Compare And contrast the way in which Charles Dickens and Laurie Lee present chid hood, showing how far you consider the main characters typical children of their era.
Compare And contrast the way in which Charles Dickens and Laurie Lee present chid hood, showing how far you consider the main characters typical children of their era.
The two books we have studied are Cider with Rosie and Great Expectations. Laurie Lee wrote cider with Rosie and Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations. Both these books were written in different periods Cider with Rosie is written in the 20th century (1959), Great Expectations written in the Victorian era 1860-1861. They are both based on the life of a boy and how he lived and grew in these times; both books also look at their upbringing and environments. Childhood is portrayed in many ways in both Great Expectations and Cider with Rosie. The ways in which the authors, Charles Dickens and Laurie Lee portray this are different and similar in many ways.
By reading the Book Great Expectations we can see that Pip (the main character) is a small boy with a typical life for a child who lived in the Victorian era. We know that these times, children would have had a hard life, as families would have been somewhat larger than they are today. This would mean that a lot more domestic work needed to be done around the house. In a lot of the cases it was very likely for the mother to have been killed whilst giving birth or soon after birth due to lack of medication and little money to pay a doctor.
Because Pip is narrating his story many years after the events of the novel take place, there are really two Pips in Great Expectations: Pip the narrator and Pip the character-the voice telling the story and the person acting it out. Dickens takes great care to distinguish the two Pips, the voice of Pip the narrator with perspective and maturity while also imparting how Pip the character feels about what is happening to him as it actually happens. This skilfully performed difference is perhaps best observed early in the book, when Pip the character is a child; here, Pip the narrator gently pokes fun at his younger self, but also enables us to see and feel the story through his eyes giving the reader a better understanding of the storyline.
As a character, Pip's two most important traits are his immature, romantic idealism and his innately good conscience. On the one hand, Pip has a deep desire to improve himself and attain any possible advancement, whether educational, moral, or social. His longing to marry Estella and join the upper classes stems from the same idealistic desire as his longing to learn to read and his fear of being punished for bad behaviour: once he understands ideas like poverty, ignorance, and immorality, Pip does not want to be poor, ignorant, or immoral.
Although both Pips' parents have died Joe, and Pips sister, known only as "Mrs. Joe" throughout the novel, bring up Pip. Mrs. Joe is a stern and overbearing figure to both Pip and Joe. She keeps a spotless household and frequently menaces her husband and her brother with her cane, which she calls "Tickler." She also forces them to drink a foul-tasting concoction called tar-water. This was thought to be a remedy that would cure all sorts. Mrs. Joe is pretty and ambitious; her fondest wish is to be something more than what she is (a social climber), ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Although both Pips' parents have died Joe, and Pips sister, known only as "Mrs. Joe" throughout the novel, bring up Pip. Mrs. Joe is a stern and overbearing figure to both Pip and Joe. She keeps a spotless household and frequently menaces her husband and her brother with her cane, which she calls "Tickler." She also forces them to drink a foul-tasting concoction called tar-water. This was thought to be a remedy that would cure all sorts. Mrs. Joe is pretty and ambitious; her fondest wish is to be something more than what she is (a social climber), the wife of the village blacksmith. She uses this to look down on them both and blame them for her inadequacies.
We can see how Pip thinks, as at the beginning of the novel, for instance, Pip is looking at his parents' gravestones, a solemn scene that Dickens renders comical by having Pip ponder the exact inscriptions on the tombstones. When the convict questions him about his parents' names, Pip recites them exactly as they appear on the tombstones, indicating his youthful innocence while also allowing Dickens to show the dramatic tension of the novel's opening.
Pip's surroundings in these chapters, quoting the "shrouded" marshes of Kent and the oppressive bustle of Mrs. Joe's house, are also important to the novel. Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens uses settings to create dramatic atmosphere. The various descriptive settings in the book invariably set the tone for the action and reinforce Pip's perception of the situation.
When the weather is dark and stormy, trouble is usually brewing, and when Pip goes alone into the mist-shrouded marsh, danger and ambiguity awaits. In the beginning, Pip's story shifts rapidly between dramatic scenes with the convict on the marshes and comical scenes under Mrs. Joe's supervisory attitude at home. Despite Mrs. Joe's rough treatment of Pip, which she calls bringing him up "by hand," the comedy that pervades her household in Chapter 2 shows that it is a safe haven for Pip, steeped in Joe's quiet goodness despite Mrs. Joe's posturing. When Pip ventures out alone onto the marshes, he leaves the sanctuary of home for vague, murky churchyards and the danger of a different world. This sense of embarking alone into the unknown will become a recurrent motif throughout the novel, as Pip grows up and leaves his childhood home behind.
Laurie Lee was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, where life had followed its traditional course for centuries. The families were large, they lived in overcrowded cottages, there were no modern conveniences and it was accepted as a normal pattern of life and death that many children died young. Lee's father lived in London and worked there as a civil servant his first wife had died and he had married Lee's mother who took care of his two families and believed that one day he would return to her. Laurie Lee basis his book Cider with Rosie on the experiences he had as a child.
The first two chapters of the book Cider with Rosie show us that Laurie Lee had a fun filled life growing up in the countryside but like many other children with only one parent. This would have made it hard on the mother, as families did tend to be large in those days. This was partly due to the fact that it was just the end of the war and many fathers were lost of killed during battle.
We see in the first chapters that every day tasks took longer and eating a meal would have been less rushed than now. In the first chapter the Lees' are moving house to the countryside. The house they move into is large and is quite an adventure for the four children. Around their new house are berry bushes, fields and lots of large area to play in. the children as soon as they get their want to explore. Laurie Lee being three is a bit cautious of his new surroundings new smells, new sights and new experiences that he will or is facing.
Laurie Lee being so young is nieve about the world around him and doesn't quite no how to deal with everyday situations, 'I had never seen a man like this, in such a wild good humour'. Laurie lee is also nieve to the fact that he cannot sleep in his mother's bed for the whole of his life. The bed symbolises his security and close bond between him and his mother. Laurie Lee although had a large imagination, we see this when he compares the 'upturned chair-legs' to a 'forest'. Pip being so small everything felt enormous to him, 'the buzzing jungle of the summer bank' he is reefing to the reeds but as he looks up whilst being sat in the grass they would seem like large trees or vines.
Pips childishness with his extremely lively imagination is later on in chapter 3 'It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window as if some goblin had been crying there all night'. And 'It seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the hulks'. Both of these quotes show how childishly Pips imagination works. This can be compared to the opening chapter of Cider with Rosie in which Laurie Lee's imagination runs away with him in a similarly childish fashion. 'Each blade tattooed with tiger skins of sunlight. It was knife edged, dark, and a wicked green, thick as a forest and alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chattered and leapt through the air like monkeys'.
These descriptive metaphors and similes are quite dark and threatening images such as some of Pips were in great expectations. Therefore both authors are showing childhood as quite a scary daunting time as well as a time when you have an active imagination. Laurie Lee has written about childhood in Cider with Rosie as he saw it because it is an autobiographical novel that describes his childhood during the war. Laurie Lee portrays his childhood and growing up with the growing up of the nation. The reason that Laurie Lee portrays this time of his life as scary and daunting is because it is also a scary and daunting time for Great Britain during the Second World War.
Charles Dickens portrays childhood as a scary and hard time for his own reasons. Dickens had quite a bad childhood with his dad being in prison and himself living in the Victorian times when children were treated poorly and were worked extremely hard. Dickens wanted other people to understand the hardship that he had been through and was quite self-obsessed with his harsh childhood. He decided to tell people about this through the novels that he wrote and in the example of Great Expectations, Pip was the character that would reflect on Dickens childhood.
Dickens shows Pips childhood as a time where you are extremely guilty for the things that you have done and that you are always paranoid that bad things are going to come of you because of it. Pip is almost obsessed with his guilty thoughts and fear of captivity. The theme of guilt and imprisonment often occurs in Great Expectations. These are shown in things that Pip sees and his vivid childish imagination. Part of the reason that Pip feels very guilty and that Laurie Lee does not really recall his guilt is that Pip is very much a person who has feelings and is very much a self obsessed child. Whereas Laurie Lee is more detached from his own thoughts and more interested in the world around him. This is one of the differences in the way that the two authors present childhood.
Another difference in the way that the authors portray childhood is that Laurie Lee makes his childhood a beautiful childhood whereas Pip's is more dark and gloomy. Lee does this in the style of his writing, which is very poetic and flowing. This is due to the fact that before Laurie Lee was a writer, he was a poet. This means that the way he portrays childhood is poetic and almost beautiful. In great expectations, however, Dickens sets gloomy scenes such as the beginning scene in the graveyard and the scenes in the marshes.
Another difference is the way that guilt is portrayed along with childhood in both of the novels. Dickens shows childhood as a time when you were constantly guilty for the things you had done and the paranoia of being caught was immense. He probably had done this because as a child Dickens's father had been taken to a debtor's prison because he could not afford to look after his family. This may have made Dickens feel guilty as a child and he decides to show this through Pip. A passage that shows this guilt is, 'It seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the hulks'. This shows Pip feels guilty and is paranoid because his mind thinks that a signpost is telling him to go to prison. Laurie Lee however does not see childhood as a time of guilt but more of a carefree time where you don't have to feel guilty. A quote in chapter 3 shows this Cider with Rosie shows this, 'And exhaled our last guiltless days'.
However Laurie is not always guiltless, like pip he has a moment in the book where he felt guilty and paranoid of the consequences of his actions. This is shown in chapter 3 also, 'That the summons to the big room, the policeman's hand on shoulder, comes almost always as a complete surprise, and for the crime that one has forgotten'. Lee realises that he cannot do things such as hit people because they are of a different race. Lee is scared of the punishment that he will receive and is paranoid about when he will be found out. This is a lot like the character Pip in Great Expectations who spends his whole childhood feeling this way. This means that there is a strong link between childhood and guilt.
