Great ExpectationsModel Answer-2: Investigate the themes of the novel, Great Expectations.
Pip, a young orphan living with his sister and her
husband in the marshes of Kent, sits in a cemetery one evening looking at his
parents’ tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs up from behind a
tombstone grabs Pip, and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg
irons. Pip obeys, but the fearsome convict is soon captured anyway. The convict
protects Pip by claiming to have stolen the items himself.
One day Pip is taken by his Uncle Pumblechook
to play at Satis House, the home of the wealthy dowager Miss Havisham, who is
extremely eccentric: she wears an old wedding dress everywhere she goes and
keeps all the clocks in her house stopped at the same time. During his visit,
he meets a beautiful young girl named Estella, who treats him coldly and
contemptuously. Nevertheless, he falls in love with her and dreams of becoming
a wealthy gentleman so that he might be worthy of her. He even hopes that Miss
Havisham intends to make him a gentleman and marry him to Estella, but his
hopes are dashed when, after months of regular visits to Satis House, Miss
Havisham decides to help him become a common laborer in his family’s business.
With Miss Havisham’s guidance, Pip is
apprenticed to his brother-in-law, Joe, who is the village blacksmith. Pip
works in the forge unhappily, struggling to better his education with the help
of the plain, kind Biddy and encountering Joe’s malicious day laborer, Orlick.
One night, after an altercation with Orlick, Pip’s sister, known as Mrs. Joe,
is viciously attacked and becomes a mute invalid. From her signals, Pip
suspects that Orlick was responsible for the attack.
One day a lawyer named Jaggers appears with
strange news: a secret benefactor has given Pip a large fortune, and Pip must
come to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman. Pip happily
assumes that his previous hopes have come true—that Miss Havisham is his secret
benefactor and that the old woman intends for him to marry Estella.
In London, Pip befriends a young gentleman
named Herbert Pocket and Jaggers’s law clerk, Wemmick. He expresses disdain for
his former friends and loved ones, especially Joe, but he continues to pine
after Estella. He furthers his education by studying with the tutor Matthew
Pocket, Herbert’s father. Herbert himself helps Pip learn how to act like a
gentleman. When Pip turns twenty-one and begins to receive an income from his
fortune, he will secretly help Herbert buy his way into the business he has
chosen for himself. But for now, Herbert and Pip lead a fairly undisciplined
life in London, enjoying themselves and running up debts. Orlick reappears in
Pip’s life, employed as Miss Havisham’s porter, but is promptly fired by
Jaggers after Pip reveals Orlick’s unsavory past. Mrs. Joe dies, and Pip goes
home for the funeral, feeling tremendous grief and remorse. Several years go
by until one night a familiar figure barges into Pip’s room—the convict,
Magwitch, who stuns Pip by announcing that he, not Miss Havisham, is the source
of Pip’s fortune. He tells Pip that he was so moved by Pip’s boyhood kindness
that he dedicated his life to making Pip a gentleman, and he made a fortune in
Australia for that very purpose.
Pip is appalled, but he feels morally bound to
help Magwitch escape London, as the convict is pursued both by the police and
by Compeyson, his former partner in crime. A complicated mystery begins to fall
into place when Pip discovers that Compeyson was the man who abandoned Miss
Havisham at the altar and that Estella is Magwitch’s daughter. Miss Havisham
has raised her to break men’s hearts, as revenge for the pain, her own broken
heart caused her. Pip was merely a boy for the young Estella to practice on;
Miss Havisham delighted in Estella’s ability to toy with his affections.
As the weeks pass, Pip sees the good in
Magwitch and begins to care for him deeply. Before Magwitch’s escape attempt,
Estella marries an upper-class lout named Bentley Drummle. Pip makes a visit to
Satis House, where Miss Havisham begs his forgiveness for the way she has
treated him in the past, and he forgives her. Later that day, when she bends
over the fireplace, her clothing catches fire and she goes up in flames. She
survives but becomes an invalid. In her final days, she will continue to repent
for her misdeeds and to plead for Pip’s forgiveness.
The time comes for Pip and his friends to
spirit Magwitch away from London. Just before the escape attempt, Pip is called
to a shadowy meeting in the marshes, where he encounters the vengeful, evil
Orlick. Orlick is on the verge of killing Pip when Herbert arrives with a group
of friends and saves Pip’s life. Pip and Herbert hurry back to effect
Magwitch’s escape. They try to sneak Magwitch down the river on a rowboat, but
they are discovered by the police, who Compeyson tipped off. Magwitch and
Compeyson fight in the river, and Compeyson is drowned. Magwitch is sentenced
to death, and Pip loses his fortune. Magwitch feels that his sentence is God’s
forgiveness and dies at peace. Pip falls ill; Joe comes to London to care for
him, and they are reconciled. Joe gives him the news from home: Orlick, after
robbing Pumblechook, is now in jail; Miss Havisham has died and left most of
her fortune to the Pockets; Biddy has taught Joe how to read and write. After
Joe leaves, Pip decides to rush home after him and marry Biddy, but when he
arrives there he discovers that she and Joe have already married.
Pip
As a bildungsroman, Great Expectations presents the growth and
development of a single character, Philip Pirrip, better known to himself and
to the world as Pip. As the focus of the bildungsroman, Pip is by far the most
important character in Great Expectations:
he is both the protagonist, whose actions make up the main plot of the novel,
and the narrator, whose thoughts and attitudes shape the reader’s perception of
the story. As a result, developing an understanding of Pip’s character is
perhaps the most important step in understanding Great Expectations.
Because Pip is narrating his story many years
after the events of the novel take place, there are really two Pips in Great Expectations: Pip the narrator and Pip the
character—the voice telling the story and the person acting it out. Dickens takes
great care to distinguish the two Pips, imbuing the voice of Pip the narrator
with perspective and maturity while also imparting how Pip the character feels
about what is happening to him as it actually happens. This skillfully executed
distinction is perhaps best observed early in the book when Pip the character
is a child; here, Pip the narrator gently pokes fun at his younger self, but
also enables us to see and feel the story through his eyes.
As a character, Pip’s two most important traits are his
immature, romantic idealism and his innately good conscience. On the one hand,
Pip has a deep desire to improve himself and attain any possible advancement,
whether educational, moral, or social. His longing to marry Estella and join
the upper classes stems from the same idealistic desire as his longing to learn
to read and his fear of being punished for bad behavior: once he understands
ideas like poverty, ignorance, and immorality, Pip does not want to be poor,
ignorant, or immoral. Pip the narrator judges his own past actions extremely
harshly, rarely giving himself credit for good deeds but angrily castigating
himself for bad ones. As a character, however, Pip’s idealism often leads him
to perceive the world rather narrowly, and his tendency to oversimplify
situations based on superficial values leads him to behave badly toward the
people who care about him. When Pip becomes a gentleman, for example, he
immediately begins to act as he thinks a gentleman is supposed to act, which
leads him to treat Joe and Biddy snobbishly and coldly.
On the other hand, Pip is at heart a very generous and
sympathetic young man, a fact that can be witnessed in his numerous acts of
kindness throughout the book (helping Magwitch, secretly buying Herbert’s way
into business, etc.) and his essential love for all those who love him. Pip’s
main line of development in the novel may be seen as the process of learning to
place his innate sense of kindness and conscience above his immature idealism.
Not long after meeting
Miss Havisham and Estella, Pip’s desire for advancement largely overshadows his
basic goodness. After receiving his mysterious fortune, his idealistic wishes
seem to have been justified, and he gives himself over to a gentlemanly life of
idleness. But the discovery that the wretched Magwitch, not the wealthy Miss
Havisham is his secret benefactor shatters Pip’s oversimplified sense of his
world’s hierarchy. The fact that he comes to admire Magwitch while losing
Estella to the brutish nobleman Drummle ultimately forces him to realize that
one’s social position is not the most important quality one possesses and that
his behavior as a gentleman has caused him to hurt the people who care about
him most. Once he has learned these lessons, Pip matures into the man who
narrates the novel, completing
Pip decides to go abroad
with Herbert to work in the mercantile trade. Returning many years later, he
encounters Estella in the ruined garden at Satis House. Drummle, her husband,
treated her badly, but he is now dead. Pip finds that Estella’s coldness and
cruelty have been replaced by a sad kindness, and the two leave the garden hand
in hand, Pip believing that they will never part again. (
Estella
Often cited as Dickens’s first convincing female character,
Estella is a supremely ironic creation, one who darkly undermines the notion of
romantic love and serves as a bitter criticism against the class system in
which she is mired. Raised from the age of three by Miss Havisham to torment
men and “break their hearts,” Estella wins Pip’s deepest love by practicing
deliberate cruelty. Unlike the warm, winsome, kind heroine of a traditional
love story, Estella is cold, cynical, and manipulative. Though she represents
Pip’s first longed-for ideal of life among the upper classes, Estella is
actually even lower-born than Pip; as Pip learns near the end of the novel, she
is the daughter of Magwitch, the coarse convict, and thus springs from the lowest level of society.
Ironically, life among the upper classes does not represent
salvation for Estella. Instead, she is victimized twice by her adopted class.
Rather than being raised by Magwitch, a man of great inner nobility, she is
raised by Miss Havisham, who destroys her ability to express emotion and
interact normally with the world. And rather than marrying the kindhearted
commoner Pip, Estella marries the cruel nobleman Drummle, who treats her
harshly and makes her life miserable for many years. In this way, Dickens uses
Estella’s life to reinforce the idea that one’s happiness and well-being are
not deeply connected to one’s social position: had Estella been poor, she might
have been substantially better off.
Despite her cold
behavior and the damaging influences in her life, Dickens nevertheless ensures
that Estella is still a sympathetic character. By giving the reader a sense of
her inner struggle to discover and act on her own feelings rather than on the
imposed motives of her upbringing, Dickens gives the reader a glimpse of
Estella’s inner life, which helps to explain what Pip might love about her.
Estella does not seem able to stop herself from hurting Pip, but she also seems
not to want to hurt him; she repeatedly warns him that she has “no heart” and
seems to urge him as strongly as she can to find happiness by leaving her
behind. Finally, Estella’s long, painful marriage to Drummle causes her to
develop along the same lines as Pip—that is, she learns, through experience, to
rely on and trust her inner feelings. In the final scene of the novel, she has
become her own woman for the first time in the book. As she says to Pip,
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teachings. I have been bent
and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.”
Miss Havisham
The mad, vengeful Miss
Havisham, a wealthy dowager who lives in a rotting mansion and wears an old
wedding dress every day of her life, is not exactly a believable character, but
she is certainly one of the most memorable creations in the book. Miss
Havisham’s life is defined by a single tragic event: her jilting by Compeyson
on what was to have been their wedding day. From that moment forth, Miss Havisham
is determined never to move beyond her heartbreak. She stops all the clocks in
Satis House at twenty minutes to nine, the moment when she first learned that
Compeyson was gone, and she wears only one shoe, because when she learned of
his betrayal, she had not yet put on the other shoe. With a kind of manic,
obsessive cruelty, Miss Havisham adopts Estella and raises her as a weapon to
achieve her own revenge on men. Miss Havisham is an example of single-minded
vengeance pursued destructively: both Miss Havisham and the people in her life
suffer greatly because of her quest for revenge. Miss Havisham is completely
unable to see that her actions are hurtful to Pip and Estella. She is redeemed
at the end of the novel when she realizes that she has caused Pip’s heart to be
broken in the same manner as her own; rather than achieving any kind of
personal revenge, she has only caused more pain. Miss Havisham immediately begs
Pip for forgiveness, reinforcing the novel’s theme that bad behavior can be
redeemed by contrition and sympathy.
Abel Magwitch
Magwitch is absent for much of the novel, but functions as a
major instigator for plot activity. He is also key to changing the way Pip
understands the world. After Magwitch appears in London and reveals himself as
Pip’s benefactor, he tells his life story to Pip and Herbert. Magwitch makes it
clear that his life of crime is rooted in impoverishment and neglect: “what the
Devil was I to do? I must put something into my stomach.” This explanation suggests
Magwitch would have preferred to live as a contributing member of society but
was driven into criminality because of a lack of options. His decision to fund
Pip’s transformation into a gentleman is motivated by his desire to get a
vicarious taste of all the things he could not experience himself: “I’ve come
to the old country to see my gentleman spend his money like a gentleman.
That’ll be my pleasure.”
Magwitch does not
develop as a character, but as more information is revealed about him, Pip (and
the reader’s) perception of him changes significantly. In his interactions with
the young Pip, Magwitch is a terrifying and sinister figure. When he first
reveals the role he has played in Pip’s life, Pip is disgusted and ashamed so
that “every hour increased my abhorrence of him.” With time, however, Pip
becomes concerned with keeping Magwitch safe and begins feeling kindly toward
him. Once Pip learns that Magwitch is actually Estella’s father, he also feels
more invested in him. While we rarely get insights into Magwitch’s emotions or
motivations, he is humanized through Pip’s increasing affection for him. When
Magwitch is finally arrested, Pip vows “I will never stir from your side.”
Magwitch’s illness and death create the opportunity for Pip to finally show
integrity and loyalty to someone who has made a significant impact upon his
life.
Joe Gargery
Joe Gargery functions
as a symbol of the life Pip tries to reject but ultimately comes to value. Joe
is described as “mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going,” and provides
a loving and nurturing presence during Pip’s childhood. When Joe reveals to Pip
his own difficult childhood, lack of education, and commitment to doing
everything he can to make life better for Pip and Mrs. Joe, Pip initially
“feel[s] conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.” However, once Pip
becomes obsessed with measuring up to Estella’s lofty standards, he becomes
increasingly ashamed of Joe. He is embarrassed by Joe’s behavior when the older
man accompanies him to Satis House, and then again when Joe comes to visit him
in London. As Pip admits, “I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that
he might be worthier of my society.”
Themes of the Novel
Ambition and Self-Improvement-1
The moral theme of Great Expectations is
quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important than social
advancement, wealth, and class. Dickens establishes the theme and shows Pip
learning this lesson, largely by exploring ideas of ambition and
self-improvement—ideas that quickly become both the thematic center of the
novel and the psychological mechanism that encourages much of Pip’s development.
At heart, Pip is an idealist; whenever he can conceive of something that is
better than what he already has, he immediately desires to obtain the
improvement. When he sees Satis House, he longs to be a wealthy gentleman; when
he thinks of his moral shortcomings, he longs to be good; when he realizes that
he cannot read, he longs to learn how. Pip’s desire for self-improvement is the
main source of the novel’s title: because he believes in the possibility of
advancement in life, he has “great expectations” about his future.
Ambition and self-improvement
take three forms in Great Expectations—moral, social, and educational;
these motivate Pip’s best and his worst behavior throughout the novel. First,
Pip desires moral self-improvement. He is extremely hard on himself when he
acts immorally and feels powerful guilt that spurs him to act better in the
future. When he leaves for London, for instance, he torments himself for
behaving so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy. Second, Pip desires social
self-improvement. In love with Estella, he longs to become a member of her
social class, and, encouraged by Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, he entertains
fantasies of becoming a gentleman. The working out of this fantasy forms the
basic plot of the novel; it provides Dickens the opportunity to gently satirize
the class system of his era and to make a point about its capricious nature.
Significantly, Pip’s life as a gentleman is no more satisfying—and certainly no
more moral—than his previous life as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Third, Pip
desires educational improvement. This desire is deeply connected to his social ambition
and longing to marry Estella: a full education is a requirement of being a
gentleman. As long as he is an ignorant country boy, he has no hope of social
advancement. Pip understands this fact as a child when he learns to read at
Mr. Wopsle’s aunt’s school, and as a young man, when he takes lessons from
Matthew Pocket. Ultimately, through the examples of Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch,
Pip learns that social and educational improvement are irrelevant to one’s real
worth and that conscience and affection are to be valued above erudition and
social standing.
Social Class-2
Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens
explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging from the most wretched
criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy)
to the middle class (Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss Havisham). The theme
of social class is central to the novel’s plot and to the ultimate moral theme
of the book—Pip’s realization that wealth and class are less important than
affection, loyalty, and inner worth. Pip achieves this realization when he is
finally able to understand that, despite the esteem in which he holds Estella,
one’s social status is in no way connected to one’s real character. Drummle,
for instance, is an upper-class lout, while Magwitch, a persecuted convict, has
a deep inner worth. Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the
novel’s treatment of social class is that the class system it portrays is based
on the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England. Dickens generally
ignores the nobility and the hereditary aristocracy in favor of characters
whose fortunes have been earned through commerce. Even Miss Havisham’s family
fortune was made through the brewery that is still connected to her manor. In this
way, by connecting the theme of social class to the idea of work and
self-advancement, Dickens subtly reinforces the novel’s overarching theme of
ambition and self-improvement.
Crime, Guilt, and Innocence-3
The theme of crime, guilt, and innocence is
explored throughout the novel largely through the characters of the convicts
and the criminal lawyer Jaggers. From the handcuffs Joe mends at the smithy to
the gallows at the prison in London, the imagery of crime and criminal justice
pervades the book, becoming an important symbol of Pip’s inner struggle to
reconcile his own inner moral conscience with the institutional justice system.
In general, just as a social class becomes a superficial standard of value that
Pip must learn to look beyond in finding a better way to live his life, the
external trappings of the criminal justice system (police, courts, jails, etc.)
become a superficial standard of morality that Pip must learn to look beyond to
trust his inner conscience. Magwitch, for instance, frightens Pip at first
simply because he is a convict, and Pip feels guilty for helping him because he
is afraid of the police. By the end of the book, however, Pip has discovered
Magwitch’s inner nobility, and is able to disregard his external status as a
criminal. Prompted by his conscience, he helps Magwitch to evade the law and
the police. As Pip has learned to trust his conscience and to value Magwitch’s
inner character, he has replaced an external standard of value with an internal
one.
Sophistication-4
In Great Expectations, Pip
becomes obsessed with a desire to be sophisticated and takes damaging risks in
order to do so. After his first encounter with Estella, Pip becomes acutely
self-conscious that “I was a common laboring-boy; that my hands were coarse,
that my boots were thick.” (pg. 59). Once he moves to London, Pip is exposed to
a glamourous urban world “so crowded with people and so brilliantly lighted,”
and he quickly begins to “contract expensive habits.” As a result of spending
money on things like a personal servant and fancy clothes, Pip quickly falls
into debt and damages Herbert’s finances as well as his own. Even more
troubling, Pip tries to avoid anyone who might undermine his reputation as a
sophisticated young gentleman. In the end, sophistication is revealed as a
shallow and superficial value because it does not lead to Pip achieving
anything and only makes him lonely and miserable.
Education-5
Education functions as a force for social
mobility and personal growth in the novel. Joe and Biddy both use their
education to pursue new opportunities, showing how education can be a good
thing. Pip receives an education that allows him to advance into a new social
position, but Pip’s education improves his mind without supporting the growth
of his character. Biddy takes advantage to gather as much learning as she can,
with Pip observing that she “learns everything I learn,” and eventually becomes
a schoolteacher. Biddy also teaches Joe to read and write. Pip’s education does
not actually provide him with practical skills or common sense, as revealed
when Pip and Herbert completely fail at managing their personal finances. Pip’s
emotional transformation once he learns the identity of his benefactor is what
ultimately makes him into the man he wants to be, not anything he has learned
in a classroom.
Family-6
Although Pip and
Estella both grow up as orphans, family is an important theme in the novel. Pip
grows up with love and support from Joe, but fails to see the value of the
unconditional love Joes gives him. He eventually reconciles with Joe after
understanding his errors. Estella is exposed to damaging values from her
adopted mother, Miss Havisham, and gradually learns from experience what it
actually means to care about someone. For both characters, learning who to
trust and how to have a loving relationship with family members is a major part
of the growing-up process. As Estella explains at the end of the novel,
“suffering has been stronger than all other teachings.” Both Estella and Pip
make mistakes and live with the consequences of their family histories, but
their difficult family experiences also help to give them perspective on what
is truly important in life. Is Pip a
success or a failure?
Is Pip a success or a failure?
In terms of his initial hopes and expectations, Pip seems to end
the novel as a failure. His two great hopes have been to rise to the status of
a gentleman and win Estella’s heart, and he does not achieve either of these
goals. His career ends up being modest, since “I must not leave it be supposed
to that we were ever a great House, or that we made mints of money.” Pip’s lack
of financial success is not only the blow to his social aspirations: he also
has to face the shame and trauma of realizing that everything he has comes from
a convicted criminal. While he has always nursed hopes of somehow winning
Estella’s love when he confesses his feelings to her, she responds by
explaining that “You address nothing in my breast, you touch nothing there. I
don’t care for what you say at all.”
On the other hand, Pip
succeeds at developing a sense of empathy. He becomes able to appreciate and
respect people based on their characters, rather than on shallow indications of
class and status. As Magwitch lays dying, Pip comforts him by confiding that
his lost child “lived and found powerful friends.” When he learns that Joe and
Biddy have married, Pip bursts out in praise of both of them: “you, dear Joe,
have the best wife in the whole world and she will make you happy even as you
deserve to be.” Although he previously thought he was better than both
characters, Pip now sees that their kindness and reliability matter more than
their income or education. What Estella says about herself, that she has “been
bent and broken, but, I hope, into better shape” applies equally to Pip. He
ends the novel a failure according to the standards he initially holds, but a
success because he has learned what better and truer standards of a good life
actually is.
Sources:
·
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1400/1400-h/1400-h.htm
·
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/greatex/character/pip/
·
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/greatex/themes/
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