Re: Great Expectations
Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Tue, 14 Oct 1997 16:52:04 -0100
My dear Mr Williams,
There can be few things more complicated or mysterious than what drives
writers of fiction to write. A simple answer to your question would be, it
was the need to provide for my family that motivated me. Another might be
that it was the need to increase the circulation of my new weekly, "All the
Year Round," in which I first published "Great Expectations."
But I suppose there were inner compulsions too. In "David Copperfield,"
my favourite among the books I have written, I tried to mirror some of the
episodes of my younger life, and think I succeeded in important ways. But
David was born to greater wealth and status than I was. In "Great
Expectations," I suppose, I was exploring what it must have been to be a boy
of humbler origins than myself, climbing society's rungs, and making
mistakes as I did, treading sometimes on the fingers of those, from whose
native rungs he was departing.
Fiction can never faithfully represent a writer's own experience, not
least because that experience is so complicated. One thing a writer can do,
though, is try successively to represent different facets of that
experience, explore different "might have beens." "Great Expectations" is
built upon the same experiences as "David Copperfield," but pursues
different "might have beens."
I hope I make myself clear.
Faithfully yours,
Charles Dickens
________________________________________________________________________________
>Dear Mr Dickens,
>I would like to ask you a question. The question is this:
>What led you to write the story Great Expectations? Also, does it have an
>element of truth about your own life in the story?
>
>
>Yours sincerely, Tom Williams.
>
>
======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author