Transformation and Conflict in Great Expectations

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Pip's journey from an orphan living with his sister and her husband to a young man yearning for gentility and love is marked by evolving relationships with characters like Joe, Miss Havisham, and Estella, challenging his perceptions and ambitions. Dickens weaves a narrative exploring themes of social class, expectations, and personal growth in a richly detailed setting, creating a classic bildungsroman filled with complex characters and moral dilemmas.

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ADDED INTERPRETATION OF YORK NOTES [Great Expectations Essay Example] Compare the relationship and character arc between Pip and Joe in Chapter 2 and 127. Why did their interaction change? What was Dickens trying to show through his subplot? (Catalyst, orphan upbringing, ambition, gentility, stereotypes, memories, empathy and sympathy, writer s motive, prejudice, greed/money/power) How does Miss. Havisham act as an enigma and catalyst in the narrative and what is the significance of Satis House in the plot development? (Bitterness, jealousy, extended metaphor of cake/dress/cobwebs, change vs stasis, love triangles, enigma/catalyst, secrets, greed/money/power, caricature, disingenuous you made your own snares, I never made them Chapter 44, p360) Why does Drummle become Pip s main antagonist and what is the character arc of Pip s relationship with Estelle? What part does Miss. Havisham, Satis House and Abel Magwitch have to play in Pip s pursuit for romance? (Love triangle, extended metaphor of chains, cake/dress, jealousy games, unresolved conflict, unrequited love, rivalry) Evaluate how Great Expectations is a seminal bildungsroman novel and explore the purpose of Dickens narrative in relation to the novel s social, historical and cultural context. (Coming of age stories, gentility, questionable protagonist, unresolved conflict, greed/money/power, hope despite context, extended metaphor of chains, prejudice, traumatic memories, fable for moral development, picaresque novel, symbolic nature of extended metaphors)

ADDED INTERPRETATION OF YORK NOTES Great Expectations Treatment 1/ Young Pip is an orphan living with his strict, bullying sister and her kind, blacksmith husband Mr. Joe Gargery. 2/ One Christmas Eve, he wanders the local graveyard to cross paths with an escaped convict who forces him to steal food and a file for him to avoid starvation and break free of his physical chains. 5/ The convict is recaptured when he is discovered fighting another wandering convict. 8/ A year later, Pip is forced to play at Satis House by the Gargerys and Mr.Pumblchook (who mocks his education unfairly 8/ They arrive at a gloomy mansion where time has figuratively stopped and everything is decayed. 8, 11 & 12/ Miss. Havisham is a rich spinster that has lived in seclusion since she was abandoned on her wedding day; she stills wears her unwashed wedding dress while the wedding cake sits uneaten, moulding and covered in cobwebs. 8, 11 & 12/ At the house, Pip meets a beautiful young girl called Estella whom she adores despite her persistently mocking and undermining him; Pip admits to Miss. Havisham (still within earshot of Estella) she is a bit mean but is still interested in her. 11/ Pip is confronted by a young boy who challenges him to a fight, which Pip easily wins. Estella oversees this and later rewards Pip s masculinity with a kiss on the cheek. Pip continues to tell elaborate lies about things he has stolen and tells exaggerated stories about his adventures at Satis House. These visits continue until Pip is ready to take apprenticeship as a blacksmith like Mr. Joe Gargery. 14/ After visits to Satis House, Pip is decides he is discontented with his apprenticeship as a blacksmith and dreams of becoming a gentleman and marrying Estella. 15/ His sister is brutally assaulted with a leg-iron and Pip suspects Orlick, the surly journeyman who works at the forge.

ADDED INTERPRETATION OF YORK NOTES Great Expectations Treatment (page 2) 17/ Biddy, a local girl, comes to the forge as a housekeeper and he confides his dreams to her. He is unaware of Biddy s feelings for him as he tells all about Estella. 18/ Pip s dreams seem to be coming true when a London lawyer Jaggers visits the forge and tells him that he has a mysterious benefactor and has great expectations (Chapter 18,p138). He is to become a gentleman. 19/ Pip believes his patron Miss Havisham, and already feels superior to his old friends at the forge as he sets off for London. 20/ Pip arrives in Little Britain near Newgate, where Jaggers has his office. It is dirty and disreputable but it is clear that Jaggers is an effective criminal lawyer. 21/ Pip makes friends with Jaggers clerk Wemmick and Herbert Pocket (a relation of Miss Havisham s).He realises that Herbert is the boy he had a play-fight with at Satis House. 27/ Pip learns to be a gentleman and feels awkward when Joe comes to see him the contrast in gentility is significant and Pip becomes condescending and out of character with someone he used to respect, admire and look up to. 29 & 32/ Pip visits Satis House and later accompanies Estella in London he only returns to the forge for his sister s funeral. Pip believes he is destined for Estella, but his relationship with her brings no happiness. 36/ On his twenty-first birthday, Pip gets five hundred pounds and uses some of the money secretly to buy Herbert a partnership in a shipping firm. 38/ He becomes increasingly jealous of Estella s flirtation with a loutish gentleman called Drummle and witnesses a dispute between her and Miss Havisham, who is perturbed at her lack of feeling. 39/ During a storm, a rugged man visits Pip unannounced he is revealed as Abel Magwitch, the convict that Pip helped in the marshes long ago.

ADDED INTERPRETATION OF YORK NOTES Great Expectations Treatment (page 3) 42/ Abel Magwitch was transported to Australia where he made money sheep-farming. It is revealed that Abel Magwitch is Pip s mysterious benefactor and is responsible for Pip s great expectations . Pip is horrified that all of his dreams have a foundation based on the labour of a criminal and he feels unable to profit by it. 44/ Pip declares his love for Estella but it is revealed she is engaged to marry Drummle. 46/ Pip prepares with his friend Herbert for Magwitch s escape, 47/ Magwitch is in danger because the fellow convict Compeyson he fought on the marsh is in London. He and Magwitch are sworn enemies and it was Compeyson who trick and deserted Miss Havisham. 48/ Miss Havisham invites him to Satis House and learns about Estella s marriage to Drummle. 49/ Miss Havisham asks for forgiveness about Pip s unrequited love for Estella and Havisham s unhelpful meddling. As a peace offering, she agree to help Herbert with a gift of money. As Pip leaves, her clothes catch fire. Despite Pip s attempts to save her, she is badly burnt and dies soon after. 50/ Pip learns from Herbert that Estella is Magwitch s child. 51/ Even Jaggers is surprised by the news. 52/ Pip performs a good act with his expectations by trying to help Magwitch escape. He is invited by a letter to the sluicehouse to confront a mystery visitor. 53/ The mystery visitor is the villainous Orlick, who now works for Compeyson nearly murders Pip but is rescued in time to help Magwitch escape abroad.

ADDED INTERPRETATION OF YORK NOTES Great Expectations Treatment (page 4) Another revelation develops: Pip has discovered that Estella is Magwitch s daughter. 54/ They try to board a steamer but are foiled by the police (thanks to Compeyson s involvement). In the struggle, Compeyson drowns and Magwitch is badly hurt. Pip loses his expectatins. 55/ Herbert is to work abroad and Wemmick has a surprise wedding. 56/ Magwitch dies in prison but not before Pip tells him the good news about what Estella has become and how she loves her father. 57/ Pip faces imprisonment for debt and Pip falls ill and Joe comes to London to nurse him and pay his creditors. Pip can now see Joe is a Christian gentle man (Chapter 57, p463). 58/ Pip returns to the forge intending to propose to Biddy but discovers it is Joe and Biddy s wedding day. 59/ Biddy encourages Pip to find an honourable woman to marry; Pip is less hopeful and idealistic about his future after his heartbreak over Estella. He visits the churchyard and sees his parents tombstone. Pip joins Herbert in his business abroad and prospers. After eleven years, he returns home and visits the ruins of Satis House for the last time and still sees the remains of the garden where he fought Herbert and Estella looked on admiring Pip s masculinity. Coincidentally, in the evening mist, he meets Estella, who is now a widow and is softened by her harsh marriage. Estella recalls, I have been broken, but hopefully into a better shape and seems to empathise more with Pip than she was previously able to. Pip can see no the shadow of another parting from her (p484) suggesting that a rekindled romance may blossom between the two.

Great Expectations Themes Speaking and Writing education novel (bildungsroman) - Pip wanting to discover his identity through his family s tombstones, narrative is concerned with Pip s efforts to read in a evolving strange and hostile world. - The novel is a retrospective, confessional narrative from Pip s perspective. - Mastery of language is the key to the social mobility essential to Pip in his ambition to become a gentleman literacy elevates him from Joe and Magwitch literacy does not relate to moral instinct. - Literacy can dilute potency of local dialect that isolates someone from their cultural roots. - Joe and Biddy are content to fill their place at the forge with honour and dignity. Gentility - Pip learns he is a common labouring boy (Ch. 8, p60). - In time he learns the superficial habits of a gentleman, but he doesn t behave in a gentlemanly way when Joe visits him in London (Ch. 27) or when Trabb s boy mocks him on his return to town (Ch. 30). - Drummle is clearly a gentleman in social terms but also a stupid, cruel man. - Dickens shows us that life of a brought up London gentleman (Ch. 3 p321) can be idle and dissipated. Dickens further develops this theme through Magwitch s hatred of Compeyson (Ch. 42) who is a gentleman in style but source of so much evil in the book. - Joe is gentle but can deal with Orlick (Ch. 15) and the bullying Jaggers (Ch. 18) if he has to. - His humane response to Magwitch on the marshes (Ch. 5) contrasts with cruelty and oppression around him. Pip recognises his heart as a gentle Christian man (Ch. 57, p463) and transforms genuinely.

Great Expectations Themes Industry and Idleness - Dickens belonged to a new generation of Victorian self-made men and had an instinctive mistrust of inherited wealth was being a gentleman all about idleness? - Magwitch lived rough, that [Pip] should live smooth (Ch. 39, p319) - Pip soon falls into debt and dissipation without meaningful work knows he is in danger of corrupting Herbert. - Dickens was anxious to point out the moral by making Pip s final place in life that of a bourgeois business man. - Dickens wished to shift the definition away from its superficial notions of status, class and manners and focused on social responsibility and vocational commitment. - Dickens was interested on the nature of work and its effects on people s lives. - The main focus in Great Expectations is criminal law Jaggers is professional, ruthless and competent who rarely lets down his guard (apart from in Chapter 50) devoted to secrets, power and manipulation has no private life. - Wemmick separates personal and working life kind-hearted and determined. - Joe Gargery is the image of unalienated labour, happy and contented in work. Respectability and crime - Wild, exposed marshes vs. smug Christmas dinner at forge opposing cultures. - Pip feels more kinship with starving convict outside than those within. - Pip s conscious struggles for gentility while unnerved by a sense of his own criminality - Pip s past haunts him life as a gentleman past at the forge and Satis House. - Pip wishes he could escape the past as he brushes the dust of Newgate off his clothes. - Magwitch revelation has been obscurely known all along (Ch. 39). - Compeyson moves in social and criminal circles, Jaggers is lawyer to Miss Havisham and Magwitch Estella is daughter of a felon and criminal and Pip s fortunes are founded on the labour of a criminal.