Childhood Flashcards
General Points- Great Expectations
Bildungsroman novel following pip
Pip is synonymous with a seed
Relates to the reader- no matter what age
Hobbs- all humans by nature are elul in faculties of body and mind (evil)
Rousseau- naturally innocent and made evil by society (more dickensian) aka adults- in line with the romantic view
It was okay to physically punish children-modern day audiences would be more shocked
From a child’s point of view but with an educated adult’s syntax and vocab due to it being a retrospective narrative
Pip
Naivety “what’s a convict” - part of what makes pip’s character appealing to the reader
Abused by sister “the ticker” brought up “by hand”
Blames joe ‘I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been so too’ RETROSPECTIVE NARRATIVE
Psychological interpretations- his realisation that he and his sister are the only survivors of this family could be seen as the source of his sense of guilt
Darwinism- “who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle”
“i was always treated as if i had insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion and morality”
“Be grateful, boy, to them who brought you up by hand”
“My sisters upbringing had made me sensitive”
“I had know, from the time when i could speak, that my sister…was unjust to me”
Biddy
“She was an orphan; like me, too, had been brought up by hand”
Estella
“cold hearted” and “proud”
“avenge her (Miss Havisham’s) broken heart”
“Break their hearts”
“She hung on estella’s beauty…as though she were devouring the beautiful creature she had reared”
“And if you ask me to give you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities”
“I must be taken as i have been made”
“It is in my nature (to be cold)”
Billy Collins
Went to a catholic school
Was an only child to well educated parents
“I would say it was a fairly happy childhood”
Howard Nemerov “you didn’t need to supper extraordinary to be a writer because adolescence itself is suffering enough”
Sometimes writes from a child’s pov
books/child development
Despite the domestic setting of much of his party, collins’s writing reveals little of his private life
Class based on education, wealth and occupation
Easier to change classes than previously
Forgetfulness
Makes the reader aware that things are being forgotten
Concern linked to age- age being linked to death
Reflecting on Collin’s own society
On Turning Ten
From a child’s pov through their development
Imagination and dreams of a child
Comparing their concerns to 20th C ones and GE and WoB
Links to pip’s childhood and his naivety
