The idea of men superiority over women has been a large controversial issue in history, and although lessened, it is still a mindset today. In the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, this theory is heavily referred to. Dickens generalizes the entire female population as being corrupt and impure at the core, and there is only one major exception to this trend of evil women- Biddy. To start off, Miss Havisham is guilty of belligerence against life by Estella, as an inanimate tool of revenge for her broken heart. Estella and Miss Havisham are not tightly knit, in fact they are puppet and puppet-master more than daugther and mother. Since Miss Havisham believes Estella is a beautiful doll that she can mold, Estella must follow all …show more content…
her commands. When Pip visits the Satis house for the second time, Miss. Havisham says to Estella “break their hearts, my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy!” (p. 58) Ironically, Miss. Havisham is giving Pip a warning, by saying this right in front of him, but Pip is too busy admiring Estella’s beauty. Rather than seeing Estella as a whole person, Miss Havisham objectifies her by breaking her into the separate pieces that together create her vehicle of revenge. Whenever Pip came to play with Estella he mentioned that, “Miss Havisham watched us all the time, direction my attention to Estella’s beauty, and made me notice it more by trying her jewels on Estella.” (p. 55) Miss Havisham uses jewelry to objectify Estella and to arouse men’s interest by calling attention to her beauty. Miss Havisham dehumanizes Estella and uses her somely for her own revenge against the entire male race. Due to Miss Havishams parenting, Pip must endure the total disregard of his strongest, emotions by his great love, the cold Estella.
Pip's life is transformed as a result of his meeting Estella and his experience at Satis House. From the beginning, Estella treats Pip with humiliation and disrespect. She insults Pip for “what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!” (p. 35) This affects him so much that he ends up crying because of these insults. Yet his response is still love, because he is attracted to her beauty and her high social class.The idea of Pip's gaining her love would be very slim. Pip, who is constantly mistreated, is comfortable being emotionally abused. Estella's cruelty fits his idea of abuse, his sense of powerlessness, and his low self esteem, so he is drawn to her. Estella’s view on a person’s rank is society is a crucial point to the relationship they will have with her since, when Pip becomes a gentleman; Estella calls Pip, Pip instead of boy. This is a form of respect for Pip to call him by his proper name. Because this was the treatment while he was a gentleman and not while he is a blacksmith, she is showing that she has more respect for Pip with a higher rank in society. She sets a struggle between Pip’s personal ambition and his dissatisfaction, which Biddy teaches Pip the error of his ways and shows that being common is not so …show more content…
bad. Biddy is the only woman in the novel that can provide for herself and think of others at the same time.
When Mrs. Joe is assaulted, Biddy moves into Joe’s household as her attendant. In this novel, she also shares the quality of compassion, simplicity, self respect etc. This dignified caring attitude of Biddy is contrasted with the self-seeking, selfishness of Estella who wishes to use or flatter Pip for her own ends. When on a Sunday afternoon walk on the marshes, Pip tells Biddy that he wants to be gentleman and why she gives him sensible advice. She tells him that Estella is not worthy of his love and he should not live his life to please her. She also says that indifference can work more than an active nature or feigned love for strategic purposes. In this way, she tries her best to instill realism in Pip. Pip thinks of her before he left for London for his great expectations, “She was not beautiful – she was common and could not be like Estella – but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered” (92). In his heart of heart he knows fully well that Biddy is the ideal soul mate and wife for him, but he is completely overwhelmed by his foolish infatuation for
Estella. The four women in Pip’s life dictate terms for him and chalk out the course of his destiny. His sister Mrs Gargery decides to send him to Miss Havisham without ever trying to know what torture he would receive at her hands. Miss Havisham identifies him as her obvious target of revenge on men. Pip instantly catches Miss Havisham’s bait and falls in love with Estella head over heels; but in return to his amorous advances gets only hatred and reproach. Estella’s insulting and contemptuous behaviour, nevertheless, rouses in Pip “a desire for wealth and gentility. In moments of acute despair and desperation it is the self-effacing friendship of Biddy that comes to Pip’s succour.
While Biddy is compassionate, warm and loving, Estella goes out of her way to be cold and rude. These personality characteristics are not just represented toward Pip, but to everyone that these two women meet. Estella acknowledges her flawed personality, even stating that she has “no softness … no sympathy” (29). Throughout the novel Estella knows of her abrasiveness towards others and often feels remorse for it, but continues to show it. Her rudeness becomes an accepted part of her character and but separates as a distinct part of her character, meaning she isn’t an evil character in the same way as Compeyson or her eventual husband Drummle, Estella simply cannot help the character traits she acquired during her youth. By direct contrast, Biddy’s personality is everything that Estella’s isn’t. While Estella is obnoxious and impatient toward Pip, Biddy is “the most obliging of girls” (10) even being patient with Pip when she was teaching him how to read. Biddy’s exemplary character casts her as exactly the type of person that Pip should want to fall in love with, especially when the only other option is Estella. But of course, Pip being the confused boy that he is, is unable to see that and only has feelings for Estella. Beyond being nice and obliging, Biddy was also very trustworthy toward Pip as a child. At one point Pip says, “I reposed complete confidence in no one but Biddy: but I told poor Biddy everything.” (12) Biddy acted as a confidant to Pip especially during his early traumatic years with Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham. While Pip most likely wanted to have Estella as a trustworthy friend, she pushed him away and acted cold at every possible opportunity. Pip acknowledges Biddy for being an excellent friend and being sympathetic to his problems, even saying how “Biddy had a deep
”(Dickens 102) Estella always knew that Pip was in love with her, yet she never reciprocated the feeling and simply exploited his weakness. The reader can understand and somehow excuse her behavior because she has Miss Havisham as her main example. Estella even explains how amusing it is when people are surprised by the way Miss Havisham treats them in chapter 33. This shows how cruel Miss Havisham is and how cruel Estella is as a result of
Literature from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century has supplied ample insight into society’s idea of the female image and gender expectations. Females of any class status were expected to be submissive to men in every regard, and their primary role in life routinely amounted to nothing more than domestic duties. Men writers’ depictions of females were base and valued a woman’s worth by how beneficial she could be to a man; and women writers’ woefully conceded their lowly positions. However, some women writers were willing to defend against the long accepted female submissiveness that society embraced. Two such audacious writers keen to delve into the role of women in society and propose measures to ensure equality among the
Unbeknown to Pip, he is the perfect victim for Mrs. Havisham’s revenge trap. Calloused from a deceitful lover; Miss Havisham raises Estella as a puppet in her attempt at revenge of the entire male population. Upon first meeting Pip, Estella abruptly insults Pip. Calling him course and making him feel obsolete. Entranced by the beauty of Estella Pip begins to become self conscience after these comments. Once he deemed himself inadequate Pip began to aspire to live up to Estella’s expectations, but he is unable to do so because Estella was raised to torment not to love.
As Pip grows throughout the novel, he develops and matures from a young boy that doesn’t know what to do to a young man who has a great outlook on life. In the first stage of Pip's life he is young and does not understand what it means to be a gentleman and how it can affect his life. During the first stage of Pips life, he only wants 3 things. He wants education, wealth, and social advancement. These three wishes are mostly so he can impress Estella, who is the symbol of this first stage. Pip does not want to be just a blacksmith like Joe. He wants to be intelligent and considered a person of high importance. At the end of this stage he moves to London and begins to have a different outlook on his future.
From very early in the novel you discover that Pip is ambitious to better himself. For example, after confronting Estella he wishes to become refined, “I took the opportunity of being alone/ to look at my coarse hands and my common clothes. My opinion of those accessories was not favorable. They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me now, as vulgar appendages. I determined to ask Joe why he had ever taught me to call/ jacks/ to be called knaves” (71). Here Pip is realizing that he himself, for example his clothing and knowledge, is not up to the standards of ‘high society’ and Estella, especially Estella. He is also realizing that if he wishes to have any chance of anchoring Estella’s heart he must get acquainted with finer clothing and become more knowledgeable. Then, Pip wants Biddy to teach to him every ounce of knowledge she has: “The felicitous idea occurred to me/ when I woke that the best step I could take towards making myself uncommon was to get out of Biddy everything she knew” (84). Basically, Pip knows that he must become uncommon for Estella and figures that Biddy is very intelligent and can help him reach his goal of being more knowledgeable. By being taught by Biddy Pip is hoping that during his visits to Satis House that Estella will see that he is paving he way to becoming refined. Lastly, Pip strides for self-improvement when he arrives in London and is diligent in his studies, “After two or three days, when I had established myself in my room and hag gone backwards and forwards to London several times and had ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr.
...andoned Satis House, Pip encounters Estella who is now single and appears to be headed down the same sad path Miss Havisham walked. Pip frantically attempts to stir her from her slump and, having succeeded, the story ends with the two of them leaving Satis House presumably to live happily ever after.
After Pip realized that he wanted to be a gentleman he became more serious about being with Estella. He didn’t want anything to do with his family anymore after that. Then Pip got a benefactor that would take him to everything to become a gentleman. As he was sent to London to become a gentlemen and learn
Estella is raised in a prosperous household and is judgmental of Pip because he is from the working class. She insults his appearance when she says, "But he is a common laboring boy. And look at his boots! (Dickens 45)" because he is not of the upper class. She also criticizes the way he speaks when he calls one of the playing cards Jacks instead of Knaves (Dickens 46). Dickens uses her negative comments about Pip’s appearance and use of slang to highlight the differences between the two classes. She also insults Pip with a comment calling him a “stupid, clumsy laboring boy (Dickens46)." Because of the differences between their classes, she instantly labels him as unintelligent because of the way she has been raised with uncommon people. Pip thinks about what Estella would think of his family and what Joe does to earn a living. Pip also contemplates how his sister and Joe eat dinner at the kitchen table and how
Pip’s state of mind at this point in the novel is conflicted and torn due to the aspects of social class, and his surroundings. Pip currently lives with his newfound riches and manners, but is constantly reminded of his background of low social class. He refuses to accept his past and is torn between who he is, and how he wants to be – a “gentleman,” sharing a life with his love, Estella.
Throughout Dickens’s Great Expectations, It is clear that most of the women are portrayed as being heartless, revengeful or violent. Thus this doesn’t give a impression of women, and shows that Dickens could have been gender bias, like most men were in the 19th and early 20th century. However this could have not been Dickens’s intension at all, as he also created very evil male characters such as Dolge Orlick.
There is some thought to how Dickens named these characters, which has a big impact on the message he gets across. According to the “What's In a Name?” sheet, Pip means ‘a seed’, and throughout, readers can see the growth and the passion to change that the young ‘Pip seed’ develops. The fact that his name literally means ‘seed’ is that we can tell from just reading his name that he will go through a big adjustment in his life. Short after Estella makes fun of Pip, he shares with Biddy, “... I want to be a gentleman” (Dickens 157). Pip then goes on and explains that he is not happy with his life, and he realizes he can do so much more with it. Staying at the forge would be holding him back and not allowing him to go on and do great things. Going away to become a gentleman seems to be the best option for Pip at the time, but he regrets it later in his life. Throughout the book, the characters Biddy and Joe are always positive, nice, caring and end up living a carefree life together. But on the other hand, Pip and Estella are cold, mean, and judgmental judgy people who live their lives lonely and wishing they had acted differently. These two sets of character doubles show readers that those who ended up happy, never felt the need to change for anyone, and those who did modify their lives, were not pleased with their life after all the unnecessary
From one viewpoint, Pip has a profound craving to enhance himself and accomplish any conceivable headway, whether instructive, good, or social. His aching to wed Estella and join the privileged societies originates from an indistinguishable optimistic craving to be part of the upper class: “It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped like the watch and clock a long time ago.” (66) This shows when he saw Estella his world stop and he saw her as the way to get to the upper class. Pip believed that being in the upper class would mean you would have a good moral character like Estella. But when Estella chooses to marry Drummle because she knew he was a bad person. Estella explains to Pip that she has no heart as far as emotions “You must know,” said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant and beautiful woman might, “that I have no heart—if that has anything to do with my memory.” (162) This showed even though you might be upper class you still can have no moral character.
In order to make more money Pip’s uncle sends Pip to a psychotic old lady’s house named Mrs. Havisham. Mrs. Havisham is a mean and nasty character who constantly bickers at Pip and tells him of his unimportance. Pip continues to be mild mannered and respectful to Mrs. Havisham yet he begins to see that he will never get ahead in life just being nice. Mrs. Havisham uses Pip as sort of a guinea pig to take out her passion of revenge against men. She does this by using her daughter, Estella to torment Pip.
In the novel, “Great Expectations” the main, young character Pip is easily swayed by others and unaware of the darkness underneath.Especially by Estella, he’s naive to think that he can change her heart so the love would become mutual. His actions encircle around what Estella thinks of him and ignore everyone’s else’s thoughts. This leads him to damage the good 1relationships he has in order to please Estella, who has made clear will never be fond of him.