Level 4 Make up in Motion : My first impressions of Great Expectations.

The Introduction

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a very classic novel written in the 1860s during the Victorian era that began with the coronation of the Queen Victorian in 1837 and lasted until her death in 1901.

The period of the novel was a time of change. England was expending worldwide and becoming a wealthy country with power. The economy was changing from a mainly agriculture one to an industrial and trade based one. With increasing technological changes came clashes with religion, and increasing social problems. Machines were making factories more productive, yet raw sewage spieled into London streets - people lived in terrible conditions as slums lined the banks of the Thames. Children as young as five were being forced to work twelve and thirteen hours a day at a poverty wage!

The location of the story is in London or on the marches around Kent, near the junction of the River Thames and Medway. These are areas that Dickens knew well. His happiness childhood years were spent in Chatham on the eastern coast. Nearby were marches, the prison hulks, and convicts. Also he lived in London for years and knew the back streets, market, and places like New gate Prison.

Moral Themes include good versus evil, moral redemption from sin, wealth and its equal power to help or corrupt, person responsibilities, and the awareness and acceptance of consequences from ones choice. Psychological themes, explored through Pip's personal and growth, included abandonment, guilt, shame, desire, secrecy, gratitude, ambition, and obsession/emotional manipulation versus real love.

The story has a three part structure. The first part of the story covers Pip's childhood from the time he meets the convict in the graveyard until the time he receives his expectations. The second examine his young manhood, learning to become a gentlemen and living extravagant in London, and finally, the third part visits Pip in his adulthood, from the time he tries to help Magwitch escape until his return from Egypt at the end of the story. Pip's childhood is viewed as a time of innocence and goodness while living in the Garden of Eden. His young manhood is the fall from grace when he sins and must seek an end to his suffering, and his adulthood is seen as a time of redemption when he achieves forgiveness and inner peace.

I have read the book and I found it was very slow, hard to get into the story and it was very boring!

The text was very different from the film that I watched and the television version that was shown.

I watched the film of Great Expectations of the year (1999) with Loan Gruffudd as Pip, Justine Waddell as Estella and Charlotte Rampling playing as Miss Havisham

It was very interesting to

watch as it had given me different inspiration by watching the film after reading the book and then seeing the television version also got me inspired on seeing how they created Miss Havisham.

I really liked the fact how they got the film to look very ghostly, dark, cold, dull and scary as it shows how people felt and describes back in Victorian times as to do with the war in the time where they didn't have much money and most people was very poor.

Miss Havisham was much younger in the BBC programme than the film I had watched. She had messy unbrushed hair with a younger looking face but also looking ill and very skinny like she had not eaten for months and you could tell she had not washed as her weeding dress was very dirty with dust, I also though it was very interesting that they added a nerve pinch on Miss Havisham showing her nerves and like desperation on accomplishing on having men's hearts specially Pip's being broken by Estella she tough her that love is death, happiness is being destroyed and to have a cold heart towards men. She wanted revenge for what had happened to her by being ditched on her weeding day .

As the film that I first watched she had a more mature face with wrinkles, she also had a glowing face, her hair was also very nicely up and her dress very nicely kept.

My favourite characters where Estella and Pip, because Estella was this beautiful girl bough up to be a lady to be breaking men's hearts so she would be cold towards men and get them to fall in love with her beauty.

Pip was this little boy that was always covered in dirt expected to become a blacksmith, but secretly dreamed of becoming a gentleman. Until he meets the mysterious Miss Havisham and her adopted beautiful niece Estella. He then changes his mind on becoming a gentlemen and being educated.

I was very surprised as Gillian Andersons characterisation of Miss Havisham because she is so young I was expecting Miss Havisham being older.

I really liked the new thing they done by putting in the nerve pinch on her hand you can definitely see that she isn't well ever since being ditched on her weeding day at exact nine o'clock.

You can defiantly see she is very ill as she doesn't wash, she walks around in her weeding dress everyday she looks like a ghost she doesn't brush her hair and her house hasn't been cleaned since the day her fiance at the time wrote her a letter ditching her on her wedding , her cake is rooting away along with mice all over it.

The film of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens