Preview

Great Expectations: Injustices and Poor Conditions Committed on Women

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
747 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Great Expectations: Injustices and Poor Conditions Committed on Women
Great Expectations: Injustices and Poor Conditions Committed On Women and
Children

Great Expectations, authored by Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, is considered one of his finest works of literature. It was indicative of
Dickens's strong feelings for injustices and poor conditions committed on women and children of that time. Through the main character, Pip, Dickens's demonstrated the compassion he felt for children. Most readers, like myself, are able to associate Pip's experiences with their own. Pip endeavored upon many things that I can see myself doing.

From the beginning of the novel Pip had felt an impending feeling of guilt. It is a common theme in Great Expectations and is one that I have felt numerous times before. In one instance, my friends and I were at a party playing with a water balloon launcher shooting balloons down the street. My neighbors had just put in a new set of porch windows that were quite expensive. With a slight aiming misalignment we broke a window and had to confess to my neighbor and give her our apologies. Pip, however, had the guilt weighed on his conscience forever-he did not have the courage to tell Mrs. Joe that he had taken a pork pie that was for Christmas dinner. Mrs. Joe only made it harder for Pip when she asked, "And were the deuce ha' you been?" (page 20). Pip had to make a moral judgment about whether or not to tell the truth about what he did and is challenged with many more of these decisions throughout the book.

Pip was later introduced to Estella, Ms. Havisham's adopted daughter, whom was taught to pursue retribution on all of the male population for her "mother".
Pip became easily infatuated with Estella's good looks, money, and attitude.
Estella considered Pip to be common and pointed out the ways when she said, "He calls the knaves, jacks, this boy! And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!" (page 55). Pip once again has the feeling of guilt, this time for just being a common

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be” (Dickens 284). The three major themes of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens are social status and character, growing pains, and revenge.…

    • 449 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this first section Pip is a young child, and Dickens masterfully uses Pips narration to evoke the feelings and problems of childhood. At the beginning of the novel, for instance Pip at His Parents’ gravestones, a solemn scene which Dickens salvages to make humorous by having Pip consider the exact inscriptions on the tombstones. When the convict questions him about his parents’ names, Pip recites them exactly as they appear on the tombstones, indicating his youthful innocence while simultaneously allowing Dickens to lower the dramatic tension of the novels opening scene. When the convict confronted Pip he horrified him however despite his horror, Pip treats the convict with compassion and kindness using the title sir when answering the man, “Don’t cut my throat, sir”. It would have been easy for Pip to run to Joe or the Police for help rather than stealing food and the file, but honors his promise to the suffering man and when he learns that the police are searching for him he even worries for his safety. Still, throughout this section an aggressive tone continues from the convict adding to the danger of the scene.…

    • 688 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Charles Dickens uses the imagery of a bleak, unforgiving Nature in his exposition of "Great Expectations" to convey the mood of fear in Chapter 1. The weather is described as "raw" and the graveyard a "bleak" place. The "small bundle of shivers" is Pip himself, who is terrified by a "fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg." He is a desperate man, with broken shoes,as he grabs the orphan Pip. .…

    • 2325 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The novel, Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens is heavily a character-driven novel due to the fact that the sequence of events in the novel are causes and effects of the actions of the characters as well as the interactions between them. The novel mainly depicts the growth and development of an orphan named Pip, who is greatly influenced by the other characters and became a gentleman and a bachelor in the end of the novel through his encounters with the other characters. Pip, as the main character, definitely has a lasting impact on the drive of the novel since his decisions are very instrumental and effective towards the other characters as well as to himself. This phenomenon applies to not only Pip, but to the other characters, especially Estella, Miss Havisham, Joe, and Abel Magwitch. Everything a character does and every encounter between the characters in Great Expectation has an effect on the flow of the plot and situation of the novel.…

    • 1322 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Dr. Pipher remembers her cousin Polly as a young girl. She describes her as energy in…

    • 1473 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Pip is used by his elders in society. He is constantly manipulated by them and turned into a puppet that is tasked with preforming their bidding. The first example of this is in chapter one of Great Expectations, when The Convict used Pip to obtain goods for his own need. The Convict appeared in the graveyard and grabbed Pip, and said “you get me a file, and you get me some wittles”. He expects that Pip will get him what he wants because of his threatening demeanor, and the threats that he relayed upon him. Another example of this is how Mrs. Havisham uses Pip as a piece of her “sick fantasy”. Mrs. Havisham has Pip come to her house on many occasions to “play” with Estella. Mrs. Havisham claims they are “playing", even though her true intentions…

    • 307 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Finally, in Frame number 8 when the man turns Pip upside down and a piece of bread falls out. The man eats it violently and after quotes “How big and fat Pip’s cheeks are.” Giving the impression he wished to eat him. I added this scene to let all the readers out there know how terrified Pip must feel and what they’d do in his position. This scene is right at the end of the first opening chapter and it leaves us on a cliff – hanger. This is one of the main this that is used to draw the…

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Pip does his best to ally her guilt, in that she is a shell of a person with no family that loves her. With Estella married and gone she has no one and is alone. There is nothing but time, for her life to think about what she has done to the people she cared about the most, if her…

    • 368 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This sentence once again relates to the theme of social class. Pip's mother was "Freckled" and "Sickly" because she was in a socially lower class and thus had less money to take care of herself.…

    • 1442 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    During the first extract we get to see that Pip is an orphan after he says: As I never saw my father or my mother.. (for their days were long before the days of photographs), we recognise that he unfortunately lost both his mother and father along with five brothers he once had, who passed away whilst they were still infants. The only family Pip had, was his older sister Mrs Joe Gargery and her husband who was a Blacksmith. He had lived with them both for most of his life, his sister treats him dreadfully as all she sees Pip as is a waste of space in her household. Whilst her husband - Joe Gargery, treats Pip like he was his own flesh and blood. We now get the chance to begin to see the hard and upsetting life Pip leads and what he has gone through in the past. We start to feel sympathy for Pip, as not many children would have to go through the same experience as he once did.…

    • 1825 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Because Charles Dickens’ novel “Great Expectations” focuses on the growth and development of the most important character who functions as both Pip the narrator and Pip the protagonist, this novel is called a bildungsroman. In this context, it is of great significance to understand or analyze the character of Pip so that we can draw a conclusion from his actions in the novel. The aim of this essay is basically to discuss the two significant issues of ‘love’ and ‘guilt’ together in this mid-Victorian novel concerning mostly the main characters Pip, Miss Havisham, Estella, Biddy, Herbert and Joe.…

    • 1721 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Pip Dialectical Journal

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Shane Sukhlal Joanna Trim English 9 September 18, 2014 Journal on Great Expectations Chapters 1-3 1.Book started by introduction of the narrator,using the first person words such as “I” in the sentence “My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. ”(Dickens,1). 2.Pip reveals most of his family members,who he lives with, and his orphancy. Pip’s mother and father are dead,and he lives with his sister and her husband who’s profession is a blacksmith.…

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Were as Pip is quite a well manored young boy and very innocent he does not seem at all disturbed by the fact that his mother and father and 6 brothers are dead yet he conveys a young innocence,…

    • 816 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Charles Dickens has written the story “Great Expectations” to show that cruelty acts as a bridge to a newer phase in one’s life and wants to show how one has or will become in that phase. In Great Expectations, Miss Havisham will present cruelty at its finest after one gets to know her more and learn what tragedies she has been through. Dickens also presents that cruelty comes at a different time later on after you assume you got to know someone really well. It will come as you are in someone’s “trap.”…

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays