Great Expectations: Overview (AQA GCSE English Literature)

Great Expectations: Overview

Paper 1, Section B of your GCSE requires you to study one 19th-century novel and write one essay-length response to one set question in your paper. The question includes an extract from your studied text but it is a closed-book exam, which means you will not have access to a copy of the novel in your exam. There are two Dickens novels that you could study for the exam:

• Great Expectations

• A Christmas Carol

This page contains some helpful information, and links to more detailed revision note pages, that will enable you to aim for the highest grade when studying Great Expectations. This page includes:

• Who was Charles Dickens?

• Great Expectations summary

• Great Expectations synopsis

• A brief overview of what is required in the exam

• Great Expectations characters

• Great Expectations context

• Great Expectations themes

• Great Expectations quotes

• Top tips for the highest grade

Who was Charles Dickens?

Charles Dickens was an English novelist, essayist and social critic who was one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the Victorian era. Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England on February 7, 1812 and, after spending a great deal of his life in Kent (the initial setting of Great Expectations), he died on June 9, 1870. He is buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey despite his request to be buried in Rochester Cathedral in Kent. 

Dickens was a prolific writer: he wrote 15 novels as well as countless essays and short stories, which were often serialised in periodicals and released on a weekly basis, as was the case with Great Expectations. He is particularly known for his writing on poverty and the English class system, which he saw as repressive and unjust. His writing clearly represents a criticism of existing systems of oppression and of glaring - and, due to the extreme wealth being created during the Industrial Revolution in England, increasing - inequality that existed in British society. Dickens used various narrative forms to highlight these inequalities and iniquities, such as satire, caricature, Bildungsroman and even fairy tale, all of which he used when writing Great Expectations. For more on Dickens’s use of narrative and form, see our Great Expectations: Writer’s Methods and Techniques page.

Great Expectations summary

Great Expectations is a novel written by Charles Dickens first published as a serial in the weekly journal, All the Year Round, between 1860-61, and first published in novel form in 1861. It is in the form of a Bildungsroman, in that it charts the coming of age, and moral transformation, of its protagonist, Philip Pirrip, known as ‘Pip’. It is a sharp critique of the vanity and arrogance of the English upper classes, and of a society - Victorian England - which Dickens believed prioritised reputation and appearance over moral character and integrity.

Great Expectations synopsis

A young orphan called Pip encounters an escaped convict, who requests some food and a file to free himself from his chains. Reluctantly, Pip agrees. Later, Pip is invited by an affluent woman called Miss Havisham to play with her adopted ward, Estella. Pip falls in love with Estella and, in the hope of someday marrying her, shuns his old life in Kent and aspires to leave his working-class background behind. Soon, an anonymous benefactor makes it possible for Pip to move to London to live the life of a gentleman. Believing this donor to be Miss Havisham, he is especially crestfallen when he discovers that Estella does not in fact intend to marry him, and further disappointed to discover that his benefactor is not Miss Havisham at all, but the mysterious convict he aided as a child. The rest of the novel sees Pip on a path of redemption, renouncing his attempts to boost his gentlemanly reputation in favour of helping those - the convict Magwitch; the brother-in-law who raised him - who have shown Pip kindness. For a more detailed plot summary, and section-by-section breakdown of the novel, see our Great Expectations: Plot Summary page.

How is Great Expectations assessed in the exam?

• Paper 1 of the English Literature GCSE requires you to answer two questions in 1hr 45min, which means you have about 52 minutes to plan, write and check over your Great Expectations essay

• Paper 1 is worth 64 marks and accounts for 40% of your overall GCSE grade

• Your essay is worth 30 marks in total (for this question your SPaG is not assessed)

• Section B of Paper 1 contains the question and you are required to answer the one available question on the novel (there is not a choice of two questions, as there is for the Modern texts exam)

• Your question will also include a printed extract of about 35 lines from the novel

• It is a closed-book exam, which means you will not have access to a copy of the text (other than the printed extract) in your exam

• You will be asked a question that asks you to analyse and write in detail about an aspect of Great Expectations

• Your answer will need to address both the extract from the novel that you will be given, and the novel as a whole

For a much more detailed guide on answering the Great Expectations question, please see our revision notes on How to Answer the 19th-Century Novel Essay Question.

Great Expectations characters

The characters you should focus on when revising Great Expectations are:

• Pip

• Estella

• Miss Havisham

• Abel Magwitch

• Joe Gargery

• Mrs Joe Gargery

• Biddy

There are also other minor characters in Great Expectations who contribute to Pip’s psychological and moral transformation and it is important to understand their role in the novel. For example: Compeyson, Dogle Orlick, Mr Jaggers, Herbert Pocket and Bentley Drummle.

It is always vital to remember - when considering a Dickens novel, or any text - that characters are deliberate constructions created by a writer for a purpose. These characters often represent ideas, or belief systems, and a writer, like Dickens, uses these characters to explore these ideas and beliefs through them. In Great Expectations, many characters represent sections of the English class system, for example. For more details on how Dickens uses his characters in Great Expectations, please see the Great Expectations: Characters revision notes page.

Great Expectations context

Six marks are available for context in the 19th-century novel question. Before you go into your exam, it is vital that the word ‘context’ has a very specific meaning in the English Literature mark scheme. Examiners understand context not as historical information, or biographical facts about a writer, but as the ideas and perspectives explored by a writer through their text. Therefore, for the context of Great Expectations you should not write about random, irrelevant information about Kent or London in the 1820s, or biographical information about Charles Dickens, but ideas about:

• Social Class

• Ambition and Self-Improvement

• The Bildungsroman Genre in the 19th Century

• Integrity and Reputation

Crucially, context is about how the above ideas and perspectives give us a better understanding of the author’s intentions, or messages in Great Expectations. Many of these ideas and perspectives are universal, so your own opinions of them are valid, and will be rewarded in an exam. For a detailed breakdown of the contextual topics listed above, see the Great Expectations: Context page.

Great Expectations themes

Exam responses that are led by ideas are more likely to achieve the highest number of marks. Exploring the ideas of Great Expectations, specifically in relation to the question being asked, will help to increase your fluency and assurance in writing about the text. Understanding the themes that Dickens explores in Great Expectations is one of the best approaches any student can take when revising the novel. This is because to get the highest mark on your exam, you need to take what examiners call a “conceptualised approach”: a detailed and perceptive exploration of Dickens’s ideas and intentions. The main themes explored by Dickens in Great Expectations are:

• Guilt and Shame

• Social Class

• Ambition and Self-improvement

• Integrity and Reputation

There are many more themes than just those listed above that are explored by Dickens in Great Expectations, and you are encouraged to consider these too. However, the above list makes a great place to start, and detailed breakdowns of each of these themes can be found on our Great Expectations: Themes page.

Great Expectations quotes

Examiners stress that students don’t need to revise dozens of quotations, as long as they can also use what they can “references” to the text. This means summarising, paraphrasing, referencing single words and referencing plot events. Using these references - especially for a wordy text like Great Expectations - are all as valid as quotations in demonstrating that you understand the novel. It is important that you remember that you can evidence your knowledge of the text in these two equally valid ways: both through references to it and direct quotations from it. If you are going to revise quotations, the best way is to group them by character, or theme. We have already identified some quotations that you may wish to review in preparation for your exam, although a good approach is only to revise a few words from each quotation: it is not necessary to memorise all the quotations by heart. For a detailed analysis of each of these quotations, see our Great Expectations: Key Quotations page.

Top tips for the highest grade

Please see our revision pages on the 19th-century texts for guides on:

• Structuring the Great Expectations essay

• Great Expectations methods and techniques

• How to include context in a Great Expectations essay

• Understanding the Great Expectations mark scheme

• 19th-century novel model answer