The text is created in an intelligent way so that it interests the reader from the beginning.
The title itself stimulates the inquisitiveness of the reader. We are led to think that the novel promises a certain amount of drama or action. The text from the novel ‘Great Expectations’ is structured in a deliberate fashion to encourage the reader to read on.
Great Expectations is a gothic novel. It explores various gothic genres which are mysterious and gloomy. The settings are dim and dismal and the gothic genre is created so that it would be familiar to a Victorian audience. The outlook of the genre would engage the reader from the beginning.
The setting contains imagery so that the audience can have a clear picture of the scene.
Chapter one begins in the graveyard ‘from the tombstones’ which gives the reader a gothic and intense feeling as they imagine ‘a bleak place overgrown with nettles’. The reader’s curiosity is aroused because we are wondering why Pip is there. The surrounding landscape in the beginning is described as a ‘distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing’. This makes the reader feel apprehensive about what is going to take place in this setting. Pip is described as an orphan; he has never seen his parents and he lives with his sister (Mrs. Joe Gargery) and her husband. The description of the deprived looking boy alone in the graveyard adds to the sense of inquisitive drama. The expectation that we have anticipated comes to our attention when a menacing looking house is shown in chapter eight. This is shown when Pip describes the outside of the house ‘which was of old brick and dismal’. The inside of the house is quite creepy ‘and still it was all dark’ which makes the reader wonder of who might own and live in that house.
