Discuss the relationship between character and location in the case of Magwitch and the marshes; Miss Havisham and Satis House (chapters 1-19)
Both the characters Miss Havisham and Magwitch are linked closely with their respective surroundings, as Dickens employs imagery and pathetic fallacy to illustrate this. Although many characters in Great Expectations reflect their environments, the relationship of Miss Havisham and Magwitch offer a particular contrast. The novel echoes many of Dickens’s own life experiences, and the reader is given a strong flavour of Victorian history and commonplace. There is no doubt that when Dickens describes the marshes in the early stages of the novel, he is influenced by his own passion for the Kent marshes and docks.
In a physical sense, the convict seems to mirror the marshes 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, “I was 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 become 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 is referring to his own life experiences, when his parents were imprisoned for debt. 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.