Gate Expectations
Inferno Canto IX; waiting at the gate outside the city of Dis
“At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham’s, and my hesitating ring at the gate brought out Estella.” There’s always a gate — garden, love, decadent ancient manor, smooth McMansion, or in our case: Hell’s lower rung. In Great Expectations, Pip passes the gates and enters the gloomy, overripe rooms of a kind of reversed …