what did pip meant when he says i may here remark that i suppose myself to be self acquainted than any living authority, with the ridgy effect of a wedding ring, passing unsympathetically over the human countenance
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this was my second Dickens and I just realized, is the first time I've ever read more than one book by a classic author besides Tolkien, and that's a series so I'm not counting it the same way. I liked A Tale of Two Cities better but I am definitely a self-professed Dickens fan after reading this!
It was so interesting to read this so soon after I read A Tale of Two Cities because the two books are so entirely different. A Tale of Two Cities is heavy and ponderous and verbose, where Great Expectations had a ton of dialogue in comparison, and was light and simple. I found it so interesting that Dickens could write two books that were so different. I'm interested to see which of the two his normal style is closer to, since I've only read the two so far, which are so different from each other, and don't know how his other books read. Anyway, back to Great Expectations, it was nice just to read the chronicle of Pip's life. At the beginning I remember that I thought nothing was really happening but something about it still kept me reading. And then we were introduced to Miss Havisham and Estella and the mystery of that whole thing really intrigued me.
Fast forward to the first time Pip sees Estella since childhood and wow!! That was the soul of the book to me. "Love her, love her, love her!" The entire story about Estella and Miss Havisham is so fascinating to me. I love the idea of a scorned woman raising her adopted daughter to be this beautiful, cold thing that entraps men to break their hearts. It's such an interesting concept. From that moment I loved Estella. She was my favorite thing about the book, I'm sad we didn't see her more. "You should know that I have no heart." I love it! I mean, I know that it damaged her to be raised like that but I just like her so much as that cold character. I also really liked the scene closer to the end when Pip spoke about his suffering in front of Miss Havisham and that she had such a realization in hearing it.
I don't have very much more to say except that I love Joe and I'm so happy that things ended well with him and Pip because I was always thinking of how good Joe was throughout the whole book. He's such a truly good character. And speaking of good characters, Herbert. He's such a sweetheart, I liked reading about him too