C/A - Comparing emotions in Romeo and Juliet and Great Expectations

Question 0

Expectations

Answer 0

The emotions therefore will reflect to what extent the expected relationships are challenged or fulfilled.

Question 1

Circumstance

Answer 1

The oxford English Dictionary defines emotion as a strong feeling, deriving from a circumstance, mood, or relationship with others.

Question 2

Reference

Answer 2

Both Shakespeare and Dickens make particular reference to the issues within those relationships which revolve around relationships.

Question 3

Question

Answer 3

In Romeo and Juliet, the marriage in question is Juliet’s, but in Great Expectations, the marriage at issue is much less clear: Miss Havisham’s, or Estella’s (to whoever it may be).

Question 4

Forbidden

Answer 4

Both texts are coming of age stories, centred around forbidden love.

Question 5

Assuming

Answer 5

In both cases the parental figure wrongly assumes their child and themselves are of one mind, and tragically as a result destroy that child (Juliet is left dead, and Estella is left emotionally scarred).

Question 6

Forgiveness

Answer 6

By the end of both texts, both parents recognise them selves and look for forgiveness.

Question 7

Strength and Range

Answer 7

In this essay I will argue that Shakespeare explores the strength and range of emotions created in a straightforward parent/child relationship, whereas Dickens explores how a relationship is affected when emotions are repressed, twisted and perverted

Question 8

Themselves

Answer 8

In Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, the audience can see the actors representation of the characters themselves, but in “Great Expectations” we only ever see the relationship between Miss Haviham and Estella through Pip’s eyes.

Question 9

Confusion, Victim and Presence

Answer 9

Not only is his view coloured by his emotional confusion as an object or even victim of that relationship - a further distorting layer of complication for the reader - but we also have to consider to what extent Pip’s presence affects how Miss Havisham and Estella interact.

Question 10

Language

Answer 10

One useful way of assessing the presentation of emotions therefore, is the language each author uses.

Question 11

Heightened

Answer 11

In “Romeo and Juliet”, Shakespeare shows heightened emotions with the use of poetry and vivid imagery. Dickens rarely uses imagery through the relationship between Miss Havisham and Estella, but expresses repressed emotions by the absence of emotive vocabulary.

Question 12

Explore

Answer 12

I will explore this further in my writing.

Question 13

Separate

Answer 13

Although more than 200 years separate the two texts, there have been more changes in the relationship between parent and child since Dickens’ time than between the two.

Question 14

Childhood

Answer 14

In both cases childhood is shown to be short: Capulet is considering Paris’ marriage proposal to Juliet at the age of 14, Pip is beginning an apprenticeship and Estella is expected by Miss Havisham to “break hearts”.

Question 15

Obedient and Challenge

Answer 15

In both writers’ times, the children were expected to be obedient and grateful for everything their upbringing. Both Juliet and Estella challenge this.

Question 16

Expected

Answer 16

When we first encounter the relationship between Capulet and Juliet (in Act 1 scene 2) we see the expected relationship of the time.

Question 17

Tender and Manner

Answer 17

Capulet is protective and tender towards Juliet, when Paris asks to marry her. He speaks in a poetic manner which reflects his emotion. (“My child is yet a stranger to the world”.)

Question 18

Invites

Answer 18

However Capulet invites Paris to inspect the other “fresh, female buds” at his forthcoming party, and if Juliet remains his favourite, Capulet agrees to let Paris woo her.

Question 19

Clearly and Agreement

Answer 19

Clearly Capulet expects obedience, though this is based on his assumption that she will be willingly in agreement (“My will to her consent is but a part”).

Question 20

Reinforce, Willing and Endart

Answer 20

Juliet’s words to her mother reinforce the expectance of willing obedience, “No more deep will I endart my eye, Than your consent gives it to make it fly”.

Question 21

Couplet

Answer 21

This rhyming couplet shows that emotions are still as they should be, and tensions have not yet risen.

Question 22

Difficult and First

Answer 22

It is much more difficult to work out the relationship between them when we first meet them. Neither we nor Pip know at this stage that Estella is Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter.

Question 23

Orders, Cards

Answer 23

Miss Havisham orders Estella to play cards with Pip which suggests she expects obedience and yet when Estella questions her (“With this boy?”) a conversation between equals, or even a collusion occurs when Miss Havisham responds “Well you can break his heart”.

Question 24

Complex, Disdain, Uncomfortable and Mind

Answer 24

There are a greater amount of complexities involved with emotions here. It is not yet clear whether Estella’s “disdain” and “aversion” to Pip is because she is being forced to engage with Pip; because she is uncomfortable about her role in Miss Havisham’s plans to “beggar” Pip; or she really is of one mind with Miss Havisham.

Question 25

Together, Crying and Powerful

Answer 25

The next time we see Juliet and Capulet together, she is crying in front of her father. This affects him powerfully because he uses a powerful image to describe what he sees, “Thy eyes which I may call the sea, do ebb and flow with tears”.

Question 26

Mistaken, Strength and Defies

Answer 26

Although Capulet is mistaken about why Juliet is crying, it hows the strength of his emotions. Juliet then defies her father by saying she does not wish to marry Paris.

Question 27

Mother, four lines, riddle, capable and silence

Answer 27

In fact it is her mother that tells Capulet about htis, as Juliet only says four lines to her father in this scene (three of which are in a riddle). We have seen that Juliet is capable of these poetic outbursts when she is with Romeo. This makes her silences here meaningful.

Question 28

Stage-Directions, defiance, street and changes

Answer 28

There are no stage directions of relevance in the whole of Romeo and Juliet, meaning we have no sense of whether she is being obedient, or merely sullen. Juliet’s defiance challenges the expected relationship of the day and shocks Capulet from poetry to the lowest form of prose, Street insults. Examples include, ‘You green sickness carrion’ and ‘I will drag you on a hurdle thither’.

Question 29

Reflecting, fury and openly

Answer 29

These images are very powerful, displaying his fury very dramatically. His anger is shown as openly as his love throughout.

Question 30

Stems, Marriage, Day

Answer 30

Capulet’s anger stems from the social expectation on the day - he believes it is his role to protect his daughter and to find a respectable and “noble” gentleman for her to be matched to. “Day, night, work, play, my care hath been/to have her match’d” - and her role to accept him and continue the family revision.

Question 31

Mutual dependence

Answer 31

She is “the hopeful lady of [his] earth”. This is expected mutual dependence.

Question 32

Puppet

Answer 32

The next time we see Miss Havisham and Estella, it is clear that Estella is not Miss Havisham’s puppet.

Question 33

Joe, straightforwardly, mischieviously, unforced, powerful and relish.

Answer 33

In the scene where Joe visits Miss Havisham alongside Pip, Miss Havisham deals with Joe fairly straightforwardly, but Estella stands behind her, smiling mischievously at his discomfort. In this scene Estella is shown to have taken the more dominant role, whereas Miss Havisham has lost her power and is merely feeding off her with a miserly relish.

Question 34

Complicated, heart, fact and emotive

Answer 34

But it remains complicated as Estella tells Pip in this scene, ‘I have no heart, no softness there, no - sympathy - sentiment - nonsense’, but the very fact she uses these words undermines the whole statement.

Question 35

Bowed and Shoe

Answer 35

When we see her in this scene her head is bowed and she is holding the unworn wedding shoe (the pair to the one Miss Havisham has worn since her fateful wedding day).

Question 36

Longing

Answer 36

This shows two images: possibly an image of Estella longing to love, or possibly Estella’s inheritance of her adopted mother’s plans to wreak revenge on all the male sex by not marrying.

Question 37

Perhaps mind

Answer 37

At this point they are perhaps of one mind, but shortly after, our sense pf the relationship is confused again through Pip. Pip looks at Estella, having not seen her for many years and says “anything that I had seen in Miss Havisham? No”.

Question 38

Contrast, ‘passionate eagerness”, loved

Answer 38

In contrast to Estella’s stated coldness, we see a passionate eagerness explode out of Miss Havisham when she describes that she adopted Estella to be loved.

Question 39

Cold, emotional urgency, approach

Answer 39

When we first see Miss Havisham through Pip, we believe her to be cold hearted and commanding but we start to see an emotional urgency in her through her descriptions of her approach to Estella.

Question 40

Rescued, workhouse, dependent, lives through

Answer 40

We and Pip know that Miss Havisham rescued Estella from the workhouse, and that Estella is totally dependent on Miss Havisham for her materialistic assets but now Miss Havisham lives through Estella.

Question 41

Desperate, Love her!, straightforward, violent.

Answer 41

She is desperate for Estella to be loved. She urges Pip to “Love her, love her, love her!”. While Pip, who does love her believes this to be a straightforward request, the fact that Dickens uses such violent language alerts the reader to the unnaturalness of their relationship.

Question 42

Begging

Answer 42

We realise that Miss Havisham is begging to be loved herself.

Question 43

Revelation, 38, together, behaves, devouring.

Answer 43

The real revelation in Great Expectations is when Estella and Pip visit Satic House together in chapter thirty eight. Miss Havisham behaves as though she were “devouring the beautiful creature she had reared”.

Question 44

Physically, detach, contrast, coldness, wild, given, taken

Answer 44

When Estella physically begins “to detach herself” Miss Havisham panics and we see the contrast between Estella’s coldness and Miss Havisham’s wild heart. Estella claims that she was never given love and can therefore never give it back and states “I must be taken as i have been made”.

Question 45

Address, burning.

Answer 45

Miss Havisham cannot address Estella but pleads with Pip “Did her never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy at all times?”

Question 46

Noticeable, Pip, Broken.

Answer 46

What is very noticeable is that Miss Havisham and Estella do not address each other, but speak through Pip. Their relationship has broken down.

Question 47

Contrast, Deceiving, Irony.

Answer 47

By contrast, the only time Juliet speaks at length to her father is when she is deceiving him. Shakespeare uses dramatic irony in this scene when she says she will obey her father.

Question 48

Social Expectation, terrible.

Answer 48

Capulet is prepared to believe Estella as it fits into the social expectation of the day, “this is as’t should be”. But as an audience, we know the terrible truth.

Question 49

Culmination, central, returns, fragile, frost.

Answer 49

In the culmination of both relationships, we see how central love was to both. Capulet forgets his anger and insulting tone and returns to his poetical speech, referring to her like a fragile flower. “Death lies on her like an untimely frost, Upon the sweetest flower of all the field”.

Question 50

Tenderness, reassures, same, 49, misery.

Answer 50

Capulet’s tenderness in grief reassures the audience. Almost the same can be said of Miss Havisham in chapter forty nine, “What have I done? I meant to save her from misery like my own.”

Question 51

Poetic, Ice, plead, altar, turmoil.

Answer 51

Miss Havisham, surprisingly, turns to poetry in this chapter, “I stole her heart away and put ice in its place”, she begins to plead with Pip for forgiveness. Like the bride at her altar, she falls down on her knees and relives the turmoil of her wedding day.

Question 52

Echoes, Hand, Jointure, forgiveness.

Answer 52

Capulet echoes this scene in the closing passage of the play where he takes “his old enemy” Montague’s hand, saying “this is my daughter’s jointure. In the end, both adults are looking for forgiveness for the mistakes they made with their children. Both these culminating scenes are very powerful and emotional.

Question 53

Manipulate, gratification

Answer 53

Both adults attempted to manipulate the emotions of their children. Capulet to try to meet social expectations, and Miss Havisham for her own personal gratification.

Question 54

Fractured, consequences

Answer 54

The fact that both stories end with the fractured symbol of the marriage ceremony, emphasises the tragic consequences of their actions in manipulation.

Question 55

Appeal, Challenged, frailties, independence.

Answer 55

The two works, “Great Expectations” and Romeo and Juliet have continuing appeal to todays audiences as parent/child relationships are challenged by the changing social expectations of today, parental frailties and the increasing independence of the child. These all remain sources of some of the most heightened emotions.