Great Expectations

By Charles Dickens

Brooke Bittel

“I overheard Miss Havisham answer- only it seemed so unlikely- 'Well, you can break his heart.’ ”

Judith with the Head of Holofernes

David Teniers the Younger

GriefElizabeth Barrett Browning

“I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;” (l. 1)

" 'You must know,' said Estella, condescending to me as a beautiful woman might, 'that I have no heart…” (pg 235)

January: Cernay, near Rambouillet

Léon-Germain Pelouse

Dead LoveAlgernon Charles Swinburne

“His heart, that strained and yearned and strove

As toward the sundawn strives the lark,

Is cold as all the old joy thereof.

 

Dead men, re-arisen from dust, may hark

When rings the trumpet blown above:

It will not raise from out the dark    Dead love.” (l.5-11)

“I promised myself that I would do something one of these days, and formed a plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast beef and plum pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension upon everybody in the village”

Beggars at a DoorwayAbraham Willemsens

Cui BonoThomas Carlyle

“What is Man? A foolish baby,

      Vainly strives, and fights, and frets;

Demanding all, deserving nothing;—

      One small grave is what he gets.”

(l. 9-12)