Attitudes toward Victorian Society in Great Expectations by Charles Dic

Great Expectations Explore some of the ways in which Dickens’ attitudes to Victorian society are presented in the opening chapter of Great Expectations. For this essay I will be focusing on the opening chapters of Great Expectations, a novel written by Charles Dickens. I am going to consider the Victorian society at the time and dickens’ use of language to express themes, settings and characters. Charles Dickens wrote this story in the Victorian times. Hence we seem to think what ‘does he mean’ by â€Å"Great Expectations†. By us the readers, knowing and understanding what it means, we can get a rough idea of what the story is like. By Great Expectations we mean having high expectations for life, class and dreams for a better life. Dreams that a person really wants for it to come true. Hoping or expecting more than you have. This lays quite an effect on the reader, this is because the title â€Å"Great Expectations† doest say much. The title itself can give ideas to us the readers as to what the story will be like. For example they can suppose that the story is about someone’s great expectations in life, of a job, of a person and even of himself or herself. This story was set in the Victorian times, which was actually in the mid 1800’s and Charles Dickens wrote it in the 1860’s. So life back then is very different as to how it is now. If we compare today to the Victorian era, we see people lived very different lives in many different ways. A few had access to educations, some didn’t. Some were able to get a good high standard job and some didn’t. At the time of Charles Dickens a lot of the people were poor, many suffered from poor health and had to work all day late into the night. The few that were rich thought they were better ... ...rown with nettles’, this tell us what the area is like and creates feelings in the reader. This also gives the impression that the atmosphere is dull, depressing, empty and hopeless. This makes the reader feel that there is no hope for Pip. In conclusion I think Dickens has used language, setting and the theme of death etc in a very effective way. Dickens shows us the different ways of using language to introduce many themes and settings. He does this using different technique as he skilfully catches the reader’s attention in just through the first pages! He involves the reader so quickly that they just keep on reading. This makes the readers feel it is important to know what happens next. However I myself and many many other readers will find that Dickens does keep his readers interested all the way through the story and it shows how good he is at it.