Great Expectations (1861), one of Dickens’s later novels is more mature and serious than his earlier works and less harsh and critical of Victorian society that Dickens is known to caricature. This novel, whose hero Pip is an orphan, reads more like a detective story. The story opens with little Pip meeting an escaped convict in the churchyard on a cold December evening in an almost surreal setting. As the story unfolds, we find Pip asked to wait upon a strange old lady, Miss Havisham, and becoming infatuated with her beautiful ward, Estella. Soon thereafter, Pip inherits a handsome property left to him by an unknown benefactor. He leaves for London, soon forgets his childhood friends and leads a life of leisure. After Pip’s twenty-fifth birthday, his benefactor makes himself known and Pip realises the irony of his good fortune. With the unravelling of his own position, Pip grows in moral stature. Great Expectations is the story of Pip’s coming of age.
