2025 Readings 6

 When I started this little project I knew that some of my readings would be rereads, and that is especially true in regards to novels by Charles Dickens. I don't know if I've read everything that Dickens ever wrote, but it's pretty close. Years ago my ex Brenda bought me the entire hardbound Dickens collection (she was famous for her great gifts). Later, sadly, they all disappeared during our divorce; nothing insidious on her part, as she was kind and supportive during the painful process, certainly more than I deserved, but rather the house sold when I was overseas (and if they were that important to me I should have spirited them away earlier). Yesterday I finished a reread of Great Expectations, which, for some reason, I had not read in years. I've probably read Bleak House or David Copperfield four or five times each since the last time I read Great Expectations. It was much better than I remember (which probably explains the delay in rereading it again). It's not that I remember it as a bad novel, because I have never thought that and can't imagine thinking it, but maybe I just thought it was overrated. It often is ranked as the best Dickens novel, and maybe the natural contrarian in was resistant to that rating. Anyway, it is a great novel, although I would not agree that it is his best work. It does have a great ending, although I think it could have had a better ending - and not an imagined better ending that I concocted, but rather the original ending that Dickens himself wrote.

The ending that I was familiar with featured one last meeting (maybe) between Pip and Estella, in the ruined grounds of Miss Havisham's house, where they had met and their lives were shaped (and in some ways ruined) by her. Here is the ending that we have all read:

"I little thought", said Estella, "that I should take leave of you in taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so."

"Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting is a painful thing. To me, the remembrance of our last parting has been ever mournful and painful."

"But you said to me," returned Estella, very earnestly. "God bless you, God forgive you!" And if you could say that to me then, you will not hesitate to say that to me now - now, when suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape. Be as considerate and good to me as you were, and tell me we are friends."

"We are friends," said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from the bench.

"And will continue friends apart," said Estella.

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 no shadow of another parting from her.

I love this ending, and it may be the best ending of any Dickens novel, with the possible exception of A Tale of Two Cities. The ending in Bleak House and David Copperfield, my two favorite Dickens novels, are certainly happier, and I would argue appropriately happier, although a little forced (which Dickens was guilty of, certainly). This ending leaves a certain degree of uncertainty, which the reader can fill in depending upon her view of the story. Yes, it could be that there is "no shadow of another parting from her" because they got together, but, and this is how I've always read it, they never met each other again (she remarried someone else and Pip went back to Egypt to work with his friend Herbert) so there could not be another parting. The ruins, the mist, the uncertainty, all completely mirror the novel itself, so I don't know how you could read it any other way, unless you really think that Estella has changed and you're a born romantic who wants them to end up together.

However, that is apparently not his actual intended ending. He wrote the following, which was changed very late in the process based on a friend's suggestion. There is no ending in the ruined house of Miss Havisham, but instead on the streets of London, when Pip is interrupted while taking Joe's son Pip on a walk. Pip knew of her history. Like in the published ending, Estella had been married, and treated remarkably poorly, by Bentley Drummle. After his death she married a doctor with a very modest practice, and they lived a very quiet existence (far from her own great expectations of being a very wealthy great lady).

I was in England again - in London, and walking along Piccadilly with little Pip - when a servant came running after me to ask would I step back to a lady in a carriage who wished to speak to me. It was a little pony carriage, which the lady was driving; and the lady and I looked sadly enough on one another.

"I am greatly changed, I know, but I thought you would like to shake hands with Estella too, Pip. Lift up that pretty child and let me kiss it!" (She supposed the child, I think, to be my child.)

I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for, in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.

This one definitely ties it up even more clearly than the one that made it into book form. There is no dream of another parting because there is no dream of them being together. She is married, and neither of them seems to be moping over the other one (although we don't get much information on that front because their meeting was very quick, or at least is reported as fleeting). Apparently some literary critics are appalled by the published ending because they think that the definitively darker nature of the original ending fits the overall ending of the novel better, and that the altered ending is a bit of a sellout. I'm going to respectively disagree. I love the ending that made its way into the novel. The novel began in mist and uncertainty in a rural setting and the published ending does the same. A chance meeting on a street in London, at least to me, doesn't feel natural, unless you tie it to the bigger issue of Pip's great expectations, and their eventual failure, being tied to London. Maybe it just comes back to whether you think the ending in the novel is a happy or sad ending, and, as I've said, I view it as appropriately sad or appropriately mysterious and bittersweet, and thus it is tied together brilliantly.