CHARLES DICKENS - GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Charles Dickens shows how a young simple boy
desires to grew into a gentleman.
desires to grew into a gentleman.
'Great Expectations' reveals the discontentment
in many people and
how they strive for things that are out of reach.
in many people and
how they strive for things that are out of reach.
This is exactly the situation Pip is faced with.
Pip later gains humanity and learns that
the true gentleman of Great Expectations
(in the Victorian society)
(in the Victorian society)
is that of a true kind-hearted gentleman.
Question
‘Great Expectations, with its first narrator, makes the
reader acutely aware of the distance between the inner life
and its surrounding circumstances. Sometimes those
circumstances help to explain the inner response but other
times the inward voice expresses itself in thoughts and
language that far exceeds any outward cause or provocation.’
Discuss this statement in the light of pip’s revelations
about himself and his social world, paying equal attention
to the themes in the novel and the narrative techniques used
to explore them.
A gentleman – a Victorian ideal, consumes Pip. The
cost of becoming a gentleman started Pip’s journey of self
-improvement: moral, social and educational; and these
motivate the best and worst aspects of Pip. The idea of
expectations driven by repressed desires, aspirations and
self-development provide the psychological mechanism of
Great Expectations. The working out of these desires and fantasies
provides Dickens with the opportunity to gently satirize the
capricious nature of the class system of his era. Complicated
by the moral ambiguity of the characters and the situations:
the good versus the evil, the façade and false appearances;
these provoke us to wonder who is good and who is evil, and
what is real and what is false. We will look into the gap
between Pip’s inner life and his surrounding
circumstances in his struggles for moral development
and the narrative themes and techniques used in
developing its didactic message.
Pip, an orphan, a fragmented individual is constantly being
tormented by his sister, Mrs Joe. Along with unceasing beatings,
even innocently asking a simple question, was twisted around to
appear criminal. At a Christmas dinner Pip was attacked verbally
by adults that he should be grateful because were he a swine he
could await no better fate than to arrive on the dinner table;
endorsing a comical expression that children need to be bullied
into virtue. These have instilled in him, fear and a sense of
guilt for merely existing. Only though Mrs Joe’s submissive
husband, Joe, his affection nurtures him. Pip’s only solace was
sitting on Joe’s lap, it is here he learns how to distinguish
goodness from mean-spiritedness, the virtue that ennobled their
modest lives.
Then one memorable day came and made great changes in Pip’s life
–‘Imagine one selected day struck out of it… and think how
different its course would have been… for the formation of the
first link on one memorable day’
(p. 71).
Pip’s meeting with the terrifying, tyrannical convict, Magwitch
on the marshes where he was instructed to get food and a file.
Robbing Mrs Joe to feeda convict, Pip becomes troubled by this
additional criminal guilt - he feels like he is on secret
conspiracy with convicts, hence aligning himself as an outcast.
Pip’s childhood is saddled with the dilemma between the demands
of his bullying sister and this inner guilt.
Pip, an ignorant country boy of repressed desires, yearns for
Estella’s love
–‘her light came along the long dark passage like a star’(p.58),
aspiring to belong to her social class triggers the heightened
awareness of his common upbringing and he immediately
fantasizes of becoming a gentleman. Mysteriously, Pip was
eventually whisked away by his newly acquired fortune,
becomes a man of high social status but the affluence only
brings wealthy idleness. In his haste to climb the social
ladder of gentlemen; he abandons a loving bond with Joe.
His lack of gratitude toward Joe further intensify his guilt.
In London, Pip’s knowledge of the ‘civilised’ life is dominated
by the precariousness of a class-divided society –the wealthy,
the high status and the deprivation of its underclass. Jaggers,
a prominent lawyer, continually washes his hands with soap
display his guilt as the criminal he protects. Later Magwitch,
a petty criminal and Compeyson were tried for the same crime,
however Compeyson got a reduced sentence due to his well-bred
manners and elevated position in society. The external trappings
of the criminal justice system become a superficial standard of
morality. The filthy rich are imprisoned, in self chosen
psychological prisons – The bitter Ms Havisham, by stopping her
clocks, done nothing more than even to put on her second shoe
and although Estella lived a privileged life, her callous heart
robs her of happiness, both have meaningless existence. The
coarse and cruel Drummle provides an important contrast, a lout
who inherited immense wealth while Joe, a humble blacksmith,
who works hard for the little. Later when Joe visited Pip in
London, the social change hinder their interaction. However,
despite Joe’s lower social status, Pip observes -
‘a simple dignity in him. The fashion of his dress could no
more come in way …, than it could come in its way in heaven’
(p. 222).
Pip regrets his previous snobbery and realizes that social
status has no inherent connection to moral worth.
When Magwitch suddenly appears as an escaped criminal and the
discovery that Pip’s secret benefactor is wretched Magwitch
and not wealthy Miss Havisham completely shatters him. He feels
a sense of entrapment, he is now forever bound to the lowest of
the society. Pip’s disparagement to Magwitch is expressed in
his description of Magwitch appallingly unrefined manner of
eating ‘ as he turned his food in his mouth, and turned his
head sideways to bring his strongest fangs to bear upon it,
he looked terribly like a hungry old dog’ (p. 327). Magwitch,
indebted to Pip, toiled for years as a sheep herder to make Pip
a gentleman and despite taking the great risk of a death
penalty, he still visit Pip. Moved by Magwitch noble act and
guilty of his condescension, Pip discovered Magwitch’s inner
nobility despite his status as a criminal. Prompted by his
conscience, he helps Magwitch to evade the police. Pip’s
gentility connecting with murder and deportation seems to
suggest that the triumph of mid-Victorian society were
prescribed by some very dark realities.
The first person narrative in Great expectation with its multi
-genre- bildungsroman, gothic, melodramatic and the realism of
detailed description aim to display young Pip’s perspective:
his guilt, his aspirations and moral development. The dual
personality of pip: adult Pip, the narrator and the child Pip
is a skilfully executed distinction; linking the gap between
the moral exploration and self-identification of the young,
idealistic boy with his innate conscience. The adult Pip
observes his childhood, interprets its meanings and judges
himself severely. Even at his lowest point, we still see a
grain of goodness in Pip and because of the double narrative
we never lose sympathy for pip.
Dickens creates a magnificent gothic setting to denote
Pip’s inner world of strange hallucinatory and romantic,
idealistic perception of the upper class. In Satis house,
Pip meets the eccentric Miss Havisham dressed in a tattered
wedding dress, that looked like ‘grave-clothes’ and her old
wedding cake is rotting. And everything in the room, the watch
and the clock has stopped for a long time in the midst of
decaying objects. Havisham decaying house reflects her twisted
mind and the degenerating society with its hidden diminishing
morality. Furthermore, the images of inanimate objects in the
characters’ appearances are expressed as a social critique– Mr
Wemmick inscrutable features ‘imperfectly carved-out with a
dull-edged chisel’ are compared to a letter-box while Mrs Joe
looks as if she scrubs her face with a nutmeg grater- suggests
that the character’s social position pressured them into
resembling an object and that the class system dehumanizes
certain people, just as Miss Havisham’s crime of dehumanization
by using Pip and Estella as inanimatevehicle of revenge for her
broken heart.
Irony creates tension in the novel. When the convict asked Pip
where his mother is, and Pip answered ‘There, sir!’ (p.5),
pointing to the graveyard, the convict becomes momentary
frightened creating an ironic, comical and delightful moment.
A major irony is how a simple task of bringing a convict food
and a file, changed Pip’s life forever, when Magwitch repaid
him by making him a gentleman and also turn out to be the
father of Pip’s love, Estella. Another dramatic irony is how
Miss Havisham wanted Pip to be tormented emotionally,
ironically she grew to like him and even paid for part of
Pip’s expenses for the partnership and eventually apologies
to him.
Repetition reinforces the reality. The repetition of mist
symbolise danger and uncertainty- when Pip brings Magwitch
food in the marshes, when Magwitch reappears in London-
‘It was wretched weather; stormy and wet…
mud, mud, mud…a vast heavy veil…..
an eternity of cloud and wind.’
(p. 309)
and when Pip was kidnapped by Orlick. Additionally, ‘Hands’
are repeated themes to redefine some significant moments.
Biddy’s ‘good matronly hand’ replaces Mrs Joe abusive hands
with warmth and affection. And in the climatic recognition
scene, when Magwitch ‘ holding out both hands for mine’
(p.327) and at Magwitch deathbed ‘raised my hand to his lips.
Then let it sink upon his breast again with his own hand lying
on it (p. 455), must have moved Pip to tears and lastly when
Pip meets Estella ‘her hand in mine’ (p.479) as they walked
out of that ruined place. The emphasis on hands also symbolise
the lower class with its inherent warmth and kindness.
The hybrid of genre weaves through, contrasting the city and
the country, the public and the private and reveals how society
can impair the individual. The didactic message is that Pip
realised his greatest fault of disparagement and learns that the
issue of identity lies in the dignity of labour rather than
hereditary aristocracy, in simple human integrity rather than
deceit and pretension.
What makes a gentleman? The notion of a Victorian gentleman is
of high social status, wealth, education and moral qualities.
Compeyson, the ‘false’ gentleman, resorted to crime and betrayal
whereas Magwitch in wishing to ‘own’ a gentleman triggers his
intrinsic goodness. Thus Magwitch’s generosity and nobility,
Pip’s conscience and Joe’s kindness, loyalty and simple dignity,
these are the essence of a gentleman; and it is these values that
are more important than social advancement, wealth and class.
(1584 words)
Bibliography
Dickens, C., Great Expectations (1998), Oxford University Press
Walder, D (ed.), The Realist Novel (1995) Open University
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