Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Autobiographical Elements)

 

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

(Autobiographical Elements) 

What Dickens do have shades of autobiography. On the suggestion of Bulwer Lytton, Dickens changed the ending and hinted that Pip and Estella would begin a new life again.

As young boy Pip goes to play with Estella at Satis House, the residence of Miss Havisham Estella is the ward of Miss Havisham she is a proud and beautiful girl. As a young boy Pip is scorned and insulted by Estella and he begins to feel ashamed of his coarse upbringing. Estella and Miss Havisham have an out-of-the world look about them and they represent a society to which Pip aspires. Miss Havisham is dressed always in her bridal finery and she remains locked in her own house. She refuses to see the day light and is surrounded by wax-candles which cast shadows all around and heighten the fairytale atmosphere.

Miss Havisham was jilted by her lover on her wedding-day and ever since then she has not come out of her house. This betrayal causes Miss Havisham to seek revenge on the male sex in a most perverted way. Miss Havisham instructs Estella never to fall in love, to play false to men and to break their heart. Estella is brought up to be icy maiden devoid of any gentle feelings. The world of Miss Havisham and Estella enchants Pip and his initial fear of going there and playing with Estella is replaced by a curiosity to know more about this world.

Pip desires to be a gentleman in order to impress Estella. By a stroke of good fortune Pip’s education is financed by an unknown benefactor and Pip thinks that the benefactoress is Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham does nothing to dispel this belief. When Pip matures into a young man, he realises that he loves Estella. Estella has been brought up without feeling and emotion and here she is reminiscent of Louisa Gradgrind. Whereas Louisa has been taught to rationalise every issue, Estella has been trained to encourage men to play homage to her beauty, and then to discard them. Estella’s upbringing may sound improbable but fiction involves a “willing suspension of disbelief”.

If Miss Havisham is imprisoned in her own world, Estella too, is a prisoner of her upbringing. She is the star for whom Pip aspires to be a gentleman: Estella is cold, distant and aloof and Pip is the ‘hopeless-lover’ who never finds solace and happiness in her company.

Estella does not adhere to the angel in the house image of woman. She is cold and cruel. This image of the cruel maid is a conventional one- it has been there in European literature since the time of Petrarch. But Estella is slightly different: she is dutiful in so far as she follows Miss Havisham’s directions. If she is not an angel, she is no monster either. She does not strike terror-instead she attracts a host of admirers and they succumb to her beauty. This type of feminine figure was another stock-in-trade of medieval literature- la femme fatale- revived in the nineteenth century by John Keats in his poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’.

Estella is aware that Pip loves her and he is sincere in his feelings. She sees the hopelessness of his love and warns him repeatedly not to be attracted towards her:

Pip...... will you never take warning?

Of What?

Of me.

Warning not be attracted by you, do you mean, Estella?

Do I meant! If you don’t know what I mean, You are blind.........

Do you want me then.......to deceive and entrap you? Do you deceive and entrap him (Bentley Drummles),

Estella. Yes, and many others- all of them but you.

(GE, pp. 284-295).

Pip does not take any heed of Estella’s warning and persists in loving her. Estella, however, tells him firmly “it seems that there are sentiments, fancies- I don’t know how to call them- which I am not able to comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form of words, but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast, you touch nothing there. I don’t care for what you say at all. I have tried to warm you of this; now, have I not?”

Pip feels that her behaviour is country to Nature, but Estella would not agree, “It is in my nature.......It is in the nature formed within me” (GE, p. 342).

Estella resembles Edith Dombey to a great extent. Both are proud, beautiful and victims of their mothers’ manipulations. Edith’s mother virtually sells her to Mr. Dombey. Miss Havisham (Estella’s mother by adoption) manipulates, through Estella, her revenge on society. Miss Havisham is no fairy godmother, rather there is a “witch-like eagerness” in her whenever Estella talks about her admires. From Miss Havisham’s actions and gestures, Pip learns about “the intensity of a mind morally hurt and diseased”. Miss Havisham derives sadistic pleasure from Estella’s cold and cruel behaviour towards her admires. Miss Havisham reminds the reader of Mrs. Clennam, Miss Wade and Rosa Dartle. They are all passionate women and they express their resentment towards society in various ways. But while seeking revenge on these men, Miss Havisham appears to be equally tortured. As Philip Hobsbaum remarks: “All this self-torment is part of a vendetta directed not only at herself but outwards, as well, against the world..........like many of Dickens’s great eccentrics, her portrayal is a faithful representation of one psychological fact: that the human psyche will make great sacrifices in order to avoid total disintegration.”

By training Estella, Miss Havisham continues to have a hold on life, however thin that hold may be. Miss Havisham sent Estella out of Satis House “with the malicious assurance that she was beyond the reach of all admires, and that all who staked upon that cast were secured to lose” (GE, p. 286).

But after sometime gets a “little tired” of Miss Havisham’s schemes. Sharp words are exchanged between them and in her remarks, Estella reminds one of Louisa and Edith. Miss Havisham accuses Estella of being “cold” and “indifferent” and of being “hard and thankless”.

Estella’s answer reminds one of Gradgrind’s utilitarian theory: “I am what you have made me......... At least I was no party to the compact, for if I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could do........... and if you ask me to give me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities .............who taught me to be hard? Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?........... I have never forgotten your wrongs and their causes. I have never forgotten your wrongs schooling. I have never shown any weakness that I can charge myself with....... so, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together makes me” (GE, pp. 287-290).

Miss Havisham adopts Estella and keeps her “as a plaything, and rears her on the principle of vengeance, carefully cultivating Estella’s beauty so that she can grow up to break the heart of me.” Estella’s behaviour can be attributed to the training Miss Havisham impart to her and her success and failure can also be attributed to Miss Havisham’s instructions. Estella’s above thought or feeling to seep into her mind.

Estella tells Pip that she will be marrying she will be marrying Bentley Drummles Pip remonstrates with her but it is of no use because Estella’s mind is made up. She alone is responsible for this act because she tells Pip: “I am going to be married to him.....It is my own act.” And to Pip’s query “Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a brute?” Estella replies: “On whom do I fling myself away? Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the soonest feel. (if people do feel such things) that I took nothing to him? There! It is done. I shall do well enough, and so will my husband. As to leading me into what you call this fatal step, Miss Havisham would have had me wait, and not marry yet; but I am tired of the life I have led, which has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough to change it. Say no more. We shall never understand each other....Don’t afraid of my being a blessing to him, I shall not be that. Come! Here is my hand. Do we part on this, you visionary boy- or man?” (GE, p.343)

It is important to note that even though Pip had grown up, he retains his fascination for Estella. He has not matured into a mercenary man, and still idolizes Estella and is genuinely concerned for her. Estella knows about Pip’s feelings and it is to her credit that she warns him about herself and her upbringing. Pip’s belief that Miss Havisham is his benefactoress has been quashed by the return of Magwitch, his actual benefactor. Pip’s vision of marrying Estella and leading a blissful life is also dashed to the ground by Estella remark that she is going to marry Drummles.

Pip suffers inwardly but he pours out his heart before Estella and Miss Havisham, saying: “you are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then.......... Estella to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character .......O God bless you, God forgive you” (GE. pp.343-44)

While Pip speaks, Estella looks at him with “wonder” but Miss Havisham’s face seems filled with “pity and remorse” Pip’s earlier declaration of love has made Miss Havisham aware of Pip’s sincerity and she sends for Pip. She realises her mistake and feels very sorry for allowing Pip to believe that she is his benefactoress and Estella is destined to marry him once he becomes a gentleman. Miss Havisham wishes to atone for her mistake. Pip tells her to help Herbert Pocket financially and she agrees to do so saying, “Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend? Regarding that as done, is there nothing I can do for you yourself” Pip replies in the negative, he needs nothing from her for his own self. Miss Havisham begs his forgiveness saying, “If you can ever write under my name, ‘I forgive her’ though ever so long after my heart is dust- pray do it” (GE, p.376)

Catching hold of Pip’s hand, Miss Havisham sheds tears of sorrow and Pip allows her to cry in the hope that would bring her “relief”. Pip forgives her, and very soon Miss Havisham’s dress catches fire and she dies of burn injuries. (The burning may be a ceremonial purging of Miss Havisham’s sadistic outlook).

Estella has, in the meantime, got married to Bentley Drummles. Drummles appears to be a useless character. Estella suffers greatly at his hands and in the process, she is purged of Miss Havisham’s trainings and begins to value humane feelings. When Pip and Estella meet for the last time, it is with the hope that they will never part again. In the evening of his life, Pip’s star Estella arrives finally at his horizon. Suffering has made the once cold beauty into a complete woman and she is able to understand Pip more sympathetically.

Estella is simply a given entity in the novel, star-like, as her name suggests, in her coldness, beauty and remote indifference to the agony and strife of human hearts. Only as a child does she seem psychologically convincing: the self-possessed little girl’s gleeful tormenting of the awkward village boy, so out of his depth in her strange home, is entirely plausible. But the adult Estella must, it seems to me, be considered more as a fictive device than as a character in the mode of psychological realism. Estella appears to be “a sort of robot” who carries out Miss Havisham’s plans very effectively.

Estella leaves a deep impact on the reader and one tends to view her sympathetically especially after her suffering which makes her more compassionate towards Pip. In nearly all his novels, Dickens denounces those women who have strong feelings and are very articulate. Passion was out of place in a well-ordered society; hence Dickens is critical of passionate women. Dickens associated any violent display of passion with aggression and self-destruction. Examples of such destructive persons are Rosa, Edith, Hortense, Miss Wade and Miss Havisham. Such women are discontented-they cannot derive happiness and comfort from their homes and surroundings. In Mrs. Joe Gargery (Pip’s sister) Dickens presents a shrew.

Mrs. Joe has brought up Pip and hence experts complete obedience and gratitude from Pip. Mr. Hoe and Pip have often been the victims of her temper and when she is roused she can be like a “Mogul” tyrant. The tyrannical woman was the butt of traditional male satire. But Joe does not “tame” his shrewish wife because she has a “mastermind” and is a “fine figure of a woman”.

In Chapters VII, Joe gives his reasons (Which are psychological) for accepting Pip’s sister as his wife. Joe’s wife “is perpetually on the Rampage about one thing or another. She treats them both very much alike, as backward children, pulling Joe’s whiskers and dosing Pip with Tar-water.”

Joe’s father was a drunkard and often he would beat Joe and his mother mercilessly. He would spend all the money on alcohol and his mother had to toil very hard to make both ends meet. When Joe’s parents died, he was lonely and finally he got acquainted with Pip’s sister who was bringing up Pip. Finally, Joe marries with Pip’s sister and Joe tells Pip: “This I want to say very serious to you. Old chap-I see so much in my poor mother, of a woman drudging and slaving and breaking her honest heart and never getting no peace in her mortal days, that I’m dead afraid of going wrong in the way of not doing what’s right by woman, and be a little ill-convenienced my-self” (GE, p.45)

In Joe’s comments on can glean Dickens’s awareness of cruelty to wives and mothers. By writing about these practices, Dickens wishes to draw the reader’s attention to women’s problems. By all counts then, Joe is the perfect gentleman who would suffer rather than make the woman suffer.

Mrs. Joe Gargery was known for her sharp tongue and outspoken behaviour. On day she had a quarrel with Orlick, a man apprenticed to Joe. Orlick attacks her and she dies after a few days. Joe then marries Biddy who brings him pleasure and happiness. In Great Expectations Biddy is “one of the wisest girls” Pip known. She is his first teacher and she has an uncanny ability to perceive the truth. Pip expresses to Biddy, his desire to be a gentleman because Estella has spited him and found him coarse and common. But Biddy’s advice is that Estella “was not worth gaining.” This advice shows that Biddy is a good judge of character. Pip wishes that he could “fall in love” with Biddy, but she had no such hope form Pip and tells him frankly, “But you never will, you see.” Pip’s ego is hurt but he admits the truth of her remark. Estella is a living symbol for Pip is shown by his inability to fall in love with Biddy, whom he recognizes as kinder, and more suitable for his future life as a village blacksmith, at the time when no alternative ‘real’ life seems possible: he confides in Biddy but he can’t take advice from her, Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s grand-daughter who was down-at-heel and is not much more literate than Joe.” Biddy is a kind, sincere and loving girl who cares for the people around her.

Eventually Biddy marries Joe and she brings joy and gladness into Joe’s life. She has no grouse against Pip and welcomes him warmly when he comes to meet them; “Dickens avoids idealizing Biddy and so should the modern reader.”

If Biddy represents the conventionally “good” female than Mrs. Joe Gargery is her opposite in her behaviour. As Slater has pointed out: “A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations feature four cases of women monstered by passion. Madame Defarge is a ‘tigress’, Mrs. Joe a virago, Molly (Estella’s criminal mother) ‘wild beast tamed’ and Miss Havisham a witch-like creature, a ghastly combination of waxwork and skeleton. In each case the perversion of womanhood that the character represents is stamped on our imaginations by our being shown her apparently enacting some conventionally ‘good’ female role or performing some conventionally ‘good’ female activity- but always with some horrible twist given to the thing........Mrs. Joe is supplying the place of a mother to her little brother but the bib of her apron is ‘struck full of pins and needles’ that get into the bread she gives him to eat. Molly appears Jaggers’s housekeeper, placing food on the table for him and his guests, but she is a very disturbing version of the Good Provider :.......Miss Havisham is arrayed as a young bride but the dress has rotted on her and she herself has withered into hideousness.”

Miss Havisham remains vivid in the reader’s mind. She is a “fantastic creation” and there is a compelling force within her which evokes country feelings. One can sympathize with the fact that she has been jilted on her wedding day but it is difficult to accept her sadistic behaviour as the fitting rationale to her own emotional set-back. In spite of her peculiarities, Miss Havisham has an enchanting air about her and when Pip sees her for the first time, he is drawn towards her. Indeed, Miss Havisham is like “an evil spirit casting a spell over Estella and, through her, over Pip too...........It is one of the many ironies of this great ironic novel that Pip is indeed destined finally to exorcise Miss Havisham’s evil spirit, to restore her to humanity.” Miss Havisham realizes the mistake that she has made, and she begs Pip to forgive her, and she dies subsequently.