Comment on the Role of Imagery in Great Expectations.

Edward Mathews

Comment on the Role of Imagery in Great Expectations

Great Expectations was written by Charles Dickens in the 1870’s and is written about a boy, named Pip, who grows up in a normal country life and befriends a convict whose name is Magwitch. Pip first meets Magwitch in a churchyard whilst looking over his mother and father’s grave. Later he meets a lawyer called Jaggers who tells Pip that he has “… great expectations.” Pip grows up on his inheritance, his great expectations, and falls in love with Estella; the adopted daughter of Miss Havisham who Pip believes is his Benefactor. Towards the end of the novel it becomes clear that Magwitch is actually giving him the money because of his help in the churchyard with the food. My aim in this essay is to find how Dickens portrays the imagery in this book.

At the very beginning of the story Pip is standing in the Graveyard of the local church when he meets an escaped convict who later lets himself be known as Magwitch. During this scene in the book Dickens hands over brilliant imagery of the Marshes, “…and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that distant savage layer from which the wind was rushing, was the sea…” Dickens uses this imagery to make the atmosphere come to life. The “low leaden line beyond” makes the surrounding country come to life and you can almost see the river like a stick of something cold and wet that Pip is almost visibly afraid of. It makes the country seem spookily enticing yet dismal. The “distant savage layer”, however, suggests like the river that a huge “monster” will come and get Pip if he turns his back. This is very clever of Dickens because not only is he portraying the imagery of the Marshes but he is using imagery that coincides with the child-like imagination of the character in the scene, which is Pip. Later on in this scene in the Churchyard the convict asks Pip if he can get some food and a file (to cut of his chains). Pip says he will get him the food and file but the convict says that if he doesn’t he has a young man hiding with him and that if he doesn’t this young man will come and eat his liver. “There’s a young man hid with me…that young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver…” Again Dickens is toying with the imagination of his characters. In fact, Magwitch the convict is actually making this up about the young man hiding with him, but it is almost as though Dickens has complete control over Pips’ mind and imagination and as though he is portraying himself as a little boy.

The characters in the book are given very different roles and minds with the odd comical reference to a character or way in which the character is described. An example of this is when Pip goes back home and Mrs. Joe; Pip’s sister, is depicted as having “a redness of skin” and having “washed herself with a nutmeg grater”. This, as well as being a rather humorous comment clearly gives her appearance, outline of the character and the mind being written about. She is also described as having a “pregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles”. Not only does this suggest a stern woman who is very strict and has a short temper but also that Pip is quite afraid of her even though she is his sister. This can also be linked later on in the book when a character named Wemmick, who lives in a small house in the country and it is described as being a castle or fortress with a big cannon named “Stinger”. The point here is that Mrs. Joe has this apron “stuck full of pins and needles” and can be depicted as a fortress herself because of the appearance of her apron. Mrs Joe is an aggressive non-approachable kind of person and the pins and needles present her personality quite deeply.

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This brings the subject on to Estella, being cold and harsh in her nature rather like the appearance of Mrs. Joe. Estella is the adopted daughter of Miss Havisham, who in her nature is very cold and harsh. She even admits further on in the book that she has “no heart”. When Pip first meets Estella outside the gates of Miss Havisham’s house she makes her first dialogue with Mr. Pumblechook, a relative of Pip’s family, to which she comes across as rather spoilt but quite nice. It is only when she talks to Pip is her true personality revealed. Her first words to Pip are, “So this is Pip is it”. Although his name is mentioned in this phrase the end word “it” is harsh towards Pip as he is being described not as a person but as a thing or object. She also, as the scene and story progresses, refers to Pip as, “boy”. This is used quite a number of times in phrases such as, “this way, boy”, “don’t loiter, boy” or even “he calls knaves, jacks, this boy”. This is actually rather ironic because Estella is the adopted daughter of Miss Havisham, a rich lady with a spoilt daughter who is described as being “very beautiful”, a rich beautiful girl who speaks with such harsh words doesn’t really work, but it is in this situation that Dickens has been able to match the two sides of her up to work well. Estella later on in the book is arranged to be married and Pip gets annoyed that this has happened, as he loves Estella himself. When he meets Estella she tells him that she has no heart that can love as she has been brought up to break men’s hearts by Miss Havisham. She then goes on to say how even though Pip is such a good friend that it is stupid to fall in love with her as she will just break his heart too.

Miss Havisham who is the Stepmother to Estella has a completely new personality. She is a middle-aged woman in the beginning of the book and does more or less nothing in her house other than sit around. Pip first meets her when he travels to her house and is told to play with Estella. Miss Havisham is a very strict and cold woman who has not changed her clothes or touched anything since her husband left her “along time ago”; the full quote is “I began to realise that everything had stopped, like the watch and the clock along time ago…” The reason she has done this is that ever since he left she has not touched, moved or altered anything in the house apart from the essentials. Even her wedding feast still remains. Miss Havisham knows that Pip is falling for Estella and as well as her she is trying to break Pip’s Heart, “I think she is very insulting.”(She was looking at me then with a look of supreme aversion).”

Mr Jaggers also makes his first appearance in Miss Havisham’s House. Pip and Estella are walking up the stairs they meet him on the way down. Mr Jaggers turns out to be Miss Havisham’s Lawyer. “He was a burly man of exceedingly dark complexion, with an exceedingly large head and a corresponding large hand.” This, more or less sums up the appearance of Mr Jaggers. He is Lawyer to Miss Havisham and will be the future Lawyer to Pip. Although on the surface Mr Jaggers is quite a simple character on top he is also a complex character underneath. He almost has a unique character in the book, but, not as you would think. By saying this the most obvious reason why would be that he is slightly strange or weird this, however, is not the case because as you get to into the book more you realise that he has a more human side of things that most of the other characters and when you compare to real life especially of that time, the other characters in the book are the vaguely weird and wonderful and extravagant ones.

Next are the places of work and the first must be Jaggers’ Office. Pip arrives in London and goes to see Mr Jaggers. As he enters the office Pip arrives at the immediate conclusion that this is not a very nice place. “Mr Jaggers’ room was lighted by a skylight only, and was the most dismal place; the skylight eccentrically patched like a broken head.” The meaning of this is that because Mr Jaggers is a Lawyer he has obviously had people hanged for various crimes. The skylight is like one of the heads of the people that have been hanged looking down on him as if to judge him. Mr Jaggers also has different weapons that he has collected from various places or people, “such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard…” Perhaps this is as if they are symbols of his job. There is also one other fact about the office, “Mr Jaggers’ own high-backed chair was of deadly black horse hair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin…” This makes it seem as though Mr Jaggers is sitting in his own grave. The black horsehair makes it seem even more like a funeral as you can imagine the horses pulling a Hurse with a coffin on top. You can imagine what Pip must have felt like whilst he looked around Mr Jaggers’ office seeing old weapons, an old chair that has a strong resemblance to a coffin and masks of dead faces which have not even been mentioned yet. These faces are presumably of people Mr Jaggers has had hanged and do not exactly help the atmosphere of the place. Another mentionable thing about the place where he works is that the office that he works in is called “Little Britain”. Dickens is stating here that Britain is just as corrupt as Jaggers’ Office and in some ways even more so.

This also ties in with the fact that Miss Havisham’s house is called Satis House. This means “enough” or “dissatisfied”. This is the perfect name for the house as Miss Havisham has literally had enough of her life and of old times. Yet what is amazing is she does not move on. “… Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin or Hebrew, or all three – or all one to me – for enough.” This is quite surprising really as you would have thought that Miss Havisham had had enough and would move on. But it is the case that she doesn’t move on but leave everything, as it was when her husband left her.

There is also Wemmick’s house “…a small little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery mounted with guns…” This description of Wemmick’s house can be interpreted as a castle of his own. I say this because from what the book states about him, Wemmick is a very timid man and likes to be assured as well as in the knowledge that he is okay. The top of his house is like a castle or a fortress and this may be in an imaginative way, to keep him “safe”. There is also a lot of exaggeration in this scene, “The Bridge was a plank and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide, and two deep.” This is a very big exaggeration you don’t get many chasms four feet wide and two deep. Again this is put down to the almost immature character and the child-like imagination in the book. Even Wemmick’s house is completely blown out of proportion.

There are many places in the book where there are patterns of different imagery such as light or new life and hands and sometimes-even death and guns. The death imagery starts from the beginning of the book right through to the end of it. In the beginning Pip is in the graveyard next to his Mother and Fathers grave. This although subtle is an idea that Pip is very alone in the world and that he needs something to happen to make him happy. In that respect the book is quite predictable but there is a lot more to it than that. There is also lots of imagery to do with the gallows too. These gallows appear in the scenes around London and especially in Jaggers’ Office. “…take me into a yard and show me where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly whipped…” There is also death imagery in the beginning when Pip and Joe go out to find the two convicts. The “Black Hulk” waits in the harbour while the convicts are being taken aboard, “…the black Hulk lying out a little way…like a wicked Noah’s Ark…” There is something sinister about this and it doesn’t seem quite right. This can also be matched with the scene in London where Pip sees the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, “…the great black dome of St. Paul’s bulging at me from behind a grim stone building…” The dome he sees is silhouetted against London’s skyline and again is dark, sinister and cult. There is something supernatural about the way that the Cathedral, a religious place, is so un-natural. This says something about London in those days and how corrupt and “evil” it had become over the centuries.

There is also lots of hand imagery in the book; the first image of hands in the book is when Pip is at Miss Havisham’s house when Estella tells him, “And what coarse hands he has!” This not only is a typical comment from Estella but a significant part of the book. This is so important because later on in the book Miss Havisham catches fire and Pip saves her. Pip after this looks at his hands and sees they are burnt, “…I was astonished to see that both my hands were burnt…” This is a significant comparison to earlier on in the book and represents that Pip has changed and that, in a way, he has started his life again by being an ordinary boy and becoming a gentleman and starting a new life.

This leads me onto the new life imagery; this comes in towards the end and starts when Magwitch is on trial and the image of death and new life is used. “The Sun was striking in at the great windows of the court…” This is from the scene in the court where Magwitch and the others are being tried. This is very contrasting to what is going on in the rest of the scene. It is as if God is looking down upon Magwitch and forgiving him but corruptness has overpowered him and the judge has sentenced him anyway. There is another part where there is more light imagery it is when Pip returns to the country, “…the larks were soaring over the green corn…” Although this, on its own sounds like any normal phrase in a book, it is ironic that it is the end of the book and Magwitch has just died and he is just about to meet up with Estella again. But his is because the whole thing is starting over again and it is as if Pip is starting a new life himself.

In the book is also quite a bit of social criticism; there is a scene in London where Pip has tea at a restaurant with Wemmick, “I rang for tea…but of tea not a glimpse.” This is implying that the restaurant is very fancy and if you ask for some tea and some food you will get a whole load of other stuff and a little tea if any. In another scene Dickens criticises London, “…the shameful place…all asmear with filth and fat and blood…behind a grim stone building…” it goes on. This is adventurous because the people who read this when it came out in sections would read this and think, “Wait what’s he saying about where I live”. But this also gives a good idea of what London was like and what people thought of it at that time. One more scene is the court scene where Magwitch is being tried, “…a broad shaft of light between the two-and-the-thirty and the judge, linking both together…” this states that the justice system is corrupt and that the thirty-two convicts are just as guilty as the judge. Dickens also describes this scene like a theatre because of the on looking people and the reality of the trial and how the justice system is mocked at like a comedy or pantomime.

There are actually two endings to the book, the original where Pip finally meets Estella after two years but she decides to leave and they do not get together and the other in the published version of the book where Estella makes up her mind to stay with Pip and not to leave. The published version is very different compared to the other ending as the ending begins at night. This is clever because the novel begins in the morning and therefore ends at night. This is because Dickens wants to bring the fact that it is the end of the book to life and to say that this is the end of the book without having to have a complicated ending. It is also at night because it brings atmosphere and a certain charm to the end of the book, “But the stars were shining beyond the mist, and the moon was coming…” This image of the stars also gives a great romantic atmosphere to fall in love with Estella and Dickens portrays this brilliantly. In fact the old ending Dickens was told not to use has been incorporated into the end few pages of the book and is used quite effectively to add different aspects to the end.

The social criticism is important in the book because most of the readers of the book at that time where living in London. Dickens is trying to give a different perspective and view of the life of London at the time of the book.