Okay. The first thing I have to say before you read this is that I didn't write it because I have a love for the novel Great Expectations. Far from it. Honestly, I found the book to be boring as crap; I just really loved Estella’s character. Then I had this project assigned to me in English class. We read The House On Mango Street, and we were talking about a protagonist’s journey to self-discovery, and we had to choose a protagonist from a novel we’d read earlier in the year and write a bunch of vignettes about them. So, I picked Estella. And I wrote these vignettes from her point of view, and I used literary devices and crap (using literary devices was part of the project) and I just really like them, okay?! So, if you’re like me and you were forced to read Great Expectations, I hope you read and enjoy the only Great Expectations fanfiction in existence. Oh, also: SPOILER ALERT. I follow Estella through the entire plot of the book, so if you don’t know how it ends and you don’t want to know, DON’T READ IT. Okay. Cool. Enjoy. This is part two...
Estella - Part II. The First Boy
There is a boy.
He is new, and different, and so very far from me that I am unsure of what I am to do with him; why has Mother brought him here?
He is a he. A him; a boy.
Mother warned me about boys. Boys and their promises of love. Boys and their murmured confessions, the impossible offers they procure out of thin air, and she says that I’ll believe them if I am unprepared.
So Mother has prepared me. I think perhaps this Boy is practice; a way for me to experience the lies with Mother standing by to aid me, to remind me of the danger.
We play cards, but only the simple games. The Boy doesn’t know the strategic games that Mother and I play. He hasn’t been taught our ways.
Mother lets me wear her jewelry, and she whispers things in The Boy’s ear. The Boy is quite infatuated with me. I know because Mother told me so; also because he follows me the way a dog will follow a hand with a treat. Watching, waiting. Eager and hopeful.
Estella - Part II. The First Boy
There is a boy.
He is new, and different, and so very far from me that I am unsure of what I am to do with him; why has Mother brought him here?
He is a he. A him; a boy.
Mother warned me about boys. Boys and their promises of love. Boys and their murmured confessions, the impossible offers they procure out of thin air, and she says that I’ll believe them if I am unprepared.
So Mother has prepared me. I think perhaps this Boy is practice; a way for me to experience the lies with Mother standing by to aid me, to remind me of the danger.
We play cards, but only the simple games. The Boy doesn’t know the strategic games that Mother and I play. He hasn’t been taught our ways.
Mother lets me wear her jewelry, and she whispers things in The Boy’s ear. The Boy is quite infatuated with me. I know because Mother told me so; also because he follows me the way a dog will follow a hand with a treat. Watching, waiting. Eager and hopeful.
---
The Boy has been with us for a very long time. I led him on and pushed him away (always according to Mother’s prompting), and now I am through with him. Mother is very proud of me. She has told me so. She says I am ready to be a lady; ready to go out, ready to make more boys fall in love. Ready to find the one who will bring me the most, and ready to marry him.
I am to go to London soon. I am to stay with a friend (Mother’s word for the vultures who lurk about her, snapping up any scrap of possible inheritance and shooting jealous looks at me (for my inheritance is already insured, as I am Mother’s daughter)) of Mother’s, in an estate just outside the city. I am to attend dances and be outfitted for new dresses; I am to show Mother that she has taught me right.
Mother has given me her jewels to take with me to London.
I grew up playing with her jewels, trying them on and pretending to be who I am about to become. Now I wear them, just as Mother wore them, and I take the carriage to London, ready to be married.
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