1 00:00:04,555 --> 00:00:09,035 "I took her hand in mine and we went out of the ruined place. 2 00:00:09,035 --> 00:00:13,795 "And, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I left the forge, 3 00:00:13,795 --> 00:00:16,595 "so the evening mists were rising now, 4 00:00:16,595 --> 00:00:19,155 "and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light 5 00:00:19,155 --> 00:00:23,675 "they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her." 6 00:00:25,315 --> 00:00:29,875 These are the final words of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, 7 00:00:29,875 --> 00:00:33,435 in which the hero, Pip, is reunited with the love of his life, Estella. 8 00:00:33,435 --> 00:00:37,675 It's a moving ending to what is arguably his greatest work. 9 00:00:37,675 --> 00:00:40,155 But it almost never existed. 10 00:00:40,155 --> 00:00:42,595 This wasn't quite how Dickens had planned it. 11 00:00:42,595 --> 00:00:45,435 He originally wrote another finale, 12 00:00:45,435 --> 00:00:49,275 a bleak scene that saw his two characters part ways for ever. 13 00:00:49,275 --> 00:00:52,635 But he had second thoughts, scrapping the final pages 14 00:00:52,635 --> 00:00:56,035 and rewriting them, leaving the couple walking off, 15 00:00:56,035 --> 00:00:58,835 hand in hand, in the evening light. 16 00:00:58,835 --> 00:01:02,395 Some say that was a cop out, that Dickens was letting himself 17 00:01:02,395 --> 00:01:05,595 and the book down by simply dashing off a happy ending. 18 00:01:05,595 --> 00:01:08,795 But I think there's more to it than that. 19 00:01:08,795 --> 00:01:12,275 I'm a writer myself and I know that changing the end of a book is 20 00:01:12,275 --> 00:01:15,355 one of the most radical things any author can do. 21 00:01:15,355 --> 00:01:18,595 It's peculiar that Dickens would want to alter something 22 00:01:18,595 --> 00:01:20,235 so integral to the story. 23 00:01:22,195 --> 00:01:25,835 So, why did he make that decision? What inspired it? 24 00:01:25,835 --> 00:01:29,315 And what could it tell us about Dickens himself? 25 00:01:29,315 --> 00:01:32,515 To find out, I need to learn more about Dickens as a writer, 26 00:01:32,515 --> 00:01:35,195 who he wrote for and why. 27 00:01:35,195 --> 00:01:38,635 And I also need to understand how his own life fed into his work, 28 00:01:38,635 --> 00:01:40,715 how his difficult upbringing 29 00:01:40,715 --> 00:01:44,595 and troubled relationships both haunted and motivated him. 30 00:01:45,835 --> 00:01:50,395 Far from being just a few hurried scribblings at the end of a novel, 31 00:01:50,395 --> 00:01:54,235 I think this new ending gives a real insight into Dickens, 32 00:01:54,235 --> 00:01:56,155 both as an author and as a man. 33 00:02:14,995 --> 00:02:18,355 In the 15 years I spent as an EastEnders scriptwriter, 34 00:02:18,355 --> 00:02:20,275 my colleagues always told me that 35 00:02:20,275 --> 00:02:25,155 if Charles Dickens was alive today, he'd be doing exactly what I was - 36 00:02:25,155 --> 00:02:28,795 writing soaps. Maybe that's just how soap writers of today would like to 37 00:02:28,795 --> 00:02:30,195 think of themselves. 38 00:02:30,195 --> 00:02:32,955 After all, who wouldn't want to be mentioned in the same breath 39 00:02:32,955 --> 00:02:35,995 as Charles Dickens? There's some truth to it, though. 40 00:02:35,995 --> 00:02:39,355 Dickens serialised his novels weekly and monthly, and just 41 00:02:39,355 --> 00:02:42,835 like soap writers of today, he was a populist through and through. 42 00:02:42,835 --> 00:02:46,475 He wrote for a mass audience and they adored him for it. 43 00:02:46,475 --> 00:02:50,315 I'm not quite sure that I could have been the Dickens of his day. 44 00:02:50,315 --> 00:02:52,195 His output was prolific. 45 00:02:52,195 --> 00:02:56,115 He came up with 20 novels, hundreds of articles, 46 00:02:56,115 --> 00:03:00,275 and 989 named characters during his lifetime. 47 00:03:00,275 --> 00:03:04,355 But I've been fascinated with him since my EastEnders days. 48 00:03:04,355 --> 00:03:06,595 So much so that I'm writing a new series 49 00:03:06,595 --> 00:03:08,875 based on some of his characters. 50 00:03:08,875 --> 00:03:11,835 Kind of a soap opera set in Dickens' imaginary world. 51 00:03:11,835 --> 00:03:14,915 I think you can begin to understand something of Dickens 52 00:03:14,915 --> 00:03:16,675 just by reading his books. 53 00:03:16,675 --> 00:03:20,035 He gives us a glimpse of himself in all his work. 54 00:03:20,035 --> 00:03:23,475 But none are more revealing than this, 55 00:03:23,475 --> 00:03:26,275 in my opinion his best book, Great Expectations. 56 00:03:28,435 --> 00:03:33,835 Written in 1860 and 1861, a decade before Dickens' death, 57 00:03:33,835 --> 00:03:37,275 Great Expectations is widely regarded as one of the great 58 00:03:37,275 --> 00:03:39,075 novels in the English language. 59 00:03:40,995 --> 00:03:44,035 It boasts some of Dickens' most memorable scenes, 60 00:03:44,035 --> 00:03:48,435 not least the opening, set in a graveyard on the North Kent marshes. 61 00:03:51,275 --> 00:03:54,675 Here, a young orphan, Pip, is visiting his family's graves, 62 00:03:54,675 --> 00:03:56,795 a typically Dickensian scene setter, 63 00:03:56,795 --> 00:04:01,315 when he is accosted by an escaped convict, Magwitch. 64 00:04:01,315 --> 00:04:05,715 "A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, 65 00:04:05,715 --> 00:04:09,075 "and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, 66 00:04:09,075 --> 00:04:13,555 "and torn by briars, who limped and shivered and glared and growled, 67 00:04:13,555 --> 00:04:17,515 "and whose teeth chattered in his head, as he seized me by the chin." 68 00:04:22,595 --> 00:04:24,915 It's a terrifying opening in some ways, 69 00:04:24,915 --> 00:04:27,315 with Magwitch threatening to kill Pip, 70 00:04:27,315 --> 00:04:30,795 but Dickens fills it with brilliant visual humour throughout, 71 00:04:30,795 --> 00:04:33,475 giving the scenes an offbeat, absurd quality. 72 00:04:35,515 --> 00:04:38,995 Dickens actually wanted Great Expectations to be a comedy 73 00:04:38,995 --> 00:04:43,035 and he called its opening pages "exceedingly droll". 74 00:04:43,035 --> 00:04:47,555 In chapter three, Pip, fresh from stealing a blacksmith's file for 75 00:04:47,555 --> 00:04:51,515 Magwitch to cut his shackles, runs into a herd of judgmental cattle. 76 00:04:53,035 --> 00:04:56,315 "One black ox with a white cravat on, 77 00:04:56,315 --> 00:04:58,715 "who even had, to my awakened conscience, 78 00:04:58,715 --> 00:05:01,315 "something of a clerical air, fixed me 79 00:05:01,315 --> 00:05:03,355 "so obstinately with his eyes 80 00:05:03,355 --> 00:05:06,475 "and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as 81 00:05:06,475 --> 00:05:09,595 "I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, 82 00:05:09,595 --> 00:05:13,675 " 'I couldn't help it, sir. It wasn't for myself I took it.' " 83 00:05:15,475 --> 00:05:19,395 Dickens always had an acute sense of the tragicomic. 84 00:05:19,395 --> 00:05:23,075 In Oliver Twist, he wrote that all good murderous melodramas 85 00:05:23,075 --> 00:05:25,195 were constructed like streaky bacon. 86 00:05:25,195 --> 00:05:28,355 The red and the white representing comedy and tragedy, 87 00:05:28,355 --> 00:05:31,075 fried up together, complementing each other, 88 00:05:31,075 --> 00:05:34,275 and this is precisely what he does here. 89 00:05:34,275 --> 00:05:37,955 For me, this is perfect writing. The ability to swerve between comedy 90 00:05:37,955 --> 00:05:40,795 and drama without it ever feeling unnatural. 91 00:05:40,795 --> 00:05:43,955 It's exactly what I've been trying to do for much of my life. 92 00:05:43,955 --> 00:05:47,875 It's the secret to good popular drama, but here it feels effortless. 93 00:05:50,635 --> 00:05:53,195 The Pip in the graveyard grows up 94 00:05:53,195 --> 00:05:56,915 and is gifted a huge amount of money by a mysterious benefactor. 95 00:05:58,435 --> 00:06:02,115 Ashamed of his family and humble upbringing, Pip moves here, 96 00:06:02,115 --> 00:06:05,315 to Central London, to become a gentleman, taking up 97 00:06:05,315 --> 00:06:09,635 a dandy-ish lifestyle of partying, drinking and spending money. 98 00:06:11,315 --> 00:06:15,075 He believes that his patron is the infamous Miss Havisham, 99 00:06:15,075 --> 00:06:17,315 the wealthy unhinged spinster, 100 00:06:17,315 --> 00:06:20,995 jilted at the altar many years ago and adopted mother of Estella. 101 00:06:22,715 --> 00:06:26,155 He's infatuated with the beautiful, aloof Estella 102 00:06:26,155 --> 00:06:29,075 and convinces himself that Miss Havisham is funding him, 103 00:06:29,075 --> 00:06:32,355 grooming him even, so that he and Estella will one day marry. 104 00:06:35,955 --> 00:06:40,635 But then comes Dickens' big plot twist, as he put it, "the very 105 00:06:40,635 --> 00:06:46,195 "fine, new and grotesque idea", upon which the whole story hinges. 106 00:06:46,195 --> 00:06:49,235 Pip's benefactor isn't Miss Havisham. 107 00:06:49,235 --> 00:06:52,675 It's Magwitch, the convict he helped as a youngster. 108 00:06:55,315 --> 00:06:58,995 Pip is devastated, realising that he left his home, 109 00:06:58,995 --> 00:07:02,275 the people he loves, on a false hope. 110 00:07:02,275 --> 00:07:06,475 Even worse, he knows that he was never meant for Estella. 111 00:07:06,475 --> 00:07:09,355 As a plot device, this works brilliantly. 112 00:07:09,355 --> 00:07:12,315 As the hero struggles to deal with the dashing 113 00:07:12,315 --> 00:07:15,755 of his great expectations, the book steps up a gear. 114 00:07:15,755 --> 00:07:19,795 More set pieces, more drama, as Dickens hikes up the tension, 115 00:07:19,795 --> 00:07:21,715 page after page. 116 00:07:25,595 --> 00:07:29,315 At the same time, there is a dramatic shift in tone. 117 00:07:29,315 --> 00:07:32,675 The book becomes darker and more melancholy. 118 00:07:32,675 --> 00:07:37,475 Pip berates himself for his decisions, his snobbery and pride. 119 00:07:39,795 --> 00:07:42,355 "I thought how miserable I was, 120 00:07:42,355 --> 00:07:45,955 "but hardly knew why or how long I had been so, or on what day 121 00:07:45,955 --> 00:07:50,915 "of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it." 122 00:07:52,755 --> 00:07:56,755 He learns that Estella has married a violent, brutal man. 123 00:07:56,755 --> 00:08:00,115 Humbled, he leaves the country to become a lowly clerk. 124 00:08:00,115 --> 00:08:03,995 It's on his return, over a decade later, when he meets Estella 125 00:08:03,995 --> 00:08:08,635 again by chance, and we arrive at the ending that almost never was. 126 00:08:08,635 --> 00:08:11,475 This change in tone in the novel, this...darkening, 127 00:08:11,475 --> 00:08:14,355 really tells us a lot about Dickens. 128 00:08:14,355 --> 00:08:17,075 This was a man who set out to write a comedy, 129 00:08:17,075 --> 00:08:21,315 but ended up writing a moral drama that somehow veered into tragedy. 130 00:08:21,315 --> 00:08:24,675 To me, Great Expectations suggests an author caught between those 131 00:08:24,675 --> 00:08:26,595 two things, 132 00:08:26,595 --> 00:08:30,195 trying to tread a delicate path between the light and the shade. 133 00:08:35,515 --> 00:08:38,875 Here at the Wisbech and Fenland Museum in Cambridgeshire, 134 00:08:38,875 --> 00:08:41,675 we can get an even better glimpse into Dickens' mind. 135 00:08:41,675 --> 00:08:45,835 And into his struggles with the ending of the novel. 136 00:08:45,835 --> 00:08:50,075 So, this is the original manuscript of Great Expectations. Yes. 137 00:08:50,075 --> 00:08:53,555 Isn't it fantastic to work with the original like this? 138 00:08:53,555 --> 00:08:57,235 And we can see all of the changes that Dickens makes. 139 00:08:57,235 --> 00:08:59,635 And first thoughts and second thoughts. 140 00:08:59,635 --> 00:09:01,675 So you can actually see where he struggled, 141 00:09:01,675 --> 00:09:03,835 I guess, during the writing process. 142 00:09:03,835 --> 00:09:06,955 One of the surprising things we can see in this manuscript is that 143 00:09:06,955 --> 00:09:09,995 a couple of the comic scenes that we'd imagined just flowing 144 00:09:09,995 --> 00:09:13,195 out of Dickens so naturally, that's really what he's known for, 145 00:09:13,195 --> 00:09:15,875 that brilliant kind of fluid comic writing, 146 00:09:15,875 --> 00:09:18,075 he's actually worked those a bit. 147 00:09:18,075 --> 00:09:22,395 So if we have a look at this scene where Pip goes to school, 148 00:09:22,395 --> 00:09:26,555 it's this fantastic scene with Mr Wopsle's great aunt throwing 149 00:09:26,555 --> 00:09:30,715 things at the naughty schoolchildren. Oh, wow! He's really struggled here! 150 00:09:30,715 --> 00:09:34,155 Yeah, we've got quite a lot of amendment there. 151 00:09:34,155 --> 00:09:37,435 There's also a very interesting bit at the end. 152 00:09:37,435 --> 00:09:42,075 This is the manuscript that Dickens changes the most, at the very end. 153 00:09:42,075 --> 00:09:46,155 And we've got these two competing endings. 154 00:09:46,155 --> 00:09:49,395 So you see here, this cancelled out section. 155 00:09:49,395 --> 00:09:53,555 We get this start of an original ending which Dickens wrote 156 00:09:53,555 --> 00:09:55,475 that was very bleak. 157 00:09:55,475 --> 00:09:59,195 It features Pip and Estella meeting by accident, 158 00:09:59,195 --> 00:10:01,595 as Dickens puts it, in Piccadilly. 159 00:10:01,595 --> 00:10:04,915 Dickens's great friend, John Forster, 160 00:10:04,915 --> 00:10:09,515 kept a copy of the first ending, which he then produced 161 00:10:09,515 --> 00:10:13,195 with his biography of Dickens some years after Dickens died. 162 00:10:13,195 --> 00:10:14,675 And it says here, "The lady and I 163 00:10:14,675 --> 00:10:17,515 "looked sadly enough on one another," which would be Estella. 164 00:10:17,515 --> 00:10:22,115 And he goes on, "She gave me the assurance that suffering had 165 00:10:22,115 --> 00:10:25,475 "been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her 166 00:10:25,475 --> 00:10:28,715 "a heart to understand what MY heart used to be." 167 00:10:28,715 --> 00:10:30,595 That's quite grim. 168 00:10:30,595 --> 00:10:34,515 Yeah, Estella's also remarried, so in practical terms, 169 00:10:34,515 --> 00:10:37,515 there's no romantic future for her and Pip, 170 00:10:37,515 --> 00:10:40,675 it's a very definite closing of that possibility. 171 00:10:40,675 --> 00:10:42,035 Why do you think he changed it? 172 00:10:42,035 --> 00:10:45,915 Well, he went to a friend of his that weekend, and he didn't like it. 173 00:10:45,915 --> 00:10:48,555 He says to Dickens, we think, 174 00:10:48,555 --> 00:10:51,435 "This is too bleak, or this is too uncomfortable for your readers," 175 00:10:51,435 --> 00:10:56,515 something along those lines, and Dickens agrees to rethink it. 176 00:10:56,515 --> 00:11:01,315 So the ending that we then have, Pip meets Estella in the garden 177 00:11:01,315 --> 00:11:05,475 of Satis House - the home that she's grown up in with Miss Havisham, 178 00:11:05,475 --> 00:11:10,395 and this very important location for him and her through their lives. 179 00:11:10,395 --> 00:11:13,955 It's a moonlight scene, the fogs are rising 180 00:11:13,955 --> 00:11:16,795 and then there's just the possibility 181 00:11:16,795 --> 00:11:20,195 that maybe there's a Pip/Estella future. 182 00:11:20,195 --> 00:11:24,395 "I took her hand in mine, we went out of the ruined place. 183 00:11:24,395 --> 00:11:28,675 "And in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, 184 00:11:28,675 --> 00:11:31,635 "I saw no shadow of another parting from her." 185 00:11:31,635 --> 00:11:33,515 So that's a happy ending. 186 00:11:33,515 --> 00:11:35,235 Do you feel it's...? 187 00:11:35,235 --> 00:11:36,835 It feels more satisfying 188 00:11:36,835 --> 00:11:40,995 than going from the grimness of this chance meeting in Piccadilly 189 00:11:40,995 --> 00:11:44,035 to them actually reaching a conclusion. 190 00:11:44,035 --> 00:11:45,675 Yes. 191 00:11:45,675 --> 00:11:51,235 The "no shadow" still reads slightly ambiguously to me, 192 00:11:51,235 --> 00:11:55,475 and maybe more so if we look at the changes Dickens makes to get there. 193 00:11:55,475 --> 00:11:58,875 So in the manuscript here, it's slightly differently phrased, 194 00:11:58,875 --> 00:12:03,275 "The shadow of no parting from her but one." 195 00:12:03,275 --> 00:12:05,795 Meaning death, I guess? Yes. 196 00:12:05,795 --> 00:12:09,835 And there, instead of "no shadow of another parting", 197 00:12:09,835 --> 00:12:14,395 we've got this different wording - the shadow of NO parting. 198 00:12:14,395 --> 00:12:17,875 Dickens immediately decides to cut "but one", 199 00:12:17,875 --> 00:12:20,915 so we never get this "only in death". 200 00:12:20,915 --> 00:12:23,995 So he was really struggling with this ending, to get it right. 201 00:12:23,995 --> 00:12:27,235 Yeah, it's going through a number of quite substantial changes, 202 00:12:27,235 --> 00:12:30,475 I think, that he really changed the tone 203 00:12:30,475 --> 00:12:34,875 and perhaps the way we're invited to read these lines. 204 00:12:34,875 --> 00:12:39,715 I think it shows that it's something that he himself is... 205 00:12:39,715 --> 00:12:42,275 uncomfortable about, unsure about. 206 00:12:42,275 --> 00:12:47,435 It continues to bother him, even after the book is closed. 207 00:12:48,595 --> 00:12:52,035 Dickens' revised finale may not be a simple, happy ending, 208 00:12:52,035 --> 00:12:56,355 but it does offer some hope - a possible future for Pip and Estella. 209 00:12:56,355 --> 00:13:00,915 But why did Dickens, who was usually so decisive and forthright, 210 00:13:00,915 --> 00:13:03,515 decide to make such a massive change? 211 00:13:04,715 --> 00:13:07,835 I'm not sure I buy Dickens changing the end of this book simply 212 00:13:07,835 --> 00:13:09,715 because a friend suggested he do so. 213 00:13:09,715 --> 00:13:11,995 As writers, we agonise over things like this, 214 00:13:11,995 --> 00:13:14,395 and it's clear that's what Dickens is doing here. 215 00:13:14,395 --> 00:13:16,795 He keeps going back to it, changing the odd word, 216 00:13:16,795 --> 00:13:19,635 playing with the nuance of the language, trying to make it perfect, 217 00:13:19,635 --> 00:13:23,275 trying to get the balance right, tonally, between light and shade. 218 00:13:23,275 --> 00:13:26,355 But for a writer of Dickens' calibre to be this indecisive, 219 00:13:26,355 --> 00:13:29,395 something must be eating away at him. 220 00:13:29,395 --> 00:13:30,675 What is it? 221 00:13:34,675 --> 00:13:37,875 You can always discover something of an author by looking 222 00:13:37,875 --> 00:13:41,555 at their audience, by working out who they're writing for. 223 00:13:41,555 --> 00:13:43,835 The literary establishment at the time 224 00:13:43,835 --> 00:13:45,835 actually looked down on Dickens, 225 00:13:45,835 --> 00:13:49,235 but he was always more interested in what his readership, 226 00:13:49,235 --> 00:13:52,315 drawn from the middle and working classes, had to say. 227 00:13:53,955 --> 00:13:55,995 Any writer worth his salt will tell you, 228 00:13:55,995 --> 00:13:57,995 you need to understand your audience. 229 00:13:57,995 --> 00:14:00,355 When I'm writing, I feel the whole audience behind me, 230 00:14:00,355 --> 00:14:02,515 looking over my shoulder at the page. 231 00:14:02,515 --> 00:14:05,395 What I love about Dickens is he clearly understands that 232 00:14:05,395 --> 00:14:06,555 better than anyone else. 233 00:14:06,555 --> 00:14:08,955 He talks about his audience in personal terms, 234 00:14:08,955 --> 00:14:11,395 as if they were all sitting around a fire together, 235 00:14:11,395 --> 00:14:12,595 like they were friends. 236 00:14:14,315 --> 00:14:16,115 In 1853, 237 00:14:16,115 --> 00:14:19,435 a few years before the publication of Great Expectations, Dickens 238 00:14:19,435 --> 00:14:23,515 began to tour the country, reading his novels to packed audiences. 239 00:14:25,115 --> 00:14:29,115 This was a chance to get closer to his audience than ever before. 240 00:14:31,315 --> 00:14:34,315 There were tears, laughter, people fainted. 241 00:14:34,315 --> 00:14:37,075 He sold out huge venues, where people queued overnight, 242 00:14:37,075 --> 00:14:40,235 and tickets were touted at five times their face value. 243 00:14:40,235 --> 00:14:42,955 And remember, this isn't the Rolling Stones I'm talking about - 244 00:14:42,955 --> 00:14:45,595 this was Charles Dickens, the novelist. 245 00:14:47,115 --> 00:14:49,555 The audience who worshipped him on the stage 246 00:14:49,555 --> 00:14:51,995 were the same audience who bought his novels. 247 00:14:51,995 --> 00:14:54,475 Instead of publishing these novels in one volume, 248 00:14:54,475 --> 00:14:57,195 Dickens divided them into chunks and serialised them, 249 00:14:57,195 --> 00:14:59,595 weekly or monthly, in popular journals. 250 00:15:01,235 --> 00:15:03,995 It was a style pioneered by Dickens himself. 251 00:15:03,995 --> 00:15:06,875 By serialising the stories, he kept his audience waiting 252 00:15:06,875 --> 00:15:08,915 with bated breath for the next instalment. 253 00:15:08,915 --> 00:15:12,795 As his friend Wilkie Collins said, "Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, 254 00:15:12,795 --> 00:15:14,195 "make 'em wait." 255 00:15:17,715 --> 00:15:21,515 In 1859, Dickens set up his own journal, 256 00:15:21,515 --> 00:15:24,275 based in this building in Covent Garden. 257 00:15:26,515 --> 00:15:30,355 These books contain all the original journals from 1860 and 1861, 258 00:15:30,355 --> 00:15:35,075 including Great Expectations as it was first serialised. 259 00:15:37,995 --> 00:15:41,715 This is the very first instalment, published in December 1860. 260 00:15:41,715 --> 00:15:44,795 Dickens actually had to rush publication of the novel 261 00:15:44,795 --> 00:15:47,915 because his journal all the year round was haemorrhaging readers, 262 00:15:47,915 --> 00:15:51,675 and he knew that a new novel from him would help boost sales. 263 00:15:52,755 --> 00:15:54,475 Dickens' plan worked. 264 00:15:54,475 --> 00:15:57,155 The first instalments were wildly successful, 265 00:15:57,155 --> 00:15:59,315 selling 100,000 copies a week. 266 00:16:00,355 --> 00:16:02,955 And the audience kept coming back for more, 267 00:16:02,955 --> 00:16:07,155 not least because of something very close to my heart, the cliff-hanger. 268 00:16:07,155 --> 00:16:10,435 You can't tell me what to do - you ain't my mother! 269 00:16:11,555 --> 00:16:12,915 Yes, I am! 270 00:16:14,315 --> 00:16:17,715 Back in the day, when I was trying to write three cliff-hangers a week 271 00:16:17,715 --> 00:16:21,195 on EastEnders, sometimes I had no idea where I was going to go next. 272 00:16:21,195 --> 00:16:23,555 Dickens tended to plan things a little bit better, 273 00:16:23,555 --> 00:16:25,315 he generally knew where he was going. 274 00:16:25,315 --> 00:16:27,555 And he was a genius at writing them too. 275 00:16:27,555 --> 00:16:30,675 This is one of my favourites, at the end of chapter 42. 276 00:16:30,675 --> 00:16:33,915 Pip's about to go through his door, when someone hands him a note. 277 00:16:35,035 --> 00:16:38,475 "I opened it, the watchman holding up his light, 278 00:16:38,475 --> 00:16:42,435 "and read inside, in Wemmick's writing, 'DON'T GO HOME.' " 279 00:16:42,435 --> 00:16:44,555 EASTENDERS DRUMBEAT 280 00:16:45,635 --> 00:16:47,435 This is clearly a man who knows 281 00:16:47,435 --> 00:16:50,275 how to keep an audience on the edge of their seat, 282 00:16:50,275 --> 00:16:53,475 to keep them reading, to keep them buying his magazine. 283 00:16:53,475 --> 00:16:56,635 And he must have realised that his audience would clamour 284 00:16:56,635 --> 00:16:58,115 for some kind of happy ending 285 00:16:58,115 --> 00:17:00,835 for the characters they'd spent the last year with, 286 00:17:00,835 --> 00:17:02,955 week in, week out. 287 00:17:02,955 --> 00:17:06,715 But I'm not convinced this is the whole story. 288 00:17:06,715 --> 00:17:10,355 Dickens was aware of his audience, but he didn't pander to them. 289 00:17:10,355 --> 00:17:12,915 So I don't believe he would change the ending 290 00:17:12,915 --> 00:17:15,595 just to keep his audience happy, any more than I believe 291 00:17:15,595 --> 00:17:19,115 he would change the ending because a friend told him to. 292 00:17:19,115 --> 00:17:23,355 So what else is behind his decision, or rather his indecision? 293 00:17:25,835 --> 00:17:28,795 I think that the answer may lie in Dickens' own story, 294 00:17:28,795 --> 00:17:32,315 in his intimate connection to the people and places 295 00:17:32,315 --> 00:17:34,955 of Great Expectations. 296 00:17:34,955 --> 00:17:38,635 For me there's something very personal at the heart of this novel. 297 00:17:40,875 --> 00:17:43,875 So in order to understand this ending a little better, 298 00:17:43,875 --> 00:17:45,955 we need to go back to the beginning, 299 00:17:45,955 --> 00:17:50,675 to the opening scenes of both the novel and Dickens' own childhood. 300 00:17:50,675 --> 00:17:53,795 He grew up here, close to the North Kent Marshes. 301 00:17:56,275 --> 00:17:58,955 For Dickens as a child, these marshes must have seemed 302 00:17:58,955 --> 00:18:01,275 like a particularly foreboding landscape, 303 00:18:01,275 --> 00:18:03,795 but he describes them beautifully in his book. 304 00:18:03,795 --> 00:18:06,875 "The dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, 305 00:18:06,875 --> 00:18:10,395 "intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, was the marshes. 306 00:18:10,395 --> 00:18:12,395 "And that the distant savage lair 307 00:18:12,395 --> 00:18:14,995 "from which the wind was rushing was the sea; 308 00:18:14,995 --> 00:18:17,435 "and that the small bundle of shivers 309 00:18:17,435 --> 00:18:21,675 "growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip." 310 00:18:23,595 --> 00:18:25,955 You can just imagine Dickens as a child, 311 00:18:25,955 --> 00:18:28,875 staring out at the hulks - these huge prison ships docked 312 00:18:28,875 --> 00:18:33,115 in the Medway - thinking what would happen if the prisoners escaped. 313 00:18:33,115 --> 00:18:37,515 40 years later, he turns this into the opening of Great Expectations. 314 00:18:39,875 --> 00:18:42,795 Dickens' early memories of this landscape helped inspire 315 00:18:42,795 --> 00:18:44,875 the setting, the feel of the story, 316 00:18:44,875 --> 00:18:48,875 but how much more of his life can we see in his work? 317 00:18:48,875 --> 00:18:51,035 Was it Dickens' own childhood that led him 318 00:18:51,035 --> 00:18:52,915 to write characters like Pip? 319 00:18:52,915 --> 00:18:56,435 He was obsessed with childhood, and it's partly because of his own. 320 00:18:56,435 --> 00:19:00,435 And he's brilliant at not just... the pleasures of childhood, 321 00:19:00,435 --> 00:19:02,315 you know, the imagination, 322 00:19:02,315 --> 00:19:06,235 the sense of wonder, but also the terrors of childhood. 323 00:19:06,235 --> 00:19:08,995 Pip talks about this in Great Expectations, 324 00:19:08,995 --> 00:19:12,195 he talks about terror a lot, and Dickens had 325 00:19:12,195 --> 00:19:15,195 a kind of photographic memory for those sorts of feelings. 326 00:19:15,195 --> 00:19:17,275 What about his relationship with his father 327 00:19:17,275 --> 00:19:20,595 cos obviously he's fatherless, if you like, in Great Expectations, 328 00:19:20,595 --> 00:19:22,435 so how did that play in, do you think? 329 00:19:22,435 --> 00:19:25,995 Well, so John Dickens was a spendthrift. 330 00:19:25,995 --> 00:19:32,355 And he was imprisoned for debt when Dickens was a young boy. 331 00:19:32,355 --> 00:19:35,675 Because of that, Dickens then had to go out to earn money, 332 00:19:35,675 --> 00:19:38,915 just a few pennies a day, and he was sent to work 333 00:19:38,915 --> 00:19:41,115 in this blacking warehouse, 334 00:19:41,115 --> 00:19:44,395 which is a word for... basically a shoe-polish factory. 335 00:19:44,395 --> 00:19:48,155 And that really bit into Dickens, those feelings of shame, 336 00:19:48,155 --> 00:19:52,395 those feelings that all his own expectations had been frustrated. 337 00:19:52,395 --> 00:19:54,315 And he never forgot it, 338 00:19:54,315 --> 00:19:56,915 and he never forgave his parents for making him do it. 339 00:19:56,915 --> 00:20:00,515 So Dickens as a child always felt that he deserved better 340 00:20:00,515 --> 00:20:02,315 or should have better, so, in a way, 341 00:20:02,315 --> 00:20:04,995 it's almost as though he had his own great expectations? 342 00:20:04,995 --> 00:20:08,595 He did. Full of ambition, but also full of the fear of failure. 343 00:20:08,595 --> 00:20:10,875 Great Expectations is a novel 344 00:20:10,875 --> 00:20:13,835 about how you become the person that you are, 345 00:20:13,835 --> 00:20:17,315 but also there's that nagging feeling that it might be taken away 346 00:20:17,315 --> 00:20:20,555 from you at any moment, which is, of course, exactly what happens to Pip. 347 00:20:20,555 --> 00:20:23,195 So do you think Dickens really identified with Pip? 348 00:20:23,195 --> 00:20:25,315 I think Dickens identifies with ALL his characters. 349 00:20:25,315 --> 00:20:28,915 He saw them all as strange distorted reflections of himself. 350 00:20:28,915 --> 00:20:30,875 But Pip was closer to him 351 00:20:30,875 --> 00:20:34,955 because Pip reflected the side of him that he'd never quite managed 352 00:20:34,955 --> 00:20:39,435 to get out of his system, and that's the hurt, lonely, abused boy 353 00:20:39,435 --> 00:20:43,595 that he felt he had been, and was like a bruise that would never heal. 354 00:20:47,155 --> 00:20:51,035 Dickens' obsession with his childhood was so strong 355 00:20:51,035 --> 00:20:53,675 that, in 1857, he moved back to Rochester, 356 00:20:53,675 --> 00:20:56,595 a stone's throw from where he'd grown up. 357 00:20:56,595 --> 00:20:59,915 It was here that he would write most of Great Expectations. 358 00:21:01,555 --> 00:21:04,155 This return to Rochester must have made his childhood memories 359 00:21:04,155 --> 00:21:05,835 all the more vivid. 360 00:21:05,835 --> 00:21:10,075 And as he sat down to write the novel, he filled it with people 361 00:21:10,075 --> 00:21:12,715 and places pulled directly from these streets. 362 00:21:15,835 --> 00:21:18,635 Dickens had often walked past Restoration House as a boy, 363 00:21:18,635 --> 00:21:21,635 struggling to imagine what went on inside. 364 00:21:21,635 --> 00:21:24,315 Now, seeing this palatial mansion again, 365 00:21:24,315 --> 00:21:27,355 he could re-imagine its story for Great Expectations. 366 00:21:29,875 --> 00:21:32,755 So in the book, Dickens gives Pip privileged access to the very 367 00:21:32,755 --> 00:21:36,155 same house, renames it Satis House, and imagines it to be 368 00:21:36,155 --> 00:21:41,115 Miss Havisham's lair, crumbling to pieces. 369 00:21:41,115 --> 00:21:44,755 This Satis House is at the heart of Pip and Estella's relationship 370 00:21:44,755 --> 00:21:46,755 throughout the novel. 371 00:21:46,755 --> 00:21:50,995 And Dickens has them return to the same spot for his revised ending. 372 00:21:52,915 --> 00:21:55,075 The end of this book is about Pip returning 373 00:21:55,075 --> 00:21:58,315 by going back to the place where the story started. 374 00:21:58,315 --> 00:22:01,795 I think this is Dickens saying, "I've come home." 375 00:22:04,715 --> 00:22:08,395 But when Pip returns to Satis House at the end of the novel, 376 00:22:08,395 --> 00:22:12,235 he has failed entirely to live up to his great expectations. 377 00:22:12,235 --> 00:22:14,075 Having spent most of the book 378 00:22:14,075 --> 00:22:16,315 believing he is destined for something, 379 00:22:16,315 --> 00:22:18,315 he ends up sinking into mediocrity. 380 00:22:19,755 --> 00:22:22,355 Could Charles Dickens have felt the same about himself, 381 00:22:22,355 --> 00:22:24,915 upon his own return? 382 00:22:24,915 --> 00:22:27,315 This is Gad's Hill Place in Rochester, 383 00:22:27,315 --> 00:22:30,555 where Dickens wrote most of Great Expectations. 384 00:22:30,555 --> 00:22:33,995 When Dickens was a boy, his father used to walk him past this house, 385 00:22:33,995 --> 00:22:35,155 telling his son that 386 00:22:35,155 --> 00:22:38,195 if ever one day he was successful enough, he should buy it. 387 00:22:38,195 --> 00:22:41,395 In 1856, when the house came on the market, Dickens by now was 388 00:22:41,395 --> 00:22:44,235 hugely successful, and that's exactly what he did. 389 00:22:45,715 --> 00:22:49,995 I think that gives us a real insight into how, even 40 years on, 390 00:22:49,995 --> 00:22:52,035 Dickens was still affected by his childhood. 391 00:22:56,035 --> 00:23:00,155 Most of the book was written here, in the study. 392 00:23:00,155 --> 00:23:03,315 As a writer, it's quite humbling to be in Charles Dickens' study. 393 00:23:03,315 --> 00:23:05,355 I feel like a bit of a fraud, 394 00:23:05,355 --> 00:23:09,915 a little bit like a Sunday league player trying on Pele's boots. 395 00:23:09,915 --> 00:23:13,635 Dickens tended to write here from ten to two every day. 396 00:23:13,635 --> 00:23:16,715 He was a quick worker, but could spend whole mornings sitting, 397 00:23:16,715 --> 00:23:19,355 staring into space, dreaming up stories. 398 00:23:21,755 --> 00:23:24,555 He loved mirrors. His daughter once caught him 399 00:23:24,555 --> 00:23:27,955 while he was writing, staring into a mirror, making strange faces 400 00:23:27,955 --> 00:23:31,955 and noises, creating characters and chiselling them in his mind. 401 00:23:36,395 --> 00:23:38,755 And when he wanted to escape his hectic household, 402 00:23:38,755 --> 00:23:41,195 he would simply stroll across his garden 403 00:23:41,195 --> 00:23:44,875 and into this tunnel which he had specially built, leading through 404 00:23:44,875 --> 00:23:48,195 to his own private wilderness on the other side of the road. 405 00:23:51,555 --> 00:23:54,475 He had a gargoyle installed at either end, bought from Italy - 406 00:23:54,475 --> 00:23:57,755 one representing comedy, the other tragedy. 407 00:23:57,755 --> 00:23:59,515 Kind of says it all. 408 00:24:01,075 --> 00:24:06,155 Comedy and tragedy, the twin pillars of Dickens's streaky-bacon genius, 409 00:24:06,155 --> 00:24:11,755 the dark and the light that played such a big role in his life. 410 00:24:11,755 --> 00:24:13,635 So here is Dickens in 1860. 411 00:24:13,635 --> 00:24:16,555 He's the rich, successful writer, a celebrity even, 412 00:24:16,555 --> 00:24:19,635 and living in the house he dreamt of owning when he was a child. 413 00:24:19,635 --> 00:24:22,755 You would think he would be content. Happy maybe? 414 00:24:24,355 --> 00:24:26,715 But Great Expectations doesn't really feel like a book 415 00:24:26,715 --> 00:24:28,435 written by a happy person. 416 00:24:28,435 --> 00:24:31,075 So I'm trying to get a sense of where Charles Dickens was 417 00:24:31,075 --> 00:24:33,155 when he was writing Great Expectations. 418 00:24:33,155 --> 00:24:34,755 What was going on in his life? 419 00:24:34,755 --> 00:24:38,155 The easiest way to sum it up is he's a little bit all over the place. 420 00:24:38,155 --> 00:24:41,075 In his life, he was going through 421 00:24:41,075 --> 00:24:44,155 probably the most major disruption, 422 00:24:44,155 --> 00:24:48,035 emotionally and psychologically, that he'd ever been through. 423 00:24:48,035 --> 00:24:55,155 In 1858, he publicly separated from his wife. At the same time 424 00:24:55,155 --> 00:25:00,275 he was almost definitely having an affair with a much younger actress, 425 00:25:00,275 --> 00:25:04,275 which he worked very, very hard to keep quiet. 426 00:25:04,275 --> 00:25:09,115 And he would actually rent houses under false names, 427 00:25:09,115 --> 00:25:12,395 a little bit like Dickens characters' names, to keep her there. 428 00:25:12,395 --> 00:25:15,075 He would take her back and forth to France. 429 00:25:15,075 --> 00:25:18,435 There were rumours that she had a termination of a pregnancy. 430 00:25:18,435 --> 00:25:21,515 All of this was done without the public's knowledge. 431 00:25:21,515 --> 00:25:25,555 And can you see any of this domestic turmoil in the book? 432 00:25:25,555 --> 00:25:27,235 Oh, absolutely. 433 00:25:27,235 --> 00:25:31,795 Pip has this absolute lifelong infatuation with Estella, 434 00:25:31,795 --> 00:25:37,075 whose name echoes the sounds of his real-life lover, Ellen Ternan. 435 00:25:37,075 --> 00:25:39,875 You have the Es, the Ls. 436 00:25:39,875 --> 00:25:43,035 Estella, as her name suggests, it means "star", 437 00:25:43,035 --> 00:25:44,715 it's kind of ice maiden. 438 00:25:44,715 --> 00:25:48,555 Ellen also was rumoured to be not quite as passionate 439 00:25:48,555 --> 00:25:50,915 about Dickens as he was about her. 440 00:25:50,915 --> 00:25:55,675 For him, she was the be all and end all, for her, we don't know. 441 00:25:55,675 --> 00:25:59,475 So I think a lot of this is written into Great Expectations. 442 00:25:59,475 --> 00:26:02,275 There are certain passages when I feel that, 443 00:26:02,275 --> 00:26:05,595 although it's Pip talking about Estella, 444 00:26:05,595 --> 00:26:06,875 there's times when I feel, 445 00:26:06,875 --> 00:26:09,355 is this Charles Dickens talking about Ellen Ternan? 446 00:26:09,355 --> 00:26:12,315 Love generally isn't Dickens's strong point. 447 00:26:12,315 --> 00:26:15,355 He usually makes love humorous or he writes it badly, 448 00:26:15,355 --> 00:26:19,675 and in Great Expectations we have these incredibly powerful 449 00:26:19,675 --> 00:26:23,475 convincing outpourings of love from Pip to Estella. 450 00:26:23,475 --> 00:26:28,675 But what we do see is a very different tone in this later novel 451 00:26:28,675 --> 00:26:30,395 from the cheerful earlier Dickens. 452 00:26:30,395 --> 00:26:34,635 It's quite bleak, quite tortured, 453 00:26:34,635 --> 00:26:38,835 and I think what's coming through is Dickens still was not happy, 454 00:26:38,835 --> 00:26:42,035 even though he may have been in an affair. But lots of feelings 455 00:26:42,035 --> 00:26:47,115 in the novel of frustration, pain, isolation and difficulty. 456 00:26:47,115 --> 00:26:51,035 Almost everything I have written has been personal at some level. 457 00:26:51,035 --> 00:26:53,235 I suppose I use writing as a kind of therapy 458 00:26:53,235 --> 00:26:56,515 to work out problems in my own life through my characters. 459 00:26:56,515 --> 00:26:59,075 And I think this is exactly what Dickens is doing here. 460 00:26:59,075 --> 00:27:01,195 It's clear that he invested something of himself, 461 00:27:01,195 --> 00:27:03,195 but not just in Pip - 462 00:27:03,195 --> 00:27:06,915 in BOTH these characters, in the very idea of Pip and Estella. 463 00:27:10,635 --> 00:27:13,515 What's remarkable about Great Expectations is that 464 00:27:13,515 --> 00:27:17,035 despite these difficult years - the most difficult of his life - 465 00:27:17,035 --> 00:27:20,235 Dickens responded with one of his great novels, 466 00:27:20,235 --> 00:27:22,275 one of THE great novels. 467 00:27:23,395 --> 00:27:25,835 As he lost control of events in his life, 468 00:27:25,835 --> 00:27:29,315 he tried to wrestle it back with his fiction, and with great success. 469 00:27:30,555 --> 00:27:33,875 All this wrangling and worry over the ending reflects both 470 00:27:33,875 --> 00:27:37,035 the novel as a whole and Dickens' state of mind. 471 00:27:37,035 --> 00:27:39,675 He was struggling, with the tone of his books, 472 00:27:39,675 --> 00:27:41,875 with audience expectations, 473 00:27:41,875 --> 00:27:45,115 with his past and with the way his life had turned out. 474 00:27:46,795 --> 00:27:49,795 An unhappy man, Dickens at first picked the bleaker ending, 475 00:27:49,795 --> 00:27:51,795 settling down in the shade. 476 00:27:51,795 --> 00:27:55,155 He was right to reject the idea of a simple happy ending. 477 00:27:55,155 --> 00:27:57,275 But he realised that these characters 478 00:27:57,275 --> 00:27:58,875 that he'd spent so long with 479 00:27:58,875 --> 00:28:01,915 deserved something better than a gloomy last goodbye. 480 00:28:04,355 --> 00:28:07,315 So he came up with something more ambiguous - 481 00:28:07,315 --> 00:28:10,915 Pip seeing no shadow of another parting from Estella. 482 00:28:10,915 --> 00:28:15,115 This new ending doesn't offer a definitive answer. 483 00:28:15,115 --> 00:28:17,275 He was too good a writer for that. 484 00:28:17,275 --> 00:28:21,475 But it offers some hope, a chink of light. 485 00:28:21,475 --> 00:28:26,235 In offering the possibility that these two imperfect characters could 486 00:28:26,235 --> 00:28:30,235 have a future together, he isn't simply giving in to other people. 487 00:28:30,235 --> 00:28:32,995 He wants it too. 488 00:28:32,995 --> 00:28:36,155 To me, it's kind of an exercise in wish fulfilment. 489 00:28:36,155 --> 00:28:39,515 In hinting at a happy ending for Pip, 490 00:28:39,515 --> 00:28:42,835 Charles Dickens is imagining one for himself. 491 00:28:45,835 --> 00:28:48,915 To dig deeper into Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, 492 00:28:48,915 --> 00:28:51,115 and the other books in this series, 493 00:28:51,115 --> 00:28:54,515 a free app from the Open University is available to download. 494 00:28:54,515 --> 00:28:56,715 Go to - 495 00:28:58,595 --> 00:29:01,275 Follow the links to the Open University.