Gender Roles in Great Expectations
The importance of the Victorian ideal of motherhood is glimpsed in Charles Dickens's personal life. Dickens's main complaint against his wife when he separated from her was her terrible parenting. Around the time that his separation from his wife was being finalized, Dickens complains of Catherine in a letter to his friend Angela Burdett Coutts: "'She does not -- and never did -- care for the children; and the children do not -- and they never did -- care for her'" (qtd. in Slater 146). From evidence in other letters and the seeming abruptness with which Dickens took on this point of view, Dickens biographer Michael Slater suggests that this was "something that Dickens had to get himself to believe so that he could the more freely pity himself in the image of his own children" (146; original emphasis). That Dickens would use this "psychological trick" in this way implies the severity of such an accusation for Dickens personally and for Victorian society in general. Dickens's accusation suggests the immense value placed on motherhood and maternity, qualities that, in Great Expectations, Mrs. Joe clearly lacks and that Pip is not accustomed to receiving. In creating a marriage where the wife is supremely un-nurturing and the husband is caring and kind, Dickens uses distortion of accepted gender roles to draw attention to and perpetuate the cult of domesticity. The blurred gender roles in the Gargery home cause Pip to have difficulty making decisions acceptable to bourgeois status quo, because the values he learns at home vary significantly from societal ideals.
Pip himself uses physical descriptions of his parent figures to show Mrs. Joe as masculine a...
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.... Dickens perpetuates the domestic ideal in Great Expectations by arranging Pip's early life in a non-idealized, socially unacceptable manner. The sense of failure and disappointment throughout the novel culminates in the failure of the buildingsroman hero to marry the ideal woman. Dickens uses Great Expectations to comment on middle class ideals, and his refusal to allow a traditional resolution to his buildingsroman highlights the uneasy comparison of Pip's life to the middle class ideal.
Works Cited
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Janice Carlisle. Boston: Bedford, 1996.
Gorham, Deborah. The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.
Slater, Michael. Dickens and Women. London: Dent, 1983.
Waters, Catherine. Dickens and the Politics of the Family. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is one of the most well known World War II authors. His humble beginnings and early life misfortunes shaped not only his writings, but also his view of the world. His imprisonment in Dresden in World War II, however, formed his opinions about war at an early age and later inspired many of his works and style of writing. After the returning from World War II, Vonnegut voiced his sentiments through his writing that war was wasteful and uncivilized. Vonnegut developed a unique blend of sadness, satire, and simplicity, along with his ability to understand the audience, which made his novels comprehensible and inspirational to any reader. Although one of his most famous novels, Slaughterhouse Five, is based off of his experiences in World War II, during the time of its publishing, antiwar groups applied the novel’s themes to the Vietnam War. Early life tragedies and imprisonment established Kurt Vonnegut’s antiwar opinions in his semiautobiographical novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which would influence and encourage the younger Vietnam generation to protest an unnecessary war.
Kurt Vonnegut is one of the favorite dark humorists of the past century. Combining humor and poignancy, he has become one of the most respected authors of his generation. For twenty years, Kurt Vonnegut worked on writing his most famous novel ever: Slaughter House Five. The novelist was called "A laughing prophet of doom" by the New York Times, and his novel "a cause for celebration" by the Chicago Sun-Times. However, Vonnegut himself thought it was a failure. He said that, just as Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back, so his book is nothing but a pillar of salt. Kurt Vonnegut tied in personal beliefs, characters, and settings from his life into the novel Slaughter House Five.
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Vanderwerken, David L. “Pilgrim’s Dilemma: Slaughterhouse-Five.” Research Studies 42.3 (1974): 147-52. Rpt. in Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen and Kevin Hile. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 274-77. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 1 May 2014.
For a novel to be considered a Great American Novel, it must contain a theme that is uniquely American, a hero that is the essence of a great American, or relevance to the American people. Others argue, however, that the Great American Novel may never exist. They say that America and her image are constantly changing and therefore, there will never be a novel that can represent the country in its entirety. In his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut writes about war and its destructiveness. Vonnegut tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an unlikely hero, mentally scarred by World War Two. Kurt Vonnegut explains how war is so devastating it can ruin a person forever. These are topics that are reoccurring in American history and have a relevance to the American people thus making Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five a Great American Novel.
Charles Dickens utilizes his life for inspiration for the protagonist Pip in his novel Great Expectations. They both struggle with their social standing. Dickens loved plays and theatre and therefore incorporated them into Pip’s life. Dickens died happy in the middle class and Pip died happy in the middle class. The connection Dickens makes with his life to Pip’s life is undeniable. If readers understand Dickens and his upbringing then readers can understand how and why he created Pip’s upbringing. Charles Dickens’ life, full of highs and lows, mirrors that of Pip’s life. Their lives began the same and ended the same. To understand the difficulty of Dickens’ childhood is to understand why his writing focuses on the English social structure. Dickens’ life revolved around social standing. He was born in the lower class but wasn’t miserable. After his father fell into tremendous debt he was forced into work at a young age. He had to work his way to a higher social standing. Because of Dicken’s constant fighting of class the English social structure is buried beneath the surface in nearly all of his writings. In Great Expectations Pip’s life mirrors Dickens’ in the start of low class and the rise to a comfortable life. Fortunately for Dickens, he does not fall again as Pip does. However, Pip and Dickens both end up in a stable social standing.
Billy Pilgrim, one of Vonnegut’s main characters, has severe pain and suffers from a bombing in Dresden. The bombing alters his state of mind and the Vonnegut uses this tragedy to let the readers see what it’s like to experience an event that is detrimental to the physical and mental state of your body. He then gets the ability to go back and forth in time to his background of the planet which has given him a new way of seeing time. Billy’s
Living in a world where much about a person’s character is measured by wealth, it has become increasingly important to maintain a separation between material characteristics and intangible moral values. Pip, in Dickens’ Great Expectations, must learn from his series of disappointments and realize the importance of self-reliance over acceptance to social norms. Through his unwavering faith in wealthy “ideals,” such as Miss Havisham and Estella, Pip develops both emotionally and morally, learning that surface appearances never reveal the truth in a person’s heart.
Harris, Charles B. "Time, Uncertainty, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: A Reading of Slaughterhouse-Five." The Centennial Review 3rd ser. 20 (1976): 228-42. Web.
As a bildungsroman, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations presents the growth and development of Philip Pirrip, better known as Pip. Pip is both the main character in the story and the narrator, telling his tale many years after the events take place. Pip goes from being a young boy living in poverty in the marsh country of Kent, to being a gentleman of high status in London. Pip’s growth and maturation in Great Expectations lead him to realize that social status is in no way related to one’s real character.
...ntation of the distinctions between the social classes. Dickens uses Pip’s relationships with Estella, Joe, and Magwitch to show how the lower class is judged by social status or appearances, instead of morals and values. The lower class is looked down upon and taken advantage of the upper class, and this is prevalent in the novel Great Expectations.
In the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip's struggle and ultimate failure to become a gentleman was due to social pressure. Dickens comments the stratums of the Victorian social class system. The novel shows that money cannot buy love or guarantee happiness. Pip's perspective is used to expose the confusing personality of someone transcending social barriers. Dickens also shows a contrast between both class and characters.
My mother often told my sisters and me stories of her childhood move from Virginia to North Carolina. She’d describe the heartbreak of being ripped away from her home, family, and best friends. Although it was painful in the moment, in hindsight she can honestly say that the move was one of the best things that even happened to her. Here she met the love of her life and gave birth to her three girls. The change of environment impacted her life forever. In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens writes of a boy named Pip as he grows and changes as he transitions from his home in the marsh to the hustle and bustle of London. In his novel he proves that our surroundings have a life-changing impact upon us.
When he first learns about his new found wealth he starts wavering between being snobbish and feels guilty over being so. He lets the tailor grovel over him, but he tries to comfort Joe, though not whole-heartily as Biddy points out. Pip waivers like this throughout the second part of the novel. He is acting how he thinks he should, in accordance to the way Estella and Miss Havisham indirectly taught him, even though this is in contrast to his kind nature. When Joe comes to London for a visit is when this is most apparent. Pip hates Drummle and yet he thinks of how Drummle would look down on Joe, look down on Pip for being associated with him. But Pip also is embarrassed for Joe to see how lavishly he lives. He again is wavering between being what he thinks he should be, and his own conscious. The entirety of the novel is told from the perspective of an older Pip, who does not always look back on his actions kindly. When Joe comes to visit the narrator thinks back on his shame of Joe, now in hindsight only feeling shame for his actions towards Joe saying “God help
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a coming-of-age story written from December 1860 to 1861. Great Expectations follows the life of Phillip Pirrip, self-named Pip; as his “infant tongue could make of both name nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.” (I, Page 3) The story begins with Pip as a young child, destined to be the apprentice of his blacksmith brother-in-law, Joe Gargery. After spending time with an upper-class elderly woman, Miss Havesham and her adopted daughter, Estella, Estella, with whom he has fallen in love, he realizes that she could never love a person as common as himself, and his view on the social classes change. Pip’s view of society grows and changes with him, from anticipating the apprenticeship of Joe, to the idealization of the gentle class, and eventually turning to the disrespect of the lower class of which he once belonged. Although Pip may grow and physically mature, he did not necessarily grow to be a better person. He loses his childhood innocence and compassion, in exchange for the ways of the gentlemen.