Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - Literature review Example

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Charles Dickens is known not only as a brilliant storyteller, but also for his innovative ability to include reformist attitudes within his characters, making at least one social point in every novel he wrote. In Great Expectations, he illustrates the fundamentally unchanging nature of people as he tells the story of one boy, Pip, and his development into adulthood. Although the word ‘heart’ appears in the novel 94 times, becoming arguably one of the most commonly used words in the book, this use does not necessarily indicate the story is a love story. Nor it is an anatomy lesson. According to Dictionary.com, there are at least six definitions of the word ‘heart’ that do not apply specifically to biological functions, but rather to an individual’s personal makeup. These definitions refer to the center of personality, the center of emotion, an individual’s capacity for sympathy and affection, a person’s spirit or courage, the central part, the vital or essential part and the breast or bosom. In order to explore the various ways in which this multi-dimensional term can be used, Dickens introduces a host of characters to illustrate not only the differences, but the difficulties faced when one tries to change one’s fundamental nature, or heart, to become something more socially acceptable. Dickens explores the various uses of heart and the attempts to change them through the characters of Pip, Joe Gargery, Mrs. Joe, Estella and Miss Havisham. As the main character, and the one through whom the entire story is experienced, Pip is the study of a heart developing as it is defined above. He shows himself to be an uncommonly sensitive child right from the beginning of the novel, in which his reflections upon his parents and siblings tombstones give him an impression of the family he never knew that is actually quite insightful: “I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence” (11). He is also shown to be quite quickly afraid, first describing himself as “the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry” (12). While he makes the decision to bring food and a file to the criminal he meets in the marsh, eventually known as Abel Magwitch, out of sheer terror regarding what might happen if he doesn’t, Pip also has the capacity to pity the man’s situation and to be concerned about the man’s supposed companion who had previously been used to help instill terror in the boy. Yet, through his association with Miss Havisham and his infatuation with Estella, Pip begins to see himself as common and to begin setting his heart upon higher goals than a blacksmith’s life would get him. This is shown as he begins to use Biddy to further his prospects with Estella and the shame he feels for Joe. “I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account” (108). Rather than wishing to become a blacksmith in Joe’s smithy, Pip finds his aspirations have now become to be a gentleman worthy of receiving Estella’s love. It is foreshadowing to see that at a time when Pip should be happiest, the first and second nights of having acquired his new fortune and an opportunity of fulfilling his heart’s desire, that he experiences nothing but abject loneliness and dissatisfaction. However unwisely he spends his money upon reaching London, the one good turn he does for a friend ends up providing him with an acceptable mode of living following the loss of his fortunes. After having distanced himself from Joe and those attitudes and beliefs that made his heart happy only to find disappointment and dissatisfaction, Pip eventually begins to turn his life around by thinking of others more than himself. When he realizes his friend Herbert Pocket will never be able to make anything of himself by himself, he calls in favors from Miss Havisham in order to help him. When he realizes Magwitch is in trouble, he does everything he can to get him out of trouble. Finally, he never allows Magwitch to know that the fortune he has provided Pip with has only led him to ruin and has, in addition, been taken away. All of these experiences lead Pip to conclude that the only way he will be content is if he allows his heart to feel, regardless of the pain that might also result. As the principle influence of Pip’s younger days, Joe Gargery represents the simple, good-natured heart that Pip was born with and, as such, appears throughout the novel as a subtle reminder of what Pip is giving up when he tries to reforge himself in the image expected of a young gentleman. “He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow – a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness” (16). Like Pip, Joe has a strong heart capable of caring for everyone with whom he comes into contact and as faithful as an old dog once it becomes attached. It is also obvious where Pip gets his kindness from as Joe tells Magwitch upon his capture in the swamps and confession of theft from Mrs. Joe’s kitchen, “We don’t know what you have done, but we wouldn’t have you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur – Would us, Pip?” (45). He demonstrates a keen understanding of his wife, warning Pip about becoming a scholar under her nose as she “would not be over partial to my being a scholar, but fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, don’t you see?” (54). While she might wish to have held a higher position in society, the very least he can give her is a position of strength within the home, an understanding that is not lost on Pip, who, “had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart” (55). Unlike Pip, Joe is unable to change himself to fit someone else’s ideals. In his conversation with Miss Havisham regarding Pip’s apprenticeship, Joe is so conscious of the social differences that he can only address his words to Pip. His appearance in London is humble and sweet, yet completely inappropriate to Pip’s new station, as Joe indicates in an eloquent, if rough speech: One man’s a blacksmith and one’s a whitesmith and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any fault at all today, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures should be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen or off th’ meshes. You won’t find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. … I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve beat out something night the right of this at last. And so God bless you, dear old Pip, old chap (217). In this speech, Joe illustrates where Pip has left the trail of his own happiness as well as points the way in which he can find his way back to contentment, if he would only go to where he fits and finds clothes that fit his heart. Estella, the driving force separating Pip from his simple country life and aspirations, enters the story as an aloof and proud character that has nothing but disdain for the people she meets, as she has been trained to do. While Miss Havisham tells her specifically to break Pip’s heart, Pip himself becomes aware of how he is seen through her eyes. “Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it” (64). She delighted in her ability to make Pip fall in love with her so quickly, smiling at the hurt she caused him upon their first meeting, yet the reason for her enjoyment is not clear enough to reveal her heart. Is she delighted because she is cruel and wishes to cause Pip harm or is she happy that she has so quickly succeeded in applying the lessons Miss Havisham has been giving her? Miss Havisham will eventually tell Pip that she “stole her heart away and put ice in its place” (380), which would tend to indicate Estella was once as capable of feeling as Pip. Her disdain for everyone else in her life as she grows older serves to illustrate she is incapable of feeling her heart. However, she does not seem to be unconscious of this part of her character and seems to view it as a failure in herself. However well she’s been trained, however, she seems to only offer Pip a glimpse of her true unforgiving and unloving self. This is clear when Pip asks her “Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?” about Drummle and Estella answers “Yes, and many others – all of them but you” (299). While she fulfills her duty and her lessons by marrying the wealthiest and most connected man she comes across in the form of Mr. Drummle, she is also treated poorly in this marriage and becomes a much changed woman by the time she meets Pip again. She tells him, at the end of the novel, about this change: “There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart” (457). Like many of the other characters in the book, Estella realizes that it is only through following her heart, and allowing it to feel, that she will ever find true happiness or contentment. Mrs. Joe Gargery shows herself to be a woman who has unwillingly resigned her heart to a lower position in life than that to which she had aspired. Whatever heart she has, in terms of ability to have compassion for others, is hardened by her disappointment with her social station and her resentment towards Pip and then Joe for forcing her to accept less than she wanted. This is established in chapter four of the book, when she tells Pip, “Perhaps if I warn’t a blacksmith’s wife, and (what’s the same thing) a slave with her apron never off, I should have been to hear the Carols … I’m rather partial to Carols myself, and that’s the best of reasons for my never hearing any” (29). She works to bolster her social status by making much of her charity in bringing up her small brother “by hand”; however, that she has done so since Pip was very small speaks of her acceptance of and adherence to social standards. While she continually uses violence to keep both Joe and Pip in line, she betrays her lack of compassion with her tendency to worry about where Pip has been and by ensuring that the men in her life have been taken care of to the best of her ability. This can be seen in the way she forces them to take a bit of tar-water whenever she thought their health might be at risk and being careful to ensure meals are served and the house is kept clean. Her ambition for Pip reveals a tendency to live vicariously through another as well as paves the road for the desires that awaken in him later through his association with Miss Havisham and Estella. While she is portrayed as an unfeeling character in her lack of heart in the form of compassion, she is also shown to have tremendous strength of heart in the form of courage by taking the responsibility of an infant brother prior to being married and her strength of will in managing her household. She may not be happy with her lot in life, but she’s determined to do the best job she can. Her violent tempers end at the point where she can no longer exist without relying upon Joe and others for her daily arrangements. With the death of her ambitions, Mrs. Joe is able to see her actions for what they have been, evidenced by her eagerness to reconcile her relationship with him. Like Mrs. Joe Gargery, Miss Havisham presents a picture of a woman whose heart has been disappointed. When first brought into the story, Miss Havisham is described simply as “an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion” (56). From this description, it can correctly be assumed that Miss Havisham has barricaded not only herself, but her heart as well, within the walls of her manor. Although it is not learned until well after Dickens establishes Miss Havisham’s motives for adopting Estella, it is eventually explained that she stopped her life at the very moment in which her heart had been broken by her fiancé Compeyson, on the day of their wedding, even going so far as to wear only one shoe because she had not yet put the other one on when she was informed Compeyson was missing. Estella, as her alter ego, was being trained to first capture and then break the hearts of all young men as Miss Havisham’s had been broken in her youth. Her vengeful nature is highlighted throughout Pip’s relationship with Estella, as well as in discussions about Estella once Estella is gone abroad. “There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the last words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was at a loss what to say” (117). However, one Miss Havisham is finally treated to the same cold-hearted treatment by Estella as she has trained her to give to others, Miss Havisham finally begins to understand what she has done to Pip and the part she played in breaking his heart. “If you can ever write under my name, ‘I forgive her,’ though ever so long after my broken heart is dust – pray do it!” (379). Pip is able to feel compassion for the old woman understanding the great depth of feeling and emotion she has denied to her own heart in the pursuit of any harm she had caused him even as Miss Havisham is finally able to discover that only through forgiveness can she begin to become reacquainted with her heart. Thus, throughout the novel, the characters continually learn, or relearn, that the only way to find true happiness in life is to allow the heart to feel and to follow its lead in seeking a future. These sentiments can be found in the lesser characters as easily as they can be found in the more prominent ones. While Pip begins in innocence, rightly following his heart to do the right thing and finding himself in abject terror when the choice is unclear, he quickly abandons his heart in favor of seeking a rise in station when he learns of his inheritance. Although his heart is broken by Estella again and again, a great deal of his pain and insecurity comes from his attempts to ignore the teachings of his heart that continually remind him of the goodness represented in Joe. Throughout the novel, Joe represents a true adherence to his heart, constantly maintaining faithfulness to Pip and Pip’s well-being regardless of Pip’s actions, embarrassment or shame. Although Mrs. Joe is only able to find her way back to her heart through brain trauma thanks to the attack she suffered, Miss Havisham is shown to be woken to the importance of the heart when Estella coldly informs her that she cannot love her benefactress because she has never been taught how to love. Finally, Estella is able to see what she is missing in her life after having nearly destroyed herself in the pursuit of Miss Havisham’s revenge. While there is no happy ending to Great Expectations, Dickens leaves room for the possibility that this realization will lead to a better future for everyone. Works Cited Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1979. “Heart.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1). Random House, Inc. December 16, 2006. Read More