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How Does Dickens Portray Women In Great Expectations

578 Words3 Pages

Cheyenne Bair
Crushed Expectations I have read many books over my short life, and I have enjoyed every single one of them. Well, maybe not all of them. There is one book, in fact, that I greatly disliked reading and even viewed it as a waste of time. The book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is this very book that holds an infamous place in my heart. Although the book was not entirely bad, the sections that I disliked were incredibly dull and pointless. This drab book was abhorred by me because it portrayed women in a one dimensional light, it contained long excerpts of unnecessary writing, and it had an entirely unsatisfying ending. Women in the eighteenth century were conveyed in an unfortunate way. They were seen as frivolous, dainty, and weak. Sadly, this way of portraying women did not change in the novel Great Expectations. The very few women that were in the book were not seen in a positive manner; they were almost viewed as villains when they weren't behaving in a shallow way. One of the best examples of this is the character Estella. She was depicted as a mercurial young lady who often changed her mind when it came to her opinions. Although she appeared to have to dimension to her at some points in the novel, she always returned to …show more content…

Though I have read many long novels in my life, some even longer than the one in question, I have never experienced such long excerpts of completely pointless writing. This novel held an entire chapter dedicated to the main character's finances. Even though this part of the book may have seemed like a small detour from the story, it completely failed to progress the story at all. I thought perhaps that this information may come in handy later on in the book, but I was incorrect in my assumptions. The chapter only succeeded in causing a lackluster dip in the plot and auspiciously caused the total loss of interest in the

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