Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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Recommended: The theme of childhood in great expectations

Character Information: Pip- Pip is the protagonist and the narrator of Great Expectations. Pip wants the best in life. The entire novel is him seeking his “Great Expectations”. Pip is very passionate and has a great conscience. The entirety of the novel is him wants to improve himself. Pip is the reason that his novel is a bildungsroman. Once he learned all the lessons he needed to in the novel he fully matured. Many of the events that happened to Pip are a representation of what happened to Dickens in his early life. Apart from David Copperfield, Great Expectations is his most autobiographical novel. Estella- Estella is Miss Havisham’s daughter. She is said to be very beautiful and cold hearted. She is raised by Miss Havisham to do one thing, use and break men’s hearts. Pip is in love with her but she is uninterested in him. She warns him that she has no heart. Miss Havisham essentially ruined her life. Although she is in the upper class, she has not emotion and is the shell of a person. She could have been better off if Magwitch raised her in the lower class. Miss Havisham- Miss Havisham is Estella’s adopted mother. Her entire life revolves around being left by Compeyson on their wedding day. She wears her wedding dress every day and all her clocks are stopped on the time she received the letter. She raises Estella as her own personal weapon to get revenge on all men. She never wants to get over her heart break; she has Estella continue it on. Everyone in her life suffers because of Compeyson’s actions. At the end of the novel she begs Pip for his forgiveness, showing once again the novels theme that bad behavior can be redeemed. Magwitch- A criminal who has Pip rob his family for him in the beginning in the novel. He gets se... ... middle of paper ... ...ions” to change. Works Cited Barickman, Richard, Susan MacDonald, and Myra Stark. “Dickens." In Corrupt Relations: Dickens, Thakeray, Trollope, Collins, and the Victorian Sexual System. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982, 59-110. Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Radhika Jones. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003. Print. Hobsbaum, Philip. A Reader's Guide to Charles Dickens. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973. A Reader's Guide to Charles Dickens. Google Books. Web. 25 Jan. 2014. Lii, Thereaa. "Defining Characters by Their Chosen Environment." Defining Characters by Their Chosen Environment. Brown University, 23 Feb. 2008. Web. 25 Jan. 2014. Weiss, Zoe. "Seeing Double, Double Seeing: The Use of Doubles in Great Expectations." Seeing Double, Double Seeing: The Use of Doubles in Great Expectations. Brown University, 18 Feb. 2008. Web. 25 Jan. 2014.

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