Discuss how Dickens in 'Great Expectations' constructs female characters and the extent to which they challenge the Victorian stereotype.

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Discuss how Dickens in ‘Great Expectations’ constructs female characters and the extent to which they challenge the Victorian stereotype.

        In the Victorian period a woman’s main purpose as a wife was praise and a duty to keep the domestic household in order. It was only in this field that a woman could make decisions, anywhere else and she would be trespassing on the man’s territory and power – and though it is not said, his ego. Even though the male takes charge over all other matters, any disruption in the house will invariably directly/indirectly be her fault. A woman must be ‘incorruptibly good and nothing less’, though the man will try to guard her from ‘danger and temptation’. Of course, if she succumbs to these evils it is her own doing, and the man takes no responsibility and in fact becomes the victim as she has endangered his household.

        In ‘Great Expectations’ there are a variety of women that challenge the Victorian stereotype and a few, in actual fact – three that do not.  The first female character we are introduced to is Mrs Joe, the long-suffering shrewish sister of Pip.

        From early descriptions of her we see her as a violent and intimidating figure –even to men and therefore her husband! Pip’s ominous comment that she ‘brought me up by hand’ and the ‘tickler’ which caused him ‘great depression’ are all symbols of her dominance and power which she seems to be very confident with. This domestic tyrant figure is further amplified by her physical appearance and clothes: her face looked like it had been scrapped ‘ with a nut meg grater’ and her ‘square impregnable bib …that was stuck full of pin’ both destroy any nurturing mother figure image. Instead of tending to her family’s needs she dictates them.

        It is possible that Mrs Joe’s violent nature can be blamed on her mundane and routine way of life; she needs a turbulent nature to be able to survive in a place where she does not even have her own name and is confined without individuality –perpetually linked to her husband. She has no control over her life and so blames her lot on sources outside herself. Unsurprisingly she uses her apron as a symbol of her repression, yet paradoxically she also uses it as a source of identity.

        She is not the submissive wife and it is clear that Joe does not have much hold on her when she punishes him like a little boy for ‘bolting’ his food, making him drink ‘tar-water’. She even intrudes into Joe’s business by insisting that he does not let Orlick boss him around – quite hypocritical yet with dire consequences: In Orlick’s eye’s Mrs Joe has upturned the division of power between the sexes and hence totally overstepped her position as a wife by trying to introduce female dominance.

Orlick responds by beating her, yet amazingly this seems to have a positive effect on her. It is remarked that her ‘temper is greatly improved’, she shows affection for Joe and some morals over the way she had treated Pip. Most amazingly of all she treated Orlick with an 'air of humble propitiation in all she did’. Why would she look so favourably on a man who beat her? There seem to be two answers, either she is merely showing forgiveness for his misdeed or in fact she was grateful to Orlick for beating her, as she has connoted his actions with sexual male dominance. This can been seen in the phallic symbol of the hammer that she used to represent Orlick. Remarkably Dickens is saying that woman need as strong aggressive husband to keep them sane.

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Pip is not only degraded by Mrs Joe but even more so by the intoxicating Estella. She continually mocks his humble origins, enjoying her sadistic treatment of another human being and doing it with so much enthusiasm that ‘it became infectious, and I caught it’ admits Pip. Estella has power over Pip as he will do anything for her. But she also has power over his thoughts, evident when we see her manipulate his mind by informing his that he is ‘a common labouring boy’ so that Pip becomes ‘ashamed of home’. This is not the supporting role of a ...

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