Both Miss Havisham and Magwitch are powerful influences on Pips life,

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Pip’s “shadow parents”              

Sam Miranda S4A

Both Miss Havisham and Magwitch are powerful influences on Pip’s life, in a psychological, and to some extent physical, manner. In this essay, I hope to explore these influences, and investigate what affects they have on Pip’s development. Naturally, the fact that Pip is an orphan, and never knew his parents, means there is space for characters to come in and exact a definite, parental control. The novel echoes many of Dickens’s own life experiences- he had a strained relationship with his parents when they were condemned to imprisonment for debt difficulties. The sense of abandonment and sudden awareness of the fragility of class distinctions he experienced during this time was to haunt him for the rest of his life, and this is mirrored by the great contrast in, “shadow parents.” On the one hand we have the wealthy Miss Havisham, inhabiting a decaying yet grand mansion, and on the other we have a hardened criminal emerging from the gloomy marshes.

The opening chapter gives the reader a powerful idea of how Pip is suffering from having no identity, as Pip seeks to find his role in an inhospitable world. The windswept, barren place of mud, mist and water provides the perfect setting for a frantic convict to emerge.  In his search for his origins, Pip seems to have created  “a second father” in Magwitch, who turns him upside down metaphorically as well as literally, and places him on his parents’ tombstone. In the short term, the introduction of Magwitch gives Pip a sudden responsibility, which makes him confront the violent methods of discipline employed by Mrs Joe as he steals the food and file. In chapter three, we have an adult reconstruction of a child’s experience centred in a child’s innocent world. Pip’s guilty fears, his concern for the convict and the convict’s own self-pity and anger are all well conveyed in this manner. By comparing the click in the convict’s throat to the internal workings of a clock-“Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock, and was going to strike”-Dickens is employing an apt simile that enables us to understand the complexity of the convict’s emotions, which are accurately noted by Pip as an observant child but could not be fully understood by him at that time. Pip’s natural generosity for the ravenous outcast is the beginning of a bond that will shape the plot. He provides the file that frees the convict, but this act will prove to bind Pip to Magwitch forever.

Psychologically, it can be difficult to pin down the exact influence Magwitch has on Pip throughout the novel, although we can conclude that it is meaningful. In a physical sense, the convict seems to mirror the marshes’ fear-provoking aspects in many ways, “A fearful man, all in coarse grey… A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud…” The colours of Magwitch’s reflect the bleakness of the surroundings, and the way he has been “soaked in water” and “smothered in mud” emphasise how he appears to erupt violently from the marsh and be part of it. Both Magwitch and the marshes seem to terrify Pip, who admits to being “dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands” Although the convict seems to scare Pip in a more direct sense, using cannibalistic threats in some cases, (“ ‘Darn Me if I couldn’t eat them’”) the marsh is a desolate landscape of crime, guilt and punishment that becomes symbolic of a sense or original sin that Pip cannot shake off. It is an elemental environment of mud, water, mist and boisterous wind, where the gibbet, image of retribution, dominates the low skyline. Again, with the image of reprisal, Dickens may well be referring to his own life experiences, when his parents were imprisoned for debt. At the time, crime was treated in a much more ruthless manner- people could be hanged for minor offences such as pick pocketing. Convicts like Magwitch were exiled abroad to work, and because crime was such a pivotal part of Victorian life, it is highlighted in Great Expectations. The criminal aspects of Magwitch are linked with the gibbets and aspects of retribution in the marshes.  Pip’s imagination is left to run wild, and by blending a child’s view of things with the more detached attitude of an adult narrator, Dickens creates a world of violence and humour. Despite being initially petrified by the convict, his introduction gives Pip a new responsibility. In their next meeting Pip begins to open up more, offering his opinion, “ ‘I think you have the ague,’”. This kind of consideration makes Magwitch realise that Pip is a child of good nature, and deserves rewarding in later life.

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In chapter 39, Pip’s slow, drawn-out recognition that his wealth has been based on a convict’s toil is dealt with clever suspense. Magwitch’s interrogation of Pip as to the source of his, “expectations,” is reminiscent of Pumblechook and Jaggers. Despite the scene being experienced through Pip’s viewpoint, Dickens ensures that our sympathies are equally divided between the appalled Pip and the proud, emotional convict. The chapter also reveals the convict’s mixed motives. He considers himself Pip’s “second father” and wishes to show gratitude for his act of kindness but he also wants to, “own” a gentleman. This is illustrated ...

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