Great Expectations exams Flashcards
Rising Mist?
Dickens’ uses pathetic fallacy by the mists to demonstrate clarity of thinking. Whenever the mists rise, Pip is able to see things around him clearly. When the mists are present, they can symbolize danger and uncertainty like when Magwitch attacks Pip, shortly after arriving in London or before the attack of Orlick. The rising mists are also used in the last sentence of the novel when Pip sees “no shadow of another parting from [Estella]”.
As it obscures the view, it represents a lack of clarity, insight, or knowledge. Pip’s four most formative experiences all take place in the mist. Early in the novel, Pip runs terrified through the mist to bring stolen food and a file to the convict. Not only is Pip uncertain and afraid of the convict’s threats, he is completely unaware of the immense generosity his actions will inspire in the convict over the next twenty years. Likewise, Pip moves through heavy mist as he first leaves his village for London, not knowing how different his life there will be from the grand, genteel life he has fantasized about. Later, Pip walks through the mist on his way to meet his anonymous informant, who turns out to be Orlick lying in wait to kill him. Finally, Pip passes through mist to visit the razed site of Satis House where he is surprised to find Estella and the promise of a new life.
Light/Darkness?
- Dickens’ uses the idea of shadows to suggest mystery or evilness. Pip often notices a shadow across Estella’s face and seems to suggest that she has a very dark side to her. Pip also shows that he realizes that everyone has a complex character and are composed of both shadows and light.
- Dickens uses the ever so famous archetype of light to represent the goodness and dark to represent the evil or unknown. Joe’s character almost emits light to guide Pip along the way while the Satis House is almost completely dark.
The Leg Iron?
The Leg-Iron symbolizes justice. Most literally, the convicts’ leg-irons physically constrain them within the terms of their court-decreed prison sentences. Yet Pip also compares the damp cold of the marshes to a leg-iron in Chapter 2, foreshadowing the sense of constraint he will feel in the village as he ages. For much of the novel, Pip treats the village and its working class lifestyle like a prison he tries his best to escape. The leg-iron becomes a symbol of perverse justice when used as a weapon, as when Orlick uses it to strike Mrs. Joe brutally on the head, exacting his horrifically overblown revenge.
Satis House?
Satis House is a symbol of frustrated expectations. The word “satis” comes from the Latin word for “enough,” and the house must have been given its name as a blessing or as a premonition that its residents would be satisfied with the lives they led between its walls. Yet throughout the novel, Satis House houses nothing but dashed dreams and bitter disappointments. Miss Havisham turns the house into a shrine to her betrayal by Compeyson for twenty years. Likewise, Pip’s most tenderly cherished expectation—that he will marry Estella—is formed and destroyed at Satis House. The disappointments Satis House contains can only be repaired at the expense of the house itself. Thus, Miss Havisham rediscovers her heart just as her wedding chambers are destroyed by fire. Thus, Pip and Estella look towards a happier relationship only after the house is razed.
The mason where Miss Havisham and Estella live is wealthy but crumbling and deteriorating showing a direct connection to those who live in it and to the upper class society as a whole.
Social Class?
Great Expectations is set near the end of Industrial Revolution, a period of dramatic technological improvement in manufacturing and commerce that, among other things, created new opportunities for people who were born into “lower” or poorer classes to gain wealth and move into a “higher” and wealthier class. This new social mobility marked a distinct break from the hereditary aristocracy of the past, which enforced class consistency based solely on family lines. Great Expectations is set in this new world, and Dickens explores it by tracing Pip’s ascent through the class system, a trajectory that would not have been possible within the rigid class hierarchy of the past.
Yet in the world of Great Expectations where the nobility and gentility that were once associated with the aristocracy are no longer seen as founded on birthright, characters continually grapple with the question of what those traits are based on. Can they be taught? Can they be bought? Pip tries both: he educates himself in order to gain “good” manners and also spends prodigiously on luxury goods, outfitting himself with the trappings of aristocracy as if to purchase aristocracy itself.
CLass is no way related to character
Self Improvement?
A “pip” is a small seed, something that starts off tiny and then grows and develops into something new. Pip’s name, then, is no accident, as Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, a story of the growth and development of its main character. Dickens presents the ambition to improve oneself that drives Pip along with many of the novel’s secondary characters as a force capable of generating both positive and negative results. Pip’s early ambitions focus on elevating his social class, on making himself into someone who seems worthy of Estella, but in the process he turns himself into someone who feels like a sham, is unkind to those who were kindest to him such as Joe and Provis, and ruins himself financially. Through these humbling experiences, Pip eventually comes to understand self-improvement as a more complex process involving moral and spiritual development as well. Pip’s own ambitions are echoed by the self-improvement efforts of secondary characters like Joe and Ms. Havisham, who learn to write and to empathize, respectively, at Pip’s encouragement.
