from Havisham and that she has beaten a lifetime’s training and indoctrination at about the same moment Pip has.

This second reading is a good deal longer, of course. This is you have two pages to answer this sort of question: we assume that it will take a good deal of space to thoroughly pick apart the levels of meaning in Dickens’s language.

Pip’s poor dreams

Larry observes in the assignment for Essay 3 that Pip’s five dreams are on pages 15, 79, 258, and 339. It’s unclear what dream is discussed on 339, and, more obscurely, there are only four entries for five dreams.

The first three seem to work.

15:

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for there was no getting a light by easy friction then; to have got one I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and have made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his chains.

(This and all quotations drawn from the Gutenberg e-text.)

79:

I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of the strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of conspiracy with convicts,—a feature in my low career that I had previously forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear. I coaxed myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham’s, next Wednesday; and in my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of a door, without seeing who held it, and I screamed myself awake.

258:

Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert’s Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham’s Ghost, before twenty thousand people, without knowing twenty words of it.

However, on 339 there is only this general reference to Pip’s dreams:

…for my nights had been agitated and my rest broken by fearful dreams…

What, then, are the other dreams which Claire Slagter identifies as evidence of Pip’s inner turmoil? I don’t have access to Slagter’s article, but my guess is that there are only four specific dreams, and that the fourth dream comes earlier in GE rather than later. Here is Pip, sleeping the night before he moves to London:

159:

All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong places instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs, now cats, now pigs, now men,—never horses. Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were singing.

If this is right, then the four dreams Dickens describes occur before Pip learns that Magwitch is his patron.

However, I think the motif of dreaming in GE is far more sophisticated than just these four references would suggest—indeed, the “inner turmoil” Slagter apparently discusses appears to be attached to another kind of emotional unrest.

Visit the Gutenberg e-text of Great Expectations and run your own search for “dream.” You should find 17 appearances of the word. I’ll list them in abbreviation here so you can survey their sweep of meaning:

1. My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.
2. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to think this was a dream.
3. But still I felt as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as if this must be a dream.
4. We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences which had so wrought upon me…
5. “a good fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action and dreaming, curiously mixed in him.”
6. Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all cancelled…
7. Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me, all a mere dream…
8. Then I washed and dressed while they knocked the furniture about and made a dust; and so, in a sort of dream or sleep-waking…
9. …my nights had been agitated and my rest broken by fearful dreams…
10. “I have seen it, Herbert, and dreamed of it, ever since the fatal night of his arrival.”
11. I had the wildest dreams concerning him, and woke unrefreshed…
12. I would tell him, little as he cared for such poor dreams, that I had loved Estella dearly and long…
13. “Pip,” said he, “we won’t talk about ‘poor dreams‘…”
14. “But add the case that you had loved her, Pip, and had made her the subject of those ‘poor dreams‘…”
15. I had never dreamed of Joe’s having paid the money…
16. But I had as sound a sleep in that lodging as in the most superior accommodation the Boar could have given me, and the quality of my dreams was about the same as in the best bedroom.
17. “But that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by…”

(You can find where these passages come from by looking them up on the Gutenberg text and then finding the nearest chapter marker.)

Notes on the Dickens midterm essays

I was responsible for grading most of the essays answering the tricky question about the effectiveness of the two endings of Great Expectations. In the course of grading these essays I’ve seen a few analytical weaknesses you might work to correct as you draft future essays—particularly Essay 4, in which you must write at further length about the ending of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake.

1. Realism

Many essays anchor their critiques of the effectiveness of Dickens’s two endings on their comparative realism. Writers often point to the original ending—in which Estella and Pip remain romantically if not emotionally estranged—as the more realistic of the two, on the basis of several arguments. For example, it seems somewhat unlikely that Pip and Estella would run into each other in the ruins of Satis House. This is a novelistic coincidence, though, on which more anon. The two strongest arguments against the realism of the published ending are likely these:

• Estella’s character seems unlikely to change after one bad marriage;
• Pip seems unlikely to retain a fiery passion for a girl he fell in love with after three decades of rejection

However, if we were to throw out all the elements of GE that are unrealistic, we’d have little left. Consider:

• Magwitch’s fidelity to a small boy with whom he exchanges some dozen words over twelve hours—the man is a criminal, but he is loyal to a boy?
• Miss Havisham. Is a woman with so strong a will likely to be so easily crushed by a man she scarcely knows?
• Pip sitting in a coach behind Magwitch’s convict-courier.
• A good half-dozen of the characters, who seem drawn from no world I recognize. Have you ever met a Mrs Joe? An Uncle Pumblechook?

The list could go on.

Larry suggested in lecture that GE is generally thought of as a work of Realism, but Dickens’s Realism differs markedly from the idea of realism that we have today.

Most nineteenth-century novels lean on coincidence: Jane Eyre, to give one example, would be quite a different novel were Jane not to accidentally land in the company of her estranged cousins. To a nineteenth-century writer, coincidence and unrealism were simply marks of the divine: God—or the author—would necessarily arrange things so that they reached a meaningful conclusion.

Would we argue that Swan Lake is unrealistic? We would argue, instead, that the themes of Matthew Bourne’s choreography do not loyally represent our experience of the world. (Though that would be a hard argument to make.)

2. Tone

Several essays argue for the effectiveness of endings on the basis of the appropriate tone of one (typically the unpublished ending) and the inappropriate tone of the other.

Many of these arguments observe that the tone of GE is generally “pessimistic.”

Here is why this argument does not move me.

First, the assignment asks writers to base their analysis on the organic logic of the novel. Although the tone of the novel is certainly significant, its tone is not clearly connected to its logic. To make the connection you would need to argue that the tone is connected to the themes and structure of the novel.

Second, “tone” is such a vague concept that it cannot be written about clearly. What is tone? How is it conveyed? Will every reader experience the same tone in the novel? And then there are problems of description. For example, what does it mean to suggest that GE has a “pessimistic tone”? What does pessimism mean, and how does Dickens’s pessimism differ from the general? Writing about the tone of a novel is perhaps as vague as writing about the tone of a symphony: both works clearly have a tone, but writing about that tone requires an admirable specificity of expression.

3. The reader’s pleasure

Several essays remarked on the varied pleasures a good ending can afford a reader. In particular, two versions of this argument have appeared with some regularity:

• The reader would like an ending that is pleasurable or satisfying, either because the ending fits the cliché of a comfortable genre (e.g. romance) or because the ending is interesting in that it rejects the cliché.
• The reader who is faced with an ambiguous ending has the pleasure of imagining an ending that is appropriate or interesting.

The writer, I suppose, must confront this question of how best to satisfy the reader who is paying in time and money for the experience of the book. As a literary scholar, however, you must eschew the simple pleasures of the cliché for a far richer pleasure: why, of all the satisfying or unsatisfying endings Dickens could have written, did he choose this one?

It is a bit of a cheat, I fear, to write simply that an ambiguous ending lets the reader fill in the blanks as she or he will. The reductio of this argument goes something like this: if we wanted the pleasure of filling in blanks we would write our own novels.

Instead, ambiguity is an intent. Why would Dickens craft an ending that leaves his themes unresolved and his characters’ arcs incomplete? Another way of thinking of this question goes something like this: is ambiguity itself a theme of GE? After all, the source of Pip’s wealth is ambiguous for several hundred pages; the reason for his love of Estella remains ambiguous throughout the novel.

Next: what is closure? Who decides whether a text achieves closure? What does closure come from? Is closure anything more than a cliché? Do we say that a narrative achieves closure when it has resolved the story in the way such texts historically have resolved such stories? What does it mean for a story to be resolved? We know that Wemmick marries Miss Skiffins and Herbert, Clara, and Joe, Biddy; but we also know that marriages are often miserable failures: consider the Pockets—the whole lot of them; consider Mrs Joe. How does a marriage provide any more closure than a character’s uncertain singleness?

Listening to “Araby”

There are two scholarly reasons to listen to our short stories read aloud, if you have the opportunity.

The most successful reading of a text is usually a re-reading of it: when you approach the text without having to learn its characters and plot anew you can concentrate on the subtleties of its language and rhythm. And one way to master the language and the rhythm of the masterful short stories we are reading this summer is to listen to recordings of them.

LibriVox.org is the main source of free recordings of English-language texts, and—like any service staffed by volunteers—the recordings they offer vary in quality. The good news, though, is that there is a wonderful reading of “Araby” by Julie VW that is fully worth your downloading and listening to before we get to that story on Friday.

There are fully five recordings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper,” the story we will discuss in section on Thursday. I am perhaps partial to the recording by Michelle Sullivan.

There is also a complete recording of Great Expectations on LibriVox, though it runs 20+ hours. Still, the recording can be a good supplement to reading through the text if you find yourself wanting to revisit the beginning of the novel when you are halfway through it.

Summarizing Great Expectations

In 313 this morning we didn’t reach my Dickens item on the agenda. Here is a synopsis of my advice on reading Great Expectations:

1. Put a Post-It note as a tag on the page of the footnotes that you are on, to save you time flipping back and forth. And read all the footnotes, or at least skim them.
2. Read a full summary of the plot so that you aren’t focused on the mystery of the story as you are reading it through. Here are the SparkNotes summary, the CliffsNotes summary, and the Wikipedia summary. If you’re in one of the campus libraries, ask a librarian to help you grab the MasterPlots summary, which is better than any of these. (I can’t link to it from here.)
3. Keep a list of characters as they are introduced. In the list, include full names, aliases, and the page numbers on which they first appear. (This will make it a little bit easier for you to write the essays.)
4. Keep a list of images and metaphors that appear several times in the novel.

You might find it easiest to keep these lists on blank pages at the front and back of the book. Write notes to yourself there as well: page numbers on which significant plot points take place, possible social or artistic codes at play in the book, and so on.