An elderly woman called Miss Havisham occupies the house, along with her daughter Estella. To Pip, Miss Havisham is the ‘strangest lady’ he has ever seen. She is wearing a very old and faded wedding dress and is sat in a large dressing room lighted by candles; there is no daylight. Everything in the room, Pip realises, is old and ‘faded’. Everything that ‘ought to be white’ is not and has ‘lost its lustre’, just like Miss Havisham. Pip describes her as a ‘waxwork’ and a ‘skeleton’ because she looks so pale and lifeless. Pip begins to feel uncomfortable and frightened around her and he has to avoid eye contact. Pip can see that once this lady would have been very beautiful; she is dressed in ‘rich materials’ such as ‘satins, and lace, and silks’ and has jewels around her neck and on the table. But nothing has changed for many years and everything, including herself, has been neglected and is decaying.
Estella, having lived with Miss Havisham for a very long time, consequently acts and behaves quite like her. She is very patronising and talks down to Pip all the time. She seems to take pleasure from insulting and humiliating Pip. By saying things like ‘he calls knaves, jacks this boy’ she is criticizing the way he has been brought up. She says Pip has ‘coarse hands’ and wears ‘common boots’ which is very hurtful to Pip, he feels ‘offended’ and ‘angry’ that Estella is being so insulting and insensitive. Despite this Pip believes what Estella has said and he feels he has to change his life.
During Pip’s short stay at Satis House Miss Havisham takes Pip to a dark, damp room. In the centre there is a long table. On it is rotting food and a large wedding-cake covered in spiders and cobwebs. The whole room is ‘covered with dust and mould’ and Pip describes ‘an airless smell that was oppressive’; everything is damp and decaying. The room is infested with mice, spiders and blackbeetles. Pip is fascinated by the creatures and watches how each one reacts to his and Miss Havisham’s presence, this shows he is imaginative and it reminds us that he is only a boy.
The wedding room is similar to the whole house; it is a mass of rot and decay. This is symbolic as it reflects Miss Havisham and her moral and physical decay. She is a complete fake, she pretends to have everything but in fact she has nothing and is nothing. Her name itself, ‘have’ and ‘sham’, prove this point; she represents false values. The house is cut off from reality and the occupants are living a strange and false life.
The visit to Satis House is the first time in Pip’s life when he questions who he is and what he wants to be. The visit is symbolic because it is the start of his own moral decline; he starts to forget what really matters in life. Family values and friendship have been overtaken by the need for material wealth. Satis House is when Pip starts to change as an individual. Miss Havisham and Estella have corrupted Pip’s concerns in life. It is a turning point in his life, a ‘memorable day’ as he describes it.
Money was something Dickens was obsessed with. Satis House represents wealth but it also shows what happens when money is valued above everything else. It shows how money can corrupt people and change their future in life; Miss Havisham and Estella are good examples of this. Dickens wanted to show people that with money should come responsibility, without it money corrupts.
The second key setting is London, this is where Pip experiences money and sees what money does to people. He is in an environment that revolves around money. There are those who have it and those who don’t. He can see what happens when people have money but also what happens to people when they run out. Pip is more grown-up now and London is another stage in his physical and moral journey.
When Pip first arrives in London he is quite overwhelmed as it is a totally new environment and atmosphere. He is ‘scared by the immensity of London’ yet he says it is ‘rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty’.
After arriving in London Pip goes to see Jaggers in his office. There isn’t much lighting and Pip describes it as a ‘most dismal place’ because there is such a lack of light, this is a link to Satis House. There are also many links to death in Pip’s description of Jaggers’s office, he tells of a ‘rusty pistol’ and a ‘sword in a scabbard’ and he also says that Jaggers’s chair looks ‘like a coffin’.
Pip begins to see that Jaggers is quite an unpleasant man. He is commanding and very threatening; he knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. Jaggers knows his own importance and uses that to his advantage; his goal is to make as much money as possible. Pip sees that he likes to be in control and hates people telling him what to do. Because Jaggers is in charge of people’s money he has power over them. Pip realises that London is very corrupt; money seems to give people power and respect.
Later Pip goes on a walk to a place called Smithfield. He is completely sickened by the place calling it ‘shameful’ and ‘all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam’. He explains how it ‘seemed to stick’ to him and consequently he quickly changed direction to get out of the area. He finds Newgate Prison and outside it an ‘exceedingly dirty’ and ‘partially drunk’ minister of justice asks him if he would like to see ‘a trial or so’. After seeing where people are publicly whipped and killed Pip says that it gave him ‘a sickening idea of London’.
Dickens has made London a place of greed and corruption and of crime and punishment. London symbolises all the bad things that money creates and fuels; the greed that it causes and the corruption that takes place so that people can get more, the crime that is committed because of money and the horrible punishments that are present as a result.
In his own life Dickens had problematic experiences with money; his father was imprisoned after falling into debt and it made Dickens feel tainted and ashamed. He had seen what money could do to people and their families, through Great Expectations he was voicing his concerns and warning people of the dangers. Dickens felt very strongly about helping and promoting the underprivileged in society, the people who didn’t have much money. In Great Expectations Dickens has made the reader feel a liking towards Joe and Magwitch, who have problems with money, but dislike Miss Havisham and Mr Jaggers, who have plenty of money and are supposed to be respectable but we, the readers, feel no warmth or liking towards them at all.
Dickens has portrayed London, a place where money is the key to success, as corrupt and full of greed. London is a way for Dickens to show the problems that money causes and the crime, and consequently punishment, that exists because of it. The key themes in Great Expectations are illustrated in London.
The third and final setting is Walworth where Wemmick (Jaggers’ clerk) lives. It is a place described by Pip as having ‘black lanes, ditches and little gardens’. Pip visits Wemmick’s home and sees that it has ‘gothic windows’ and a ‘gothic door’, it is a ‘little wooden cottage’ but the top is painted to look like a ‘battery mounted with guns’. There is also a chasm around the house and a plank is used as a bridge to get to it.
The house is nearly self-sufficient, Wemmick grows all his own vegetables and keeps ‘fowls’, ‘rabbits’ and ‘a pig’. This is something he is very proud of, the house can ‘hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions’. Wemmick has made and does everything himself; he calls himself his own ‘Jack of all Trades’. The house seems perfect in every way, Wemmick explains to Pip it has taken him along time to get the house to its ‘present pitch of perfection’.
Wemmick’s house is similar to Satis House because it is a fake; it pretends to be a castle but really it is not, but in other ways there are strong contrasts between them. Wemmick’s house is wonderfully looked after and very homely, very much unlike Satis House, and it is lived in by happy and content people, again very different. Wemmick’s house is almost self-contained but at Satis House production has completely stopped.
In contrast to the setting in London the house has a very calm and happy atmosphere, there is no corruption or crime like there is in London.
Wemmick also has an interesting relationship with his father, whom he always refers to as ‘the Aged’. He is very affectionate towards him and always treats him kindly, he is very nice and caring towards him. Wemmick’s personality at work however is very different because he is cold, hardworking and unsympathetic. By creating a perfect fantasy home Wemmick has given himself two personalities. When he is at work he forgets about home and concentrates on dealing with money and crime, but when he is at home he puts work matters behind him and deliberately focuses on leading a good and happy family life. Wemmick tells Pip of this when he says ‘the office is one thing, and private life is another’. He doesn’t want his home ‘professionally spoken about’ at work; to him it is completely separate and he doesn’t want them to mix. Wemmick does this because he believes money isn’t important and he doesn’t want to have to deal with it at home as well as at work. He can have a happy home life without thinking about money.
The third setting is a complete contrast to the previous two settings. The events based around Wemmick and Walworth show Pip that money doesn’t matter.
Wemmick tells Pip how he is in awe of how Jaggers can control people and how ‘they dread him’. He tells him how no-one dares try and steal from him because he has so much power over them and ‘he’d have their lives’. Jaggers has gained his control and influence through his business as a lawyer. He has no regard for people’s feelings he just wants money. Pip sees that with money comes power and greed.
From living an innocent and sheltered life in the marsh flats Pip has come a long way in his life. He had quite a strict upbringing and his family didn’t have much money, he was uneducated and could only just read and write. Then he visited Satis House, a ‘memorable day’ for Pip because his priorities in life drastically changed through the influence of Estella and Miss Havisham. He started to disregard his family life and the moral values he had been brought up with and instead wanted to change himself into what he thought would be a better person. As Pip grows up he visits Satis House often and then moves to London to be trained as a gentleman. There he sees that money is power and he feels money is the most important thing in life. He starts to ignore his family and friends and instead desires wealth. Pip’s visit to Wemmick’s home in Walworth shows him that work and home life can be completely different. Attention should still be paid to family and friends, but Pip doesn’t copy Wemmick and instead forgets all about his past.
Pip has learnt that if you focus on getting money you become greedy and forget about values such as family and friends. Money isn’t everything, if someone has money it doesn’t necessarily mean they are respected and valued. Money can disappear very quickly and can ruin someone’s life.
In the novel Pip is disturbed by the ‘taint of prison and crime’, something Dickens himself had experienced and hated. There are lots of references to prisons in the book which Dickens became obsessed with after his father was imprisoned for being in debt. Dickens had his own ‘great expectations’ but when his father was sent to prison he was forced to work in a blacking factory. He experienced what much of the population did; poor working conditions, poor living and poor pay. He realised that the ‘gentlemen’ of society had all the money and were very selfish. From then on Dickens promoted the under-privileged in society, like Joe and Magwitch. Dickens voiced many of his concerns about society in general through Great Expectations and the character of Pip has many links with Dickens himself; having hopes and dreams that are later destroyed by problems with money.
