GREAT EXPECTATIONS

And then there's the bleakness of the marshes in Kent where the air is damp and fetid and the mists appear like ghosts that swirl mysteriously around the names on graveyard stones.

And then later on in the book, when the location moves to London, we have the Chambers of Jaggers, a wealthy barrister who likes to keep a ghastly display of dreadful bloated death masks, which are the sinister mementos of executed criminals.

Crime, at least the themes of imprisonment and justice, are important in this book, as well as the looming dark facade of Newgate Prison.

Back in Kent, Satie's house is a symbol of enslavement for all invited through its doors, who find themselves in a somewhat eerie dislocation, where even time is standing still because all the clocks have stopped.

ever since the day when its owner, Miss Havisham, was abandoned by her lover on the morning of her wedding.

Miss Havisham is a grotesque rendition of the character, which is another gothic trope, as is Abel Magwitch, who we encounter at the very beginning of the book when young Pip, who is the filter through which the reader interprets the events of this novel, both in the past and in the present, is visiting his parents' grave when he comes face to face, rather alarmingly, with an escaped convict.

A rough and brutish looking man who Pip then helps by bringing him some food and some tools to break his chains.

A man who will then go on to influence Pip's future life and his expectations.

Pip is a character whose whole existence is formed by the whims and wills of others, whether for good or for bad.

And until he comes to know about the influence of Magwitch, his heart is trapped in Satie's house, that decaying dark abode to which Miss Havisham has invited him as a boy to go and play with her own orphaned ward, the mysterious, haughty and beautiful Estella, who casts a spell on Pip.

Or could it be a curse? Pip's first meeting with Estella and Miss Havisham covers his world forevermore and also resurrects a past because from the moment, in a way, when he lays eyes on the wraith life, Miss Havisham, who for years has been clothed in the yellowing lace of the wedding dress she wore when she was actually betrayed on the day of her wedding, he is reminded of a corpse or a waxwork at a fair.

images which all too poignantly echo the fates of his dead parents shrouded in their graves.

Both Pip and Estella are in their own different ways unprotected by the comforts of conventional parenting, which of course makes them both susceptible to being used as the pawns in the game of revenge played out by Miss Havisham, who is intent on causing misery to every man as revenge for her own humiliation.

For young Pip, there's an added psychological horror wherever he or whenever he goes home, because that's when he must face the violent moods of his older guardian sister or the terrifying violence of a character called Orlick.

Although Joe... his step, well, not stepfather, but his sister's husband.

So I suppose in a way, I don't know, that makes him almost like a big brother.

But Joe is very, very kind to him.

And he is a kind of parent figure who loves and has Pip's best interests at heart.

So there is some light, as there is in The Servant Biddy.

But on the whole, this is a bleak, disturbing book.

And having read it again in preparation for this podcast, I also watched the old film directed by David Lean in 1946. in which John Mills plays the part of the adult Pip and Valerie Hobson is Estella, with Martita Hunt creating my very favourite screen depiction of Miss Havisham.

At the age of 47, Martita was perhaps a little old for the part Dickens created, but actually not so very much.

Dickens' own notes clearly say that he envisaged Havisham as being somewhere in the region of 40 years of age and certainly no younger than mid-30s.

However, in this novel, from the point of view of Pip, the woman's influence and her insistence on no light but that of candles being allowed in Satie's house leaves her with this pale and wasted flesh and with her spoiled, white, yellowing wedding dress.

It gives the impression of great age.