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Christmas...is there any connection between the holiday and the plot of the novel?
Judging by the food alone, Joe Gargery appears to be doing pretty well financially. Although it's summer, try to remember the standard Christmas preparations at your house...are there any similarities to Mrs. Joe's preparations or her treatment/use of Joe and Pip in the preparations?
Humor is one of Dickens' trademarks. What are some of the humorous aspects of this chapter? And now for the hard part: Why are these things funny?
The people you meet in this chapter should be remembered (the dinner guests), as they will play a role in Pip's life. As this is a large book, I would suggest keeping a list of characters and their traits -- this helps track growth (or lack of) in characters as you go along.
A lot of tension is built up throughout the chapter as Pip awaits his fate. What can you find out about the writing of this novel that would explain why we're left hanging at the end of every chapter?
12 comments:
This is the part when I realized that Mrs. Joe is a woman bent on presentation and high standing. I think that she tries to elevate herself by making her house emaculate. Also, the Christmas preperations are incredibly similiar. The cleaning, preparing the food, the threat that if your near the chaos you'll be put to work. I found it funny that Mrs. Joe, being an incredibly moral lady, thought it best to stay behind from church in order to prepare for Christmas. It really shows a lot hipocrosy, because it shows that she cares more about the presentation her house than church, and considering that she puts herself on this moral pedestal, she completly contradicted herself. Another funny scene was during dinner when everyone is just crucifying Pip. Everyone makes there comments about his behavior and his "unappreciative" attitude towards his poor sister. Joe takes this dinner as a god thing considering that compared toward their normal meals, this is a feast. Joe monopolizes on this, and with ever insult towards Pip he just slops more food on Pip's plate, creating it into this meal of apology.
Great Expectations was originally written as a Victorian periodical in a weekly literary magazine called All Year Round published from December 1860 to August 1861. Charles Dickens was the editor of this the weekly literary magazine and published many of his novels including Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities in it. The novels were published in serial form. This explains why the ends of each chapter have hanging endings. Dickens wanted to keep his audience interested in his novel, so leaving hanging endings made the readers want to keep reading week after week. This is similar to weekly television episodes in which each episode reveals new information but still leaves the viewer eager to find out the answer or result of the hanging ending. Dickens makes his chapters interesting and revealing but still leaves the reader wondering about what will happen in the next chapter and the rest of the novel.
The portrayal of Mrs. Joe in Chapter 4 and in all chapters thereafter portray her cruelty in a humorous light. She seems to have eagle eyes, "darting a look at him [Joe] (21)", after he silently disagrees with her complaints over seemingly nothing. She serves food to both the males in the family as if they were little children and makes her cleanliness "more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. (22)" Her personality is scathingly sharp, and it shows through the acts of Joe and Pip, who at times go to lengths to avoid her. This is humorous because although a housewife (who is stereotypically docile), she appears as a raving lunatic, an unstable force in the house that both man and little man try to hide from.
Charles Dickens was a writer who was well-known for publishing his works in periodic installments. It is therefore likely that he leaves climactic endings to his chapters to urge readers to continue reading the story. Even more beneficial, they will eagerly read until the end of the installment, and pay him later to read the next one. This seems pretty crafty (Dickens must've been a smart one), especially if one wanted to make money like Dickens did...Luckily this benefits today's readers by creating an exciting plot that overcomes the old-fashioned syntax of this novel.
Funny how that Mrs. Joe is using everything in her power to beautify her presentation to these people. Considering her appearance, as well as attitude does a complete 180 degrees for her guests of honor. Some similarities I thought of were that Pip is still not allowed to speak or is frowned upon as usual, and instead listening to the guest blabber on. Eventually, they move to the pork pie, in which Pip's guilt is driving him insane. Pip bolts out suddenly when offered the pie of his guilt and meets face to face to the soldiers that await him with handcuffs.
I like what Elizabeth found about the way this book was originally published, it definitely makes more sense about the hard endings. That's just good thinking on Dickens' part to use endings like he did in order to make his readers want to keep reading his work. Mrs. Joe definitely puts her heart and soul into making Christmas dinner preparations, making sure her house is immaculate with plenty of good food to go around. I love how Mrs. Joe acts as a hardworking and morally upstanding wife, and yet she complains about everything and doesn't go to church herself. It's just funny how she's such a hypocrite and just cannot be happy even though her life is great. I also love how she never takes her apron off, it's like if she wears the apron all the time, people will think that she is always working and will somehow get pity because it looks as though she does everything herself. I just want to yell at her, “Lady, no one cares how much you appear to work because you're a crazy witch!”
I'm glad Elizabeth found that out about the way this book was written. It makes sense that because he could only write one chapter per issue of the magazine, he wanted people to keep buying the magazine to read the rest of the story. There were probably a lot more magazine sales that way. It's kind of interesting this way because the reader attention is grabbed and you want to read on chapter after chapter. I feel that this is a good technique for all writers, because you're main focus should be keeping the reader's attention. I think Dickens does a great job of doing this.
I rememeber freshman years when we learned that A Tale of Two Cities was written chapter by chapter in a magazine so people would have to wait every week for the new edition of the story. Dickens made these endings cliffhangers so people would want to buy the next magazine in order to read the next part of the story. This probably increased magazine sales as well! I feel that keeping the reader's attention was also a good way that Dickens kept his readers interested; you always want to know what's gonna happen next. Mrs. Joe also gives us something else to hate about her in this chapter: she's a little bit fake. When she has guests over, she makes sure everything is perfect for them. I also thought it was funny how when Mrs. Joe makes an annoucement about the pie, Pip is under the table hiding, scared for his life.
As Chelsea said, this chapter was where I discovered that Mrs. Joe is completely concerned with how she is seen by others. Her superficialness ties in with her strict personality and constant nagging, as well as her complaining about Joe's job. I'm glad Elizabeth found out about the cliffhangers, and now that Rachel mentions it, I do remember A Tale of Two Cities having cliffhangers at the end of most chapters. Pip's tension builds throughout the chapter when Uncle Pumblechook finds the tar-water in the brandy bottle, and when, at the end of the chapter, police officers burst into the house with handcuffs.
Reading Elizabeth's comment along with knowing quite a bit on the publication process of one of Dickens' other novel, A Tale of Two Cities, the fact that the author tends to end his chapters with "cliff-hanger" endings comes as no surprise to me. Although this book was written in the 1850-60's, the constant need for an audience is something that holds true to all forms of art and media today. In order to attract readers, viewers, listeners ext. you need to have people wanting more. Although it was vital to Dicken's success to make each chapter a cliff-hanger because his work was published sections at a time in a magazine, i feel as though the need to draw in readers enhanced the interest of the book by making readers, regardless if they have the novel in it's entirety, want to keep on reading. And on a somewhat side note, i thought it was really well done how Pip basically keeps building the tension upon himself. We all have stole or broken something and had to deal with the guilt of it. You get a bit paranoid and unsure of everything, including yourself, and i thought the author did a really good job in capturing this.
Well this is the third time I've tried leaving a comment on this so hopefully it will show up this time. There are many similarities between holiday dinners at Pip's household and my own. Just as Mrs. Joe uses items not commonly used for everyday eating, we do too. On holidays we use crisp white cloth napkins to replace the torn-off paper towels we usually use. I found the situation with Mr. Pumblechook very humorous when he drinks the horrible tasting brandy. Mrs. Joe tried her best to create the perfect dinner and conversations but she had no control over what happened with the brandy and I found it hilarious to see her fake perfection ruined. Dickens leaves us hanging at the end of every chapter because it makes us keep turning the pages of the novel to see what will happen next, which is what makes a brilliant author.
I have seen a reaccurance of Puritan-like beleifs in this book. For instance, useing something unpleasent like tar-water must be good because of its unpleasentness and other similar situations. I came across a quote in this chapter that made me think for a while, "Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of makeing her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itsself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by thier religion" (22). I am not targeting a particular religion, but there are religous fanatics in most that present thier religion as the only possibility, and all others are unacceptable. It is true that these people can be worse than an athist to anyone of an opposeing religion, or even of the same. Personally, I am a Methodist, and some christians get on my nerves because they are conviced anyone not in line with thier particular beleifs are going to hell. I thought it was interesting that Pip was given this much perspective, otherwise in the book he seems very child-like in most beleifs and ideas.
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