Great Expectations Flashcards
Pip: initial respect
“Don’t cut my throat, sir”
“pitying his desolation”, “I am glad you enjoy it”
Pip: realises he is common
“coarse hands” and “common boots”
“vulgar appendages”
Pip: becomes gentleman through education, growing snobbery
“vain of my knowledge”
“modest patronage”
Pip: others treat him more respectfully
Joe: “Sir”
Biddy: “Mr Pip”
“servile” Pumblechook: “May I?”
Pip: snobbery
“ashamed of the dear good fellow” at Miss Havisham’s
Joe’s dialect: “your elth’s your elth”
“would have paid money” to keep him away
Pip: surrounded by criminality; guilt
“the pale young gentleman’s blood was on my head”
first “impression of the identity of things” is of Magwitch
Mrs Joe: convicts “always begin by asking questions”
crime is like a “stain”
“contaminated” by Newgate
Pip: Trabb’s boy demonstrates Pip’s distance
Satire/parody: “Don’t know yah!”
Pip: generosity towards Herbert
“only good thing I had done”
Appreciation of Magwitch’s love
heart “heavy and anxious at parting from him”
after capture: “my repugnance to him had all melted away”
wrote a “petition to the Home Secretary” => no longer ashamed
Pip: changed attitudes once he loses his fortune
Pumblechook: “ostentatious clemency”
Estella: cruel and cold
Repeatedly calls Pip “boy”
“scornful” as if a “queen”
“cold, careless smile”
Estella: beauty
Aptronym = star
“I admire her dreadfully”
“worshiping the very hem of her dress”
Estella: damage to Pip
“hard twist at my hair”
“never had one hour’s happiness in her society”
Estella: honesty to Pip
“deceive and entrap” others — “all of them but you”
Estella: damaged by Miss Havisham
“Who taught me to be hard?”
“You address nothing in my breast”
“nature formed within me”
Estella: softened by marriage
“friendly touch of the once insensible hand”
Joe: physical strength
“Hercules in strength”
Joe: uncomfortable at Satis House
“persisted in addressing me instead of Miss Havisham”
also uncomfortable at Barnard’s Inn (dropping hat) => parallels?
Joe: kindness, honesty
“mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered”
“you and me is ever friends”
blacksmith/goldsmith/partings welded together metaphor => more self-awareness than Pip
Joe: forgiveness
“I forgive you, if I have anythink to forgive”
Joe: literacy and learning
drunk father “hammered” Joe, a “drawback on my learning” => disadvantaged poor
“uncommon fond of reading” -> pretence
Pip’s “modest patronage” towards Joe => snobbery
Magwitch: animal imagery
“growled”
Magwitch: cannibalism
“young man”
“I’ll have your heart and liver out”
Magwitch: death imagery
“from among the graves”
“eluding the hands of the dead people”
Magwitch: shows love on marshes
“Something clicked in his throat” (shown love)
gives Pip a “look I didn’t understand”
takes blame for Pip stealing the pie
Magwitch: pathetic fallacy (on return)
“stormy and wet”
wind “assailed and tore” (personification) at the sound of the bells (religion)
=> gives Magwitch a gothic, supernatural presence
Magwitch: ghostly imagery (on return)
“footstep of my dead sister”
“voice from the darkness beneath”
Magwitch: thinks being a gentleman is about money
“a diamond all set round with rubies”
Magwitch: physical effect of his return on Pip
“room began to surge and turn”
=> reminiscent of first meeting
=> also turns Pip’s life upside-down
Magwitch: made Pip
Frankenstein?
“I’m your second father”
Magwitch: troubled childhood
brought up to be “a warmint” (vermin) => disadvantaged
“in jail and out of jail” tricolon
-> no escape, predetermined
“ragged little creetur
Magwitch: hard to disguise
“Convict in the very grain of the man”
=> lack of social mobility
Magwitch: tension with genteel Pip
touches Pip: “shuddered”, “blood ran cold”
“I ain’t a going to be low” (dialect => no choice but to be low)
Magwitch: slowly dies in prison
“slowly weaker and worse” (=> prison conditions)
Magwitch: Pip’s prayer
“O Lord, be merciful to him, a sinner!” (irony?)
Orlick: negative description
“morose” (ill-tempered)
“slouching”
Wemmick: separation of the professional from the private
“moat”
“twin Wemmicks”
parody of Victorian ‘separate spheres’ ideology
Drummle: animal imagery
“sluggish”
“uncomfortable amphibious creature”
“the Spider” => violent, manipulative
Drummle: comparison to Orlick and Magwitch
“morose”, “slouching” (same words as Orlick)
“slouching shoulders” “reminded me of Orlick”
“growled” (same word as Magwitch)
Herbert: judged by Pip
“he would never be very successful”
Herbert: kindness to Pip
“kindest of nurses”
Herbert: Pip’s negative influence
“corrupted the simplicity of his life”
Mr Pocket: climbed via education
“educated at Harrow and Cambridge”
Mrs Pocket: domestic knowledge
“guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge”
Mr Pocket, a “lecturer on domestic economy”, has more knowledge
Herbert: realistic about Estella
“a Tartar”
“may lead to miserable things”
Jaggers: dark side of London
office next to Smithfield Market
“filth and fat and blood”
Jaggers: negative portrayal of legal system
“partially drunk minister of justice”
throws of Jew with “supreme indifference”
Inhumane trial:
32 men and women “penned in the dock”
sheriffs had nosegays (flowers to block the smell)
Magwitch too weak to stand
Jaggers: dehumanising
“washed his clients off”
Wemmick walks among Newgate prisoners “as a gardener might walk among his plants”
“I’ll have no feelings here. Get out.” (to Mike the Jew)
Jaggers: a parody of lawyers
Overly cautious language: “put the case”, “I make no admissions”
“cross-examined his very wine” (humorous)
Jaggers: two casts
“brutal casts”
“celebrated” cases got them a world of credit
Jaggers: brings out the worst
=> legal system implications?
“extort”
invited Pip’s “whole gang” => criminal implications
Jaggers: controlling
at dinner, “kept everything under his own hand”
Jaggers: no personal life
all books about law
house “in want of painting” (unlike Wemmick’s)
Jaggers: doesn’t look in the eyes
=> deceit? emotionlessness? formality?
“determined resistance” (at Estella)
Jaggers: human side (once he is not Pip’s guardian)
saved Estella from the criminal world
“started” when hearing Magwitch is her father
advises Pip not to reveal Estella’s secret (for her sake)
Miss Havisham: physical deterioration
“corpse-like”
Miss Havisham: mental deterioration
“sick fancy”
Satis House is a metaphor
Miss Havisham: detached from reality/outside world
“never since looked upon the light of day”
“spoilt child”
Miss Havisham: uses Estella
“You can break his heart”
“beautiful creature she had reared”
Miss Havisham: uses Pip
“enjoyment of Sarah Pocket’s jealous dismay”
“love her, love her, love her”
“a model with a mechanical heart to practise on”
Miss Havisham: realises the harm she did Estella
“What have I done?”
“fear infused” in her manner towards Estella (at what she created / Frankenstein?) after Estella’s daylight metaphor for love
Miss Havisham: realises the harm she did Pip
“ghastly stare of pity and remorse”
Miss Havisham: punished by her own doing
“punishment in the ruin she was”
Miss Havisham: begs Pip for forgiveness
“dropped on her knees” and “wept”
Miss Havisham: ironic cause of death
“dry” and “brittle” dress caught fire
Miss Havisham: Gothic death
prediction she will be laid on the dining table
“disturbed beetles and spiders”
Miss Havisham: redemption
through helping Herbert (like Pip)
leaves money to Mr Pocket
Mrs Joe: unpleasant personality
“coarse apron” “stuck full of pins and needles”
Mrs Joe: Pip learns of her death
via letter => impersonal
to an “honoured sir” (not addressed by name)
Mrs Joe: haunts Pip
“haunted night and day”
“footstep of my dead sister”
Mrs Joe: beautiful imagery when buried
“larks sang high above”, “beautiful shadows”
=> Pip’s forgiveness, or relief?
Biddy: great learner
“an extraordinary girl”
learns “everything that I learn”
Biddy: in love with Pip
unrequited: “she was common, and could not be like Estella”
Biddy: can see Pip will be unhappy
Pip’s conscience?
“don’t you think you are happier as you are?”
