From: David Parker (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Date: Fri Feb 19 1999 - 02:52:54 PST
My dear Mrs Overmann, There are fewer mysteries behind the names in "Great Expectations" than you detect. The Temple, the Tower, and Walworth are real places. The Temple is one of the legal quarters of London, so called because the site was originally developed in the middle ages by the Knights Templar. It was an appropriate place for Pip to live, because many of the chambers in the buildings of the Temple were let, not to lawyers, but to fashionable young men. "The Tower" is the term most Londoners use for the Tower of London, the great castle to the east of the city, centred around the Norman keep constructed by William the Conqueror. It's an unmistakable landmark on the banks of the Thames, and one inevitably used to measure the progress of boats. Walworth was a suburb entirely appropriate as the home of Wemmick, at the time I set the novel: one just beginning to develop, with many empty plots, offering ample opportunity to eccentric housholders with a taste for unusual architecture on the cheap. There has been much elaborate speculation about Miss Havisham's name, little of it corresponding to what I remember of my thoughts when I was writing the book. I think I might have had the name of a Kentish town in mind - Faversham, that is - and perhaps, too, the fact that one of the principal functions of the character in the novel is to "have." Miss Havisham has what others want. You ask about the closing sentence of the novel. It is a book full of shadows, especially in Miss Havisham's darkened unhealthy house. This version of the ending (you may know I wrote an earlier in which Pip and Estella part forever) was intended to leave the reader in some doubt, but also to suggest an emergence from shadow into light. I don't think your classmates are too wrong in imaging Pip and and Estella leaving hand in hand. Faithfully yours, Charles Dickens ____________________________________________________________________________ _________ From: Jim & Christy Overmann <joverman@se-iowa.net> To: Charles Dickens <cdickens@rmplc.co.uk>; chatback@rmplc.co.uk <chatback@rmplc.co.uk> Date: 18 February 1999 21:23 Subject: Great Expectations-Buildings, shadows, and Miss Havisham >Dear sir, > >I have greatly enjoyed reading your correspondence, and beg of you to >answer a few questions conserning the book Great Expectations. First, could >you explain your choice of names for the buildings in the book? I would >like some insight to the names of The Temple, The Tower, and Walworth. I >can find the fun in Hammersmith, as that is where Mr. Pocket pounds a >blacksmith's appretice into a gentleman. Perhaps your explinations for the >other names mentioned would further my enjoyment and understanding of the >book. > >Secondly, after reading Little Dorrit before Great Expectations I afraid I >missed your meaning in the last phase of the book where Pip says, "I saw no >shadow of another parting from her." I had thought that this shadow was >similiar to the shadows in Little Dorrit, where they signify past regrets. >I took it to mean that Estella was unchanged in her thinking towards men. >In meeting with my literary class though, the majority of the class >believes that Pip and Estella simply walked away hand in hand. > >Also, I've read where you've explained your use of names in Great >Expectations. I'm unable to find any explination for Miss Havisham's name. >As an American reader I feel somewhat handicapped in finding the meanings >in some of the names you use. I have greatly enjoyed the ones I have been >able to find the meaning of. If you could be so kind and futher my >enjoyment with and explination for this one, I'd be appreciative. > >Forever your faithful reader, >Christy >