Guilt, Criminality, and Doppelgängers in Dickens

George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Theme and Subject —> Image, Symbol, and Motif]

In From Copyright to Copperfield, Alexander Welsh examines the uses Dickens made of his memories of the infamous episode involving Warrens Shoeblacking warehouse, and in so doing he contrasts the tales of Pip and David:

The criminality uncovered in Great Expectations and the more nearly explicit burden of guilt borne by the hero make it seem more modern than Copperfield. The shame that Dickens associated with the blacking warehouse he overcame more or less straightforwardly with the story of success in the first novel; in the second, in a routine that may be thought of as a model for psychoanalysis, he exchanged shame for guilt. [180]

Nonetheless, as Welsh argues, both novels share Dickens's often-observed characteristic use of a Doppelgänger figure — a character who functions in some senses as a darker version, or even as the moral inverse, of the protagonist. In David Copperfield, for instance,

Uriah Heep is a Doppelgänger, like Rigaud in Little Dorrit and Orlick in Great Expectations, in whom the aggressive and sexual demands of the hero are strangely absorbed and whose criminal doings, as eventually exposed, clear the hero of wrong doing [143]. . . . The whole conception of Uriah Heep as the “umble" hypocrite shadows darkly Copperfield's rise in the world through earnestnes and hard work. The Doppelgänger is in revolt against the deference demanded of the young and ambitious in all societies, but with particular severity in Victorian England. [144]

Building upon Welsh's insights, see if you can determine precisely what aspects of Pip Orlick shadows? Readers have long noticed that Orlick serves as Pip's dark double, but what about Bentley Drummle? Isn't there something just a little too

perversely convenient in the way he physically abuses the woman whom Pip tells us has made him suffer? (And by the way, does Estella make Pip suffer, or does Pip make himself suffer?)

Bibliography

Welsh, Alexander. From Copyright to Copperfield: The Identity of Dickens. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987.

Seeing Double, Double Seeing: The Use of Doubles in Great Expectations

Zoe Weiss '12, English 60, Brown University, 2009

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Leading Questions]

[The decorative initial comes from George Cruikshank's Comic Alphabet, where it wryly represents “'G' for Gentleman" — very much in keeping with Dickens's novel. Cruikshank also illustrated some of Dickens's early work. GPL]

reat Expectations by Charles Dickens contains an intricate set of characters, many designed to parallel and contrast one another. Pairs of the novel's main characters, or doubles, serve to reveal both the effects of social class and the presence of common human traits in vastly different people.

Compeyson and Magwitch, criminals charged with the same offense, often appear together in the text. When Pip mentions one, the other often soon appears,

highlighting the ways they differ. Compeyson is evil, educated, manipulative, and eloquent while Magwitch is kind hearted, uneducated, and slovenly — representatives of two different social classes dealing with the same crime. Compeyson's articulate plea convinces the judge to give him a reduced sentence, whereas he sentences Magwitch to a much longer term. Magwitch explains that Compeyson was “set up fur a gentlemen...he'd been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. d-looking too." Though distinguished, nothing about his evil, scheming character appears likeable. Dickens portrays Magwitch positively, making him a sympathetic character and causing readers to feel furious when Compeyson evades greater punishment. Dickens assigns Magwitch the role of narrator while he describes these trials to Pip:

At last, me and Compeyson was both committed for felony — on a charge of putting stolen notes in circulation — and there was other charges behind. Compeyson says to me, defences, no communication,' and that was all. And I was so miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I had, except what hung on my back, afore I could get Jaggers

When the prosecution opened and the evidence was put short, aforehand, I noticed how heavy it all bore on me, and how light on him. When the evidence was giv in the box, I noticed how it was always me that had come for'ard, and could be swore to, how it was always me that the money had been paid to, how it was always me that had seemed to work the thing and get the profit. But, when the defence come on, then I see the plan plainer; for, says the counsellor for Compeyson, 'My lord and gentlemen, here you has afore you, side by side, two persons as your eyes can separate wide; one, the younger, well brought up, who will be spoke to as such; one, the elder, ill brought up, who will be spoke to as such; one, the younger, seldom if ever seen in these here transactions, and only suspected; t'other, the elder, always seen in 'em and always wi'his guilt brought home. Can you doubt, if there is but one in it, which is the one, and, if there is two in it, which is much the worst one. [Chapter 42; location in complete text of the novel]

Magwitch's social status and lack of education make it difficult for him to stay out of trouble. In the end the judge sentences them to the same prison ship, where they constantly fight one another, as they will for the rest of their lives. This scenario serves to show how class indicates little about character, since the more likeable, moral, and well intentioned character, Magwitch, ends up with the harsher punishment. The longer sentence also emphasizes of the unfairness of a class-based justice system.

Dickens portrays Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham as women seemingly bound to their homes. Both monstrous mother figures for Pip have similar fates, since they end their dominating presence in Pip's life by becoming invalids. Both treat Pip selfishly. Though Miss Havisham occassionally acts kindly, she does so to manipulate him into falling in love with Estella, who then can practice breaking his heart. A pawn in her game, Pip views Miss Havisham with fear and respect. Dickens does not make clear the intentions of Mrs. Joe, who physically and mentally abuses her little brother. She dominates the household, forcing even her husband into fear and compliance. The ways that the women behave in their settings also helps characterize them:

She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see no reason why she should have worn it at all; or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken it off, every day of her life. [Chapter 2]

I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud. [Chapter 6]

Whereas Mrs. Joe compulsively cleans her house, demanding a spotless home, Miss Havisham leaves dirt, dust, and the remnants of her past lying around. Both spend a great deal of time focusing on the past or what could have been. Miss Havisham remains in her “withered bridal dress," the dress she was wearing when her fiancé left her, and Mrs. Joe talks about what she could have been had she not married a blacksmith. Like Miss Havisham, Mrs. Joe always wears the same outfit. Mrs. Joe wears an apron, a defining characteristic of her class (a blacksmith's wife and in a working class) whereas Miss Havisham always wears a wedding dress. This dress and her enormous wealth define her character. Both women claim they wore their clothes in spite of a man, as Mrs. Joe dressed as a “strong reproach against Joe, and Miss Havisham to mourn her lost marriage. Further, Pip has little explanation in his childhood as to why these women dressed in the ways that they did, only understanding their actions in retrospect. The emphasis on the clothing of these two characters emphasizes the theme of the importance of appearances, the link between social class and lifestyle, and the physical embodiment of metaphorical character traits. For example, Miss Havisham's rotting clothing

represents an obsession with holding on to the past while Mrs. Joe's outfit indicates her desire for cleanliness and control. Their doubling serves multiple literary purposes.

Dicken's has disaster befall these women as soon as their role in Pip's life diminishes. Around the time Pip leaves his home, Orlick attacks Mrs. Joe and causes permanent brain damage. After Miss Havisham tries to make amends with Pip and all is revealed about her past, she becomes inured in a fire. When Pip was a child, Mrs. Joe loomed over him, controlling him and causing him fear and suffering. As he grew up, Miss Havisham took the same role in a more complex way, orchestrating the emotional suffering Pip goes through for Estella. The moment these characters lose their power over Pip, they lose their minds. Both women are faced with fire upon their injuries. Mrs. Joe is described as, “lying without sense or movement on the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her face was turned towards the fire." Miss Havisham's injuries are from the fire itself. After becoming invalid, they are physically and metaphorically no longer holding power over Pip. After they become injured and bedridden, both take on a habit of repeating the same phrases over and over again. Mrs. Joe asks for Orlick while Miss Havisham dwells on forgiveness. Their lives, though different in social class, education, and events, run parallel in their relation to Pip and meet in their endings.

Questions

1. What other doubles exist in the novel? How are Miss Havisham and Magwitch doubles? Estella and Biddy? Pip and Herbert? Wemmick's double life itself? Why does Dickens employ this literary device in “Great Expectations."

2. How do the doubles in this novel compare to the doubles in Jane Eyre. For example, Bertha and Jane? What do the doubles bring out in each other in the two novels?

3. How were invalids typically seen or treated in the Victorian era?

4. The motif of fire and candles appears throughout the novel. Miss Havisham is injured in a fire while Mrs. Joe faces one after her attack. Candle sticks show up in both of these scenes and in many others. What symbolic significance do fire and candlesticks have?

5. Why does Dickens choose to narrate story through Magwitch's voice? Why not continue with Pip's perspective? This is the only time in which the entire chapter is shifted to the perspective of another character. What purpose does this serve? How does the way that he talks, the language and word choice effect the tone of his story?

6. Magwitch and Compeyson are charged with the same crime but receive different sentences. How were their punishments typical of the stereotypes and treatment received by men in their respective social classes? How did the role of education help criminals in that time period?

Magwitch's Journey to Selfhood in Great Expectations

Lauren Smith, MA 2004, English 156, Brown University, 2004

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Characterization —> Theme and Subject]

In Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, no one is who they seem to be. Identities that appear self-explanatory, fixed, and even predetermined change frequently and reveal hidden layers and obfuscated past incarnations. Dickens toys with this kind of reverse history-making, through which characters learn more about their pasts as they move forward on the temporal slope of the novel and because of which they are able to form (at least temporary) present self-concepts. Yet these identities do not remain constant and are clearly susceptible to change. Names in particular become whimsical signs that seem to shift, mask-like, in front of their signifying bodies, disclosing to the characters (and reader) new and unexpected personas. In this regard, the relationship between name and identity is one each character grapples with, albeit some more than others, on their path to self-awareness.

In the case of Abel Magwitch, this path is rocky yet ultimately becomes redemptive. In the passage below, Magwitch recounts his life story to Pip and Herbert and focuses in particular on the evolution of his self-awareness, beginning with his early days as a young criminal. He places great emphasis on what he claims to be his innate knowledge of his name, and he seems to link his sense of a natural, determined name to an essential, determined identity. Yet we see in the rest

of the novel, his name undergoes numerous incarnations, from “Magwitch" to “Provis" to “Mr. Campbell," and moreover he himself changes from hardened criminal to repentant sinner by the end of his life. In short, Magwitch's idea of a fixed name and identity is challenged by the personas he continually adopts or constructs.

"Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not a going fur to tell you my life, like a song or a story-book. But to give it to you short and handy, I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, you've got it. That's my life pretty much, down to such times as I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend.

"I've been done everything to, pretty well — except hanged. I've been locked up, as much as a silver tea-kettle. I've been carted here and carted there, and put out of this town and put out of that town, and stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. I've no more notion where I was born than you have — if so much. I first become aware of myself, down in Essex, a thieving turnips for my living. Summun had run away from me — a man — a tinker — and he'd took the fire with him, and left me wery cold.

"I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chris'end Abel. How did I know it? Much as I know'd the birds' names in the hedges to be chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies together, only as the birds' names come out true, I supposed mine did.

"So fur as I could find, there warn't a soul that see young Abel Magwitch, with as little on him as in him, but wot caught fright at him, and either drove him off, or took him up. I was took up, took up, took up, to that extent that I reg'larly grow'd up took up.

"This is the way it was, that when I was a ragged little creetur as much to be pitied as ever I see (not that I looked in the glass, for there warn't many insides of furnished houses known to me), I got the name of being hardened." [258-259 in the Norton; place within the complete text of the novel]

Discussion Questions

How does Magwitch account for his fallen state? To what events, people, or forces does he attribute his prison-bound life? In describing his fate, does he feel at all responsible for his criminality or does he relinquish all personal accountability by representing himself as a victim of cruel fate? How might Dickens position

Magwitch's story against that of Estella's or Pip's? Are they all just victims of circumstance (see page 338 in Chapter 56 where Magwitch “pondered over the question whether he might have been a better man under better circumstances")?

What does Magwitch mean when he says, “I first become aware of myself"? Why does he feel it important to explain his self-awareness to Pip and Herbert? Given that self-awareness can be achieved through the recognition of oneself in a mirror, why is it significant that Magwitch did not ever look in a mirror as a young child yet insists he knew he “was a ragged little creetur"?

Why does Magwitch go to such lengths to explain his innate knowledge of his own name (i.e. when he explains that since the birds' names are all true, his name must also be true)? What link is he creating between his name and his identity? Why might Magwitch's emphasis on his name be important to him, considering the various disguises and aliases he adopts in the ensuing chapters of the novel?

Does Magwitch's account of his childhood affect Pip's perception of him at the end of the novel? Does Pip's understanding of identity (in general and in terms of his own self-image) change because of Magwitch's transformation from a hardened criminal to repentant sinner?

References

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Edgar Rosenberg. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.

Defining Characters by Their Chosen Environment

Thereaa Lii '12, English 60, Brown University, 2009

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Leading Questions]

Each character in Great Expectations selects his or her own space in the novel. In turn, the environment also defines the individual character. This push-pull relationship between characters and their space adds complexity and realism to the

story. By describing the surroundings in detail, as well as the characters' interactions with their surroundings, Dickens goes beyond simple narrations of appearance and personality. For example, when Pip first arrives at Satis House, he describes Miss Havisham's cake-room in rich detail. Not only does the description of Miss Havisham's cake-room illustrate the surroundings, but it also offers a first glimpse into Miss Havisham's past.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.

The objects in the room have symbolic meaning related to Miss Havisham's identity. For example, the frozen watch and clock reflect Miss Havisham's failure to move beyond her painful past. The yellowing room and its yellowing objects reveal a former glory that once belonged to its main occupant. In addition to mirroring her past, Satis House actively shapes Miss Havisham by isolating her from “a thousand natural and healing influences." Both Satis House and Miss Havisham decay from the inside out.

Wemmick is another character whose environment determines his disposition. Unlike Miss Havisham, however, Wemmick exercises his ability to leave his abode. Nonetheless, Wemmick's kindly disposition is tied to his home, and he shifts into his business mode during his hours at the law firm. Throughout the novel, Wemmick alternates between two characters: a humorless law clerk and a genial caretaker of the Aged. When Wemmick leaves his castle stronghold and returns to his office, Pip observes:

By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along, and his mouth tightened into a post-office again. At last, when we got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his coat-collar, he looked as unconscious of his Walworth property as if the Castle and the drawbridge and the arbor and the lake and the fountain and the Aged, had all been blown into space together by the last discharge of the Stinger.

Whenever characters move out of their space, they either adopt an alternate persona or, in Joe's case, nearly lose their ability to function amongst society. For example, when Joe accompanies Pip to see Miss Havisham, he becomes “unlike himself." Throughout the verbal exchange with Miss Havisham, Joe awkwardly “persisted in addressing [Pip] instead of Miss Havisham." Similarly, when Joe comes to the city to visit Pip, he endures great discomfort while staying at Pip's place.

As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they were perplexing to reflect upon, — insoluble mysteries both. Why should a man scrape himself to that extent, before he could consider himself full dressed? Why should he suppose it necessary to be purified by suffering for his holiday clothes? Then he fell into such unaccountable fits of meditation, with his fork midway between his plate and his mouth; had his eyes attracted in such strange directions; was afflicted with such remarkable coughs; sat so far from the table, and dropped so much more than he ate, and pretended that he hadn't dropped it; that I was heartily glad when Herbert left us for the City.

Questions

1. Joe appears terribly out of place whenever he moves into a social class not his own. However, Pip easily maks his transition between the artisan class and the gentility with relative ease. Why is is so? What were Dickens's opinions on class structure and social mobility during the Victorian age, and how does Great Expectations convey his views?

2. Dickens's depictions of Miss Havisham's house and the prisoner ships are strikingly similar:

By the light of the torches, we saw the black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah's ark. Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like the prisoners.

Within a quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham's house, which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred. There was a courtyard in front, and that was barred...The cold wind seemed to blow colder there than outside the gate; and it made a shrill noise in howling in and out at the open sides of the brewery, like the noise of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea.

What compare Satis House to a prisoner ship? Why would Satis House, a brewery, have iron-barred windows?

3. In Phantastes, Anodos rarely remains in one place for long. Even during his stay at the Fairy Queen's castle, he constantly roams the magical halls and rooms. Spirited from scene to scene throughout most of the novel, Anodos finally finds a home in the old woman's cottage. What does this say about Anodos's character development? How does MacDonald's use of space differ from Dickens?

4. Why does Wemmick choose to adopt radically different personas for home and work? More importantly, why does Dickens repeatedly refer back to Wemmick's loosening or tightening of his “post office" when one mention should have sufficed?

Pip and Anados find themselves misled

Jessica Deitcher '12, English 60, Brown University, 2009

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> George MacDonald —> Charles Dickens's Great Expectations]

In George MacDonald's Phantastes, Anodos spends the vast majority of the novel pursuing an imaginary ideal of female beauty personified by his Marble Lady. In his quest to obtain her love, Anodos encounters the evil Maid of the Alder-tree, whose ugly nature forces him to acknowledge that inner beauty does not always accompany outer beauty:

But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all — without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell. . . But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely — with a self-destructive beauty, though; for it is that which is constantly wearing her away within, till, at least, the decay will reach her face, and her whole

front, when all the lovely mask of nothing will fall to pieces, and she be vanished forever" (52).

In Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, Pip similarly falls in love with Estella, a character whose icy demeanor resembles that of the Alder-Maiden in Phantastes. Pip finds himself irrevocably in love with her, despite her uncharitable treatment of him:

The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man,...I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection. [232]

Estella consistently attempts to disabuse her admirer of his fanciful notions by treating him cruelly and dismissing his obvious devotion. In doing so, she increases his lovesick ardor and his determination to win her heart. Estella's cold rebukes do little to penetrate Pip's optimistic haze: “You must know," said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant and beautiful woman might, “ that I have no heart — if that has anything to do with my memory...I have no softens there, no — sympathy — sentiment — nonsense" (237). Not only does Estella keep Pip at arm's length, but she also encourages other men in their pursuit of her, blatantly parading her suitors before Pip, all the while brushing off her own cruelty by labeling it honesty:

"There is no doubt you do," said I, something hurriedly, “ for I have seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as you never give to — me."

"Do you want me the," said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry, look, “ to deceive and entrap you?"

"Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?"

"Yes, and many others — all of them but you..." [311]

Like the Alder-Maiden, Estella seems to relish men's responses to her beauty. Both characters represent the dangers of deceitful appearances and cruel beauty.

Great Expectations and Phantastes differ in that the Dickens's novel takes the form of semi-realism while the MacDonald's clearly falls into the genre of fantasy; however, they resemble one another in terms of their endings. MacDonald closed

his fantasy on an optimistic note. Anodos matured and had learned “it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another" . After he achieves peace and understanding in Fairy Land, he is abruptly thrust back into the real world in order “ to minister to my fellow men, or, rather, to repair the wrongs I have already done." Anodos' return to his home after having experienced all of his adventures in Fairy Land presents the reader with a satisfying and vaguely realistic conclusion. Anodos' adventures seem distant and removed from his reality, almost like a dream. He describes his own transformation very effectively, stating “ Thus I, who set out to find my Ideal, came back rejoicing that I had lost my Shadow" (205).

Pip's character achieves a level of maturity and self-understanding similar to that of Anodos. Despite his never having realized his “Great Expectations," Pip accepts that honest work and pride in his accomplishments matter more than what others expect of him. As for his relationship with Estella, Dickens ensures that the reader leaves with an optimistic hope for Pip's happiness. Just as Anodos closes with a reference to his shadow, Pip states “ I took her hand in mine. . . I saw the shadow of no parting from her" (484).

In both works, nature plays a key role in producing the atmosphere of certain scenes. Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens uses natural phenomena to foreshadow future happenings. MacDonald uses nature to reflect Anodos' feelings, for example, employing storms to reflect his inner turmoil or fear:

Great drops of rain began to patter on the leaves. Thunder began to mutter, then growl in the distance. I ran on. The rain fell heavier...My mind was just reviving a little from its extreme terror, when, suddenly, a flash of lightning...seemed to throw on the ground in front of me...the shadow of some horrible hand. [28]

Pip's Playing at Life

Sonia Kim '11, English 60, Brown University, 2009

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Leading Questions]

In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens' lyrical prose creates a detailed picture of the world in which Pip, the protagonist, operates while also providing indirect commentaries on his development through descriptions of Pip's actions, engagements, and leisure activities. In Pip's attendance at a poor production of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Dickens provides readers with amusing character profiles that refer to both actors and audience:

The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady, though no doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public to have too much brass about her, her chin being attached to her diadem by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous toothache), her waist being encircled by another, and each of her arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned as the “kettledrum." [268-69]

Here the usually elegantly portrayed queen has more of the dowdiness and extravagance of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. The ungainly appearance of this member of the royal family highlights the limits of class (whether it be birth into a higher class or a large amount of money) in glossing over an individual's various personal defects and blemishes. The queen's portrayal emphasizes the silliness of the public who look to class as the sole marker of genteel behavior and appearance, and, more specifically, Pip, who looks to his class elevation as the panacea for all of his personal, social, and educational flaws.

In addition to providing a grotesque caricature of a royal figure, the Shakespeare production betrays the pretensions of over-ambitious youth in the behavior of the over-committed boy in boots:

The noble boy in the ancestral boots was inconsistent, representing himself, as it were in one breath, as an able seaman, a strolling actor, a gravedigger, a clergyman, and a person of the utmost importance at a court fencing-match, on the authority of whose practised eye and nice discrmination the finest strokes were judged. [269]

The boy's frenzied portrayal of far too many roles cheapens the act and confuses the audience. Ultimately, Pip acts as an extended example of the country boy who may have taken on too much too soon. Instead of getting a solid education and preparing himself adequately for the rollercoaster ride of an astronomical rise in socio-economic status, Pip throws himself into the urban kaleidoscope of London. And in his eagerness to enjoy the spoils of his new fortune, Pip surrounds himself with beautiful clothes, expensive food, comfortable lodgings, and well-dressed servants and becomes lost in a pile of material objects and inadequate understanding of his new social position.

Finally, the audience's reaction to Mr. Wopsle, a resident of Pip's former town, places the crowning touch on Pip's tragedy. Pip and his friend Herbert Pocket “had made some pale efforts in the beginning to applaud Mr. Wopsle, but they were too hopeless to be persisted in. Therefore [they] had sat, feeling keenly for him, but laughing, nevertheless from ear to ear" (270). The melodramatic Mr. Wopsle meanwhile, remains convinced of his theatrical abilities, further throwing the audience's response into harsh light. Something darkly humorous and tragic lies at the heart of a scene where a completely oblivious individual stages a ridiculous spectacle and does not hear the laughs enjoyed at his expense. Similarly, Pip's insistence of coming to the social limelight only corroborates his inadequate preparation in keeping his fortune wisely, and once he realizes his mistakes, he only sees an empty theatre in front of him. The audience has long gone.

Criminally Self-Conscious: Pip's “Great Expectations"

Alexander Zevin, English 156, Brown University, 2004

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Theme and Subject —> Image and Symbol]

Great Expectations opens among the gravestones of the marshes. Pip imputes onto those slate headstones and little stone lozenges the flesh and dress of his parents and brothers, who “gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle." Even in his earliest musings life is, for Pip, a kind of occupation, a lawful employment to be earned. At the same moment, and fundamentally opposed to this vision of duty, appears Magwitch the convict. A fearful man “with an iron on his leg," Magwitch thieves and steals, he preys on the earnings of others to live. Magwitch compels Pip to steal vittles and a file from Joe and Mrs. Gargery; in so doing he inaugurates Pip into a deviant world of criminality. This, writes Pip, was “my first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things." For Pip the moment of consciousness and the moment of criminal guilt are one in the same. His theft of Gargery's pie is relatively immaterial; it is his transgression of that imperative to honestly “try to get a living" that is so damning. Pip's guilty conscience anticipates its own judgment, its own punishment (2): death, a place next to the five little tokens of his brothers.

This anticipatory death sentence infused into Pip's conscience creates a worldview that id decidedly paranoid. While rummaging through the kitchen for Magwitch “every board called after me, stop thief! And get up Mrs. Joe!" As he runs towards the church graveyard the birds themselves seem to shout, “A boy with someone else's pork pie! Stop him!" To compound his sense of guilt Pip is treated as if “insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality." Pip is “brought up by hand," with all the violence implicit in that phrase, as a miniature convict. Indeed, as Pip puts it, “I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe." Even normal childish acts like asking questions or being ill are given a criminal aspect by Pip's “remorseful conscience" and the punitive threat of Mrs. Joe.

Later on, this pervasive feeling of guilt opens a great gulf in Pip's mind between the “savage and dismal marshes" and Satis House with its ethereal occupants: Estella and Miss Havisham. While waiting for Estella to arrive in London after a visit to Newgate Prison, Pip, now a young man, remarks:

I was consumed . . . in thinking how strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and crime; that, in my childhood out on our lonely marshes. . . . I should have first encountered it; that, it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a stain that was faded but not gone; that, it should in this new way pervade my fortune and advancement . . . I thought of the beautiful young Estella proud and refined, coming towards me, and I thought of the absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her.

I beat the prison dust off my feet as I sauntered to and fro, and I shook it out of my dress, and I exhaled its air from my lungs. So contaminated did I feel, remembering who was coming, that the coach came quickly after all, and I was not yet free from the soiling consciousness of Mr. Wemmick's conservatory, when I saw her face at the coach window and her hand waving to me.

What was the nameless shadow, which again in that one instant had passed? [236]

Can Pip ever remove the stench of the prison from his clothes? To what extent can the “contrast between the jail and her" be said to derive from Pip's view of himself, the gulf between Estella and him?

If Magwitch introduces guilt into Pip's consciousness, what role does Estella play — particularly during their first encounter at Satis House — in Pip's imaginative formation?

Pip may stink of criminality but what about Estella: can her exalted form be removed from the macabre world of the criminal, the institution of the prison?

Satis House, like its inhabitants, appears to exist ethereally, apart from the rest of the novel. In light of the traffic and rapport between Satis House and Little Britain, Miss Havisham and Mr. Jaggers, Magwitch and Estella, can one separate the world of criminality and legality? If not, if these terms are somehow collapsible for Dickens, how are we meant to evaluate the characters and conclusion of Great Expectations.

How does the role and journey of the literal convict, Magwitch (and others), differ from Pip, a figurative convict, ensnared in a mental net of guilt, remorse and prohibition? Does Pip ever overcome these ensnaring emotions? What role does Magwitch play in his struggle to do this, to grapple with his “great expectations"?

References

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Edgar Rosenberg. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.

Pip's Commercial Vocabulary

George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Social History —> Theme and Subject]

avies, who follows Partlow and Jordan in describing the narrator of Great Expectations as a small businessman with a small businessman's habits of mind, points to several key scenes in which these attitudes become important, even predominant. First, he points to the scene in Chapter 34, when Pip and Herbert try to get their financial affairs in order: “I established with myself on these occasions, the reputation of a first-rate man of business — prompt, decisive, energetic, clear, cool-headed. When I had got all my responsibilities down upon my list, I compared

each with the bill, and ticked it off. My self-approval when I ticked an entry was quite a luxurious sensation.

Davies, who does emphasize the comic aspects of these narration, argues

Given Pip's belief that he is a gentleman, his pride in his own business acumen and clerical expertise is oddly misplaced. Bentley Drummle, for instance, a “real" gentleman because of birth, would simply despise such qualities. . . . On Pip's part we see memory in action, a lingering near-ahvistic recollection of business virtues — orderly affairs, meticulously kept books, financial prudence — insistent during his childhood. In Victorian terms Pip will never be a “real" gentleman, not only because he is far too conscious of money and cares what people think of him, but because he has always belonged to the world of small-businessmen. [96]

Davies similarly argues that suggest an essentially commercial, middle-class set of attitudes and assumptions, quite uncharacteristic of a Victorian gentleman, inform the chpater in which Pip hides Magwitch, for Dickens's protagonist

reflects that “a ghost could not have been taken and hanged on my account, and the consideration that he could be, and the dread that he would be, were no small addition to my horrors" (xl, 353). Not only are actions fraught with human emotions represented, first and foremost, as “business transacted," but the basis of Pip's vocabulary — “proprietorship," “secure," “take possession," “account," “consideration," “addition," and so forth — even when the text forces it to express other meanings, is drawn from the commercial world and never wholly free from commercial connotations. [98]

One last example — Pip's first visit to Miss Havisham (Chapter 8): This episode, according to Davies,

is full of the lingering echoes of Victorian business-letters, as Pip, indeed, files his report of his past life: “I entertained this speculation . . . I calculated . . . I took note . . . I regret to state. . .". Even when he fights the young Herbert in Satis House garden and the latter butts him, he comments on Herbert's head: “I had a right to consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my attention" (xi, 119). Suddenly we are far from boys fighting and in a world of high desks, scratching pens and formal communications.

Some Questions

What are the effects of recognizing this commercial vocabulary, which becomes an important motif in the novel?

Can you find additional instances of it?

How does Davies's argument affect your understanding of the ending of Great Expectations?

Finally, is such vocabulary characteristic of Dickens and Pip or just of Pip? In other words, does the novelist consciously employ such vocabulary to characterize Pip, or is its appearance just something so much part of his own worldview that it just happens to enter the novel? What evidence would convince you of either of these views?

References

Davies, James A. The Textual Life of Dickens's Characters. Savage, Maryland: Barnes and Noble, 1990.

Jordan, John O. “The Medium of Great Expectations." Dickens Studies nAnnual 2 (1983): 78.

Partlow, Jr., R. B. “The Moving I: A Study of the Point of View in Great Expectations: Hard Times, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend: A Casebook.," ed. Norman Page. London: Macmillan, 1979.

Biddy Voices Pip's Repressed Conscience

Sherry Lewkowicz '06, English 156, Brown University, 2004

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Theme and Subject]

Pip of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations is presented to us as a hero we can (and are expected to) feel much sympathy towards. However, our appreciation for his character is complicated by revelations of his moral shortcomings. The reader is permitted to watch as Pip's personality forms throughout the novel. In the following excerpt, Biddy, a childhood friend of Pip's and also his aunt's current caretaker, gives voice to Pip's as yet repressed conscience. Here, Pip's immaturity and insensitivity are clear in the way he receives Biddy's precocious advice. Just prior to this dialogue, Pip asked Biddy “I should have been good enough for you; shouldn't I Biddy?", not only insulting her with his emphasis on “you" but also by seeking her assurance that yes, he would at least be accepted into her lowly ranks. Pip's flirtations with Biddy are also teasing and cruel, as he has little romantic interest in her. Although Pip has no intention of being insensitive, he lacks the maturity to empathize with feelings other than those so passionately held in his own breast. His words here, and Biddy's even more so, are foreboding. Pip's desire for nobility and knowledge is admirable. Yet, as readers we are disturbed by Pip's lessening reverence for goodness, kindness and virtue. Much in this excerpt foreshadows what kind of man Pip will become.

"Instead of that," said I, plucking up more grass and chewing a blade or two, “see how I am going on. Dissatisfied and uncomfortable, and — what would it signify to me, being coarse and common, if nobody had told me so?"

Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and looked far more attentively at me than she had looked at the sailing ships.

"It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to say," she remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again. “Who said it?" . . .

I answered, “The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's, and she's more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account." . . .

"Do you want to be a gentleman to spite her or to gain her over?" Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause.

"I don't know," I moodily answered.

"Because, if it is to spite her," Biddy pursued, “I should think — but you know best — that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think — but you know best — she was not worth gaining over."

Exactly what I myself had thought , many times. Exactly what was perfectly manifest to me at the moment. But how could I, a poor dazed village lad, avoid that wonderful inconsistency into which the best and wisest of men fall every day? . . .

"It may well be all quite true," said I to Biddy, “but I admire her dreadfully." . . .

"If your first teacher (dear! such a poor one, and so much in need of being taught herself!) had been your teacher at the present time, she thinks she knows what lesson she would set. But it would be a hard one to learn, and you have got beyond her, and it's of no use now." [Dickens 136-137].

Questions

1. Why does Biddy choose to let Pip “off the hook"? Why does she not pursue him with her advice or teach him the “lesson she would set"? Does she allow Pip to dismiss her advice because, as she says, it would be of no use now, or are there perhaps other factors at work that impel her to let Pip learn from his own mistakes?

2. Does Dickens imply in any way that Biddy may have romantic feelings for Pip? Or are we supposed to view Biddy as a voice of reason and therefore not a voice of emotion? If Biddy did feel romantically towards Pip, would she withhold her advice in order to punish him for his insensitivity towards her?

3. What does Pip's acknowledgment of Biddy's sense and goodness contribute to our notions of his character? Why does Dickens want his readers to recognize that Pip thinks “Exactly what I myself had thought, many times" in reaction to hearing Biddy's opinion of how he should view Estella?

References

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Edgar Rosenberg. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.

White and Faded Yellows

Briel Steinberg '06, English 156, Brown University, 2004

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Characterization]

The character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations evokes curiosity and intrigue from the very first moment of her introduction into the story. Pip's only original knowledge of Miss Havisham is that she is said to be “an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion" (44). Pip himself knows nothing more of the strange woman, and thus the reader also remains in the dark until Pip's scheduled visit to Miss Havisham's house. As Pip becomes a regular visitor to Manor House, the mysteries surrounding this strange character seem to multiply rather than diminish. Miss Havisham and Estella make up a complex and puzzling world that Pip is not allowed to understand, regardless of how much he may desire to do so.

Upon Pip's entrance into her room, the initial description of Miss Havisham is both fascinating and jarring. It is this immediate description upon which the rest of Miss Havisham's character is built. Pip stands in nervous awe and describes what he sees. He tells of the faded white that epitomizes both Miss Havisham and the room in which she resides. Pip tells of this initial glimpse of Miss Havisham and the oddities surrounding her:

She was dressed in rich materials — satins, and lace, and silks — all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on — the other was on the table near her hand — her veil was half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets and

with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.

It was not in the first moments that I saw all these things, though I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its luster, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly wax-work at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now wax-work and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could. [50; Place within the complete text of the novel]

Questions

1. Pip grandly describes the white objects within the room before he mentions the fact that they have long ago turned “faded and yellow." How does the original description of whiteness contrast with and consequently effect the description of Miss Havisham in her present state? Would the effect of the passage change if Pip did not first invoke the picture of pure whiteness and then describe the true condition of Miss Havisham and her room?

2. At the end of this passage, Pip relates that he could not cry out as he might have liked. This mirrors the beginning of the novel, when Pip is unable to cry out when accosted by the convict. What does Pip's loss of voice symbolize within the text?

3. Pip admits to the reader that “it was not in the first moments that I saw all these things." The reader, however, under the guidance of Pip, does indeed view all of these things within these first moments. How does Pip's way of narrating this particular passage effect the overall description of Miss Havisham? In what other instances do Pip's narrative techniques shape or alter the reader's view of a character?

4. Miss Havisham continues to play a large role in the remainder of the novel, though much of it is due to Pip's own imaginations and conjectures regarding his patron. In what ways does this first depiction of the old woman influence the reader's perception of her throughout the novel? As Pip and subsequently the reader

learn more of Miss Havisham's circumstances, does opinion of her change or remain the same?

References

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Edgar Rosenberg. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.

Bad to the Bone

Henry Mattingly '12, English 60, Brown University, 2010

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Great Expectations —> John Ruskin]

From his earliest memories to his apprenticeship with his brother-in-law Joe Gargery, Pip of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations spends a childhood ridden with false accusations and alienation at the hands of the adult figures in his life. Christmas dinner for quiet Pip is an assault on his morality led by Mrs. Hubble, as she says:

'Why is it that the young are never grateful?' This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, 'Naterally wicious.' Everybody then murmured 'True!' and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner. [p. 62]

Maybe a mob mentality, vague stereotyping, or superstition drive these accusations---but certainly not evidence. The lack of reasoning behind the attack inspires the terrifying notion in Pip that he is fundamentally evil and that this fact is outside of his control. Since these people and opinions compose a significant part of Pip's home life, the orphaned Pip experiences both literal and emotional abandonment and alienation.

As he grows older, Pip feels trapped by the adults in his life and the expectations they place on him. When Pip is to be apprenticed to Joe, Dickens's play on the

word “bound" likens the process to Pip's being arrested and tried for an unknown and inevitable crime:

'Now you see Joseph and wife,' said Pumblechook, as he took me by the arm above the elbow, “I am one of them that always go right through with what they've begun. This boy must be bound, out of hand. That's myway. Bound out of hand.' ... I was pushed over by Pumblechook, exactly as if I had that moment picked a pocket or fired a rick; in deed, it was the general impression in Court that I had been taken red-handed, for as Pumblechook shoved me before him through the crowd, I heard some people say, 'What's he done?' and others, 'He's a young 'un, too, but looks bad, don't he?'

Pumblechook handles Pip like cop and robber, shoving him to the Court house, which produces the appropriate setting for this alternate scenario. Pip's binding so strongly resembles an arrest that onlookers make the same unfounded assumptions that the Hubbles and company did years before---that Pip is a criminal to the core. Without even a stranger's confidence in him, Pip is as alone as ever

. It is not unique to this book that Dickens makes the protagonist of his writing a lonely, unsupported, and unwanted child. Oliver Twist, for example, is another miserable child character of his. This aspect of Dickens's works was the product of his own childhood helplessness and fear. When his parents were incarcerated as debtors, young Dickens was forced to leave school to work at the Warren Shoeblacking factory, the years at which were some of the most traumatizing of his life. When his family inherited some money that allowed his family to resume some sort of normal life, his mother thought it best for him to continue working at the dreaded factory rather than return to school. The sense of utter abandonment that he felt at that point in his life manifests itself in the experiences of Pip and his other characters.

Questions

Does Dickens express his horrible childhood experiences in the factories through any characters of Great Expectations besides Pip?

How does Jane Eyre's childhood compare to that of Pip's?

The convict sees the good Pip at the beginning of the book when nearly no one else around him does. Is the irony of a convict being a good judge of moral character a social comment by Dickens?

Does Pip's guilt derive only from people and forces outside himself? Is his feeling of inferiority upon meeting Estella a form of guilt? How does Pip act when he's not feeling guilty?

What relation does Orlick have to his guilt? to Magwitch?

Jasper Fforde's Explanation of Miss Havisham's Character

George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Literary Relations —> Characterization]

ure, we all know that Dickens tells us in Great Expectations that Miss Havisham's being jilted turned her into the grotesque, pathetic, scheming character we encounter in the book. Jasper Fforde has another explanation. The Well of Lost Plots, his often hysterically funny novel about an alternative universe where people take reading really seriously and characters have their own reality, explains things differently: Miss Havisham was, you see, too . . . short. As she tells the heroine of The Well of Lost Plots (who in another Fforde novel changed the original ending of Jane Eyre to the one we know),

I remember when I was in the Well, when they were building Great Expectations. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world when they told me I would be working with Charles Dickens. Top of my class at Generic College and, without seeming immodest, something ot a beauty. I thought I would make an admirable young Estella — both refined and beautiful, haughty and proud, yet ultimately overcoming the overbearing crabbiness of her cantankerous benefactor to find true love."

"So . . . what happened?"

"I wasn't tall enough."

'Tall enough? For a book? Isn't that like having the wrong hair color for the wireless [i.e. radio]?"

"They gave the part to a little strumpet who was on salvage from a demolished Thackeray. Little cow. It's no wonder I treat her so rotten — the part should have been mine!" [68-69]

She fell into silence.

Fforde, who elsewhere provides a brilliant history of the relation of storytelling to information technologies, has a serious point, one shared by literary theorists, such as the Russian formalists, and students of folklore and comedy: all characters in fiction clearly relate to a fairly small number of stock types, even those in so-called realistic fiction.

How closely do Pip, Joe, Mrs. Joe, and Estalla conform to stock types?

Have you seen versions of them in other novels you've read?

Could Estella be a retread from a novel by Thackeray? If you think so, which one?

Related Materials

Fforde on the end of narrative originality Jasper Fforde on the Relation of Information Technology and Narrative

References

Fforde, Jasper. The Well of Lost Plots. Penguin, 2003. 68-69..

Female Aggressiveness in Great Expectations

ohn R. Reed [added by GPL]

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Gender Matters —> Theme and Subject ]

curious dynamic of female aggressiveness occurs in Great Expectations (1860-1861), when Estella, the most characteristic Judith[-figure], is prompted . . . by pride. Mrs. Gargery is the first domineering female we meet, but she is soon overshadowed by Miss Havisham, who, in turn, is softened proportionately to Estella's waxing heartlessness. All the while, behind these civilly aggressive women, is the wild spectre of Molly, to whose powerful hands Jaggers so ominously calls his guests' attention. This accumulation of female power is counterbalanced by two saintly characters, Clara Barley and Biddy. In the original version of the story, all of the destructive women suffer miserable fates, while the Griselda-like domestic saints find harmony that their enduring characters merit. But in Dickens's revised version, even Judith, in the guise of Estella, is spared, and the unattainable star is attained. Salome improbably renovates her chastened saint, and the moral design loses its intended force to satisfy an equally insistent convention of sentimental reward. [p. 50]

References

Reed, John R. . Victorian Conventions. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1975.

Mechanism and Character in Great Expectations

Dorothy van Ghent [added by GPL]

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Characterization —> Image, Symbol, and Motif]

o his friend and biographer, Forster, [Dickens] said that he was always losing sight of a man in his diversion by the mechanical play of some part of the man's face, which would acquire a sudden ludicrous life of its own. Many of what we shall call the “signatures" of Dickens' people‹ that special exaggerated feature or gesture or mannerism which comes to stand for the whole person‹are such dissociated parts of the body, like Jaggers' huge forefinger which he bites and then plunges menacingly at the accused, or Wemmick's post-office mouth, or the clockwork apparatus in Magwitch's throat that clicks as if it were about to strike. The device is not used arbitrarily or capriciously. In this book, whose subject is the etiology of guilt and atonement, Jaggers is the representative not only of civil law but of universal Law, which is profoundly mysterious in a world of dissociated and apparently lawless fragments; and his huge forefinger, in which he is virtually transformed and which seems to act like an “it" in its own right rather than like the member of a man, is the Law's mystery in all its fearful impersonality. Wemmick's mouth is not a post-office when he is at home in his castle but only when he is at work in Jaggers' London office, where a mechanical appearance of smiling is required of him. As Wemmick's job has mechanized him into a grinning slot, so oppression and fear have given the convict Magwitch a clockwork apparatus for vocal chords. [p. 130]

References

van Ghent, Dorothy. The English Novel: Form and Function. New York: Harper Torchbook, 1961.]

Wemmick: Description and Character in in Great Expectations

[Added by George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University]

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Characterization]

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor, from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch-chain, as if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends. He had glittering eyes — small, keen, and black — and thin wide mottled lips. He had had them, to the best of my belief, from forty to fifty years.

Truth in Narration

Nathan Greenberg '12, English 60, Brown University, 2009

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Works —> Great Expectations —> Leading Questions]

In Great Expectations, Dickens often describes characters by comparing them to animals. Sometimes the comparisons he draws are primarily physical. Uncle Pumblechook, for instance, is said to have "a mouth like a fish". However, often, Dickens uses comparison to portray intangible qualities such as personality and situational discomfort. For example, before Miss Havisham, Joe is rendered “like some extraordinary bird; standing as he did speechless, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he wanted a worm". Dckens uses metonymy to recast Joe's awkwardness as a tangible image, a bird with ruffled feathers expecting a worm. A similar phenomenon occurs when Pip brings Magwitch food in the swamp:

I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating, and the man's. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up,

every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger in every direction of somebody's coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably I thought, or to have anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog.

This comparison transforms Magwitch's gruff behavior into something tangible. The “strong sharp sudden bites" he describes paint a clear image. Moreover, this passage can be seen as an explanation for Magwitch's behavior. When Pip recounts that Magwitch was “altogether too unsettledÉ to have anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor," he indirectly excuses Magwitch for his actions. His violent and anxious temperament is seen as a product of being “unsettled" rather than as a fundamental facet of his character. However, because Great Expectations is narrated in first person, descriptions reveal as much about the narrator as they do about the character described. Indeed, a reader can not be sure that Magwitch was unsettled or doglike; what Pip merely thought him so. One might deem Pip a poor judge of character, especially since in his first encounter with Magwitch he proves himself to be naive. However, since Dickens later reveals that Pip's generosity has warmed Magwitch's heart, perhaps Pip's impression of him as a battered dog is well founded or even, a self fulfilling prophesy.

Questions

1. When Mr. Jaggers identifys a “Spider" in the crowd, Pip does not instantly think of the “blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow" he knows as Drummle. However, eventually Pip grows to see Drummle as the Spider:

The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to lying in wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe. Added to that, he had a blockhead confidence in his money and in his family greatness, which sometimes did him good service,--almost taking the place of concentration and determined purpose. So, the Spider, doggedly watching Estella, outwatched many brighter insects, and would often uncoil himself and drop at the right nick of time.

How do Pip's perceptions change over time. Are they the product of his own experience? Are they influenced by the perceptions and opinions of others?

2. When Pip lies about his experiences at Miss Havisham's estate to his sister, Joe, and Mr. Publechook, he asserts that “Towards Joe, and Joe only, I considered

myself a young monster" What might this remark suggest about the ways in which we justify our own actions?

3. Does Pip's love for Estella make her appear lovely, even though she treats him horribly throughout much of the novel? How do Pip's interpretations influence the reader's interpretations? Is he credible?

4. Although long passages laden with metonymy, such as the ones Dickens uses, reveal a lot about his characters, they are based primarily upon interpretation rather than fact. What, if anything, does Dickens sacrifice by narrating Great Expectations in the first person? What, if anything, does he suggest about universal truth? Does it exist in the novel?