Class, you've accomplished a lot. If you've read all the assigned Dickens for this class, you have read over 1348 pages of his fiction (not counting the non-fiction and the critical material, which was significant). If you didn't read it all, well, you should feel guiltier than Pip leaving town without visiting the Forge. Hopefully you can go back to the texts in the next week as write and revise your final papers.
I'd like to dedicate the last blog to a discussion not of a specific passage, but rather to hear about your likes and dislikes. What was your favorite reading? Who was your favorite character? Is there a particular quote that sticks with you? If Dickens were alive today and sitting next to you on the subway, what would you ask him? I'd love to hear any and all feedback you have about the course: did you like focusing on a major author? What drove you crazy about Dickens's writing? Do you have a least favoriate character? Why? Did you like the books more as we went along? If so, why? If not, why not? Let the discussion begin!
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
The Endings
I want to use the blog this week to talk about the "problem" of the two different endings as well as how this ending does/does not offer a satisfying moral to the other stories (not just the Estella/Pip relationship) being told in the novel, such as those about social change, redemption, the affects of poverty and/or violence on the self, justice in our institutions, etc. As we said in class, thinking about how you responded to this ending and why asks you to reflect on things Dickens is asking us to think about in other contexts: are victims of social suffering (poverty, violence, hunger, homelessness, orphanhood) responsible for their actions and, if so, to what extent? If we make these excuses for Estella (or Pip or Magwitch), what do we do with Orlick? or Mrs. Joe? Or how does it square with the endings of the other novels? We talked about the neat eradication of all the bad people (though Nancy complicates this) and the rewarding of the good people in Oliver Twist. We also discussed how Louisa was allowed to come half-way back -- to feel loved and valued but not to have a family of her own. Is Dickens doing a similar thing here or is this different?
So feel free to close read this passage -- there is a lot of meaningful detail in the scene -- or to speculate on some of the broader issues raised above and in class. OR BOTH: this is the second-to-last blog!
FROM VOLUME III, CHAPTER XX:
There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left, but the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed with a rough fence, and, looking over it, I saw that some of the old ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet mounds of ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed it open and went in.
A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was not yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the mist, and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I could trace out where every part of the old house had been, and where the brewery had been, and where the gates, and where the casks. I had done so, and was looking along the desolate garden-walk, when I beheld a solitary figure in it.
* * *
"At last it is. I cam here to take leave of it before its change. And you," she said, in a voice of touching interest to a wanderer, "you live abroad still?"
"Still."
"And do well, I am sure?"
"I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore -- Yes, I do well."
"I have often thought of you," said Estella.
"Have you?"
"Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I kept far from me, the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart."
* * *
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw the shadow of no parting from her.
So feel free to close read this passage -- there is a lot of meaningful detail in the scene -- or to speculate on some of the broader issues raised above and in class. OR BOTH: this is the second-to-last blog!
FROM VOLUME III, CHAPTER XX:
There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left, but the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed with a rough fence, and, looking over it, I saw that some of the old ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet mounds of ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed it open and went in.
A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was not yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the mist, and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I could trace out where every part of the old house had been, and where the brewery had been, and where the gates, and where the casks. I had done so, and was looking along the desolate garden-walk, when I beheld a solitary figure in it.
* * *
"At last it is. I cam here to take leave of it before its change. And you," she said, in a voice of touching interest to a wanderer, "you live abroad still?"
"Still."
"And do well, I am sure?"
"I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore -- Yes, I do well."
"I have often thought of you," said Estella.
"Have you?"
"Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I kept far from me, the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart."
* * *
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw the shadow of no parting from her.
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