Later in the novel, Dickens describes Pips visit to Miss Havishams house. Here, the mood created is very different from the opening of the novel. It is more one of depression and great sadness. Miss Havishams garden is very neglected and is overgrown with brambles and nettles and there is also poison ivy growing up the side of the house. Not only is her house neglected and abandoned, she also takes no care of herself. Miss Havisham had “shrunk to skin and bone”. This tells us that she hasn’t cared for herself properly as she is wearing clothes that were “like grave clothes” and she was wearing a “long veil so like a shroud”. These similes all suggest death, and Miss Havisham is indeed living a life that one would not call a life. She has never seen the sun and attempts to halt time. She orders people about and she uses Estella to get her revenge on men by teaching Estella to break men’s hearts.
When Pip walks into Miss Havishams dark and gloomy room, he sees “pale decayed objects” which shows us that she has allowed everything to disintegrate in her depression. She has even allowed herself to disintegrate. When Miss Havisham first put on her dress, she had “a rounded figure of a young woman” but now she is just a “skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress”. By using this image of a skeleton, Dickens has added to the image of the lifelessness in Miss Havisham. This image is further reinforced when Pip refers to her as a “ghastly waxwork at the fair”. This metaphor shows us her body colour and lack of movement is like looking at a wax model. Miss Havisham is like this because her fiancé left her on her wedding day, which is why she is only wearing one shoe and has only got a few pieces of jewellery on. Miss Havisham has also neglected her house and the room where she spends most of her day. The room was “well lighted with wax candles” as “no glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it”. When Pip walks into the dressing room he sees the “prominent” dressing table with “gilded looking glass”. This table was very dominant in the room. Pip refers to the table as a “fine ladies dressing table” with “no fine lady sitting at it”. Half of her jewellery was left “sparkling on the table” This shows us that Miss Havisham was so enraged and upset when her fiancé left her that she stopped everything. She stopped putting on her clothes; she stopped putting on her jewellery. She stopped arranging her veil. She stopped time. The fact that Miss Havisham doesn’t let in any of the sunlight coveys a picture in our heads of a very depressed room. The language that Dickens uses in this chapter produces an atmosphere of neglect and sadness.
The final point in the novel, which I shall analyse, is Chapter Twenty-Five, when Pip visits Wemmicks house. The mood created in this section of the novel contrasts greatly with the previous two sections as the setting and the characters take on a far more humorous and light-hearted feel. On the way to Wemmick’s house, Pip saw a village that “appeared to be a collection of black lanes, ditches and little gardens” which to Pip presented an aspect of a “rather dull retirement”. Then as they approached Wemmicks house Pip sees a happier, more pleasant house. Wemmicks house was a “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 establishes a mild sense of humour and adds more happiness to the scene. Wemmick has a real “flagstaff” at the front of his house and “on Sundays I run up a real flag”. He also has a makeshift drawbridge, which was a “plank” that crossed “a chasm about four feet wide and two deep”. But pip thought it was “pleasant to see the pride with which he hoisted it up”. The style and construction of the house is unusual and different from the rest of the houses in the village as his was decorated like a castle “with the queerest gothic windows” and a “gothic door”. These items create an atmosphere of a grand house when really his house is just a “little wooden cottage”. The humour about his house is created by Wemmicks exaggeration of all the features on his house, Such as the “flagstaff” and the “battery mounted with guns”. It is shown that it’s a small house as the door was “almost to small to get in at”. Wemmick treats his house like a castle because “at Nine ‘O’ Clock every night, Greenwich time, the gun fires”. Wemmick refers to the gun as if it were alive “ there he is you see! And when you hear him go, I think you’ll say he a stinger”. He personifies the cannon by giving it a name, “Stinger” and calling it by he and him. It is clear to see that Wemmick takes great pride in all the unusual features about his house. The cannon “was mounted in a separate fortress, constructed of lattice work. It was protected from the weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella”. The care Wemmick takes in the cannon, flagstaff, castle-like features on his house and the drawbridge show that Wemmick also takes great attention to detail to make it look and feel different from the rest in the “dull retirement village”. In Wemmick’s garden at the back of his house “there’s a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits” Wemmick keeps a small farm of animals, which he keeps in a “little frame” which he built himself, showing he likes things his own way. Wemmick also grows his own vegetables, which Pip can “judge at supper what sort of salad he can raise”. Then Wemmick took Pip to a “bower about a dozen yards off, but which was approached by such ingenious twists of path”. All of these details create an impression of a man who likes to do things by himself, he likes to make his own things and display them with pride. There is proof of this when Wemmick says “I my own engineer and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own jack-of-all-trades”. This shows that Wemmick enjoys his hobbies of building things and it “brushes the Newgate cobwebs away” meaning he distracts himself from the memories of a depressing days work at the prison, where he may have seen many hangings or became stressed by working for Jaggers, by building things and distracting himself.
The mood created in this chapter is very light-hearted and not as gloomy as the graveyard scene or Miss Havishams house and it is also more humorous than the last two chapters. The characters involved are also a lot friendlier and make Pip feel welcome. The techniques that Dickens employs are so successful in creating a mood in each of these three sections in the novel. The characters in each section are quite extreme. They are either aggressive, embittered or strangely eccentric. At the beginning of the novel, Magwitch is very aggressive and uneasy a he is hiding from the police who are looking to transport him to Australia. But Magwitch mellows out during the novel and turns Pip into a gentleman with the money he has saved up from all of his farming days in Australia. When Pip finds out that it was Magwitch who gave him the money to make him a gentleman he begins to form a strong affection for him. The bond between them is shown when Pip tries to help Magwitch smuggles himself onto a hulk ship back to Australia and they are chased by the police who recognised Magwitch. Pips saving Magwitch echoes the opening of the novel and shows Pips loyalty to Magwitch, which is later, destroyed when Magwitch dies.
In Chapter Eight, Miss Havisham comes across as cold-hearted, bitter women who dislikes men and believes that all men should have their hearts broken just like hers was on her wedding day. Like Magwitch, she changes towards the end of the novel when she is confronted by Pip. Miss Havisham is distraught with guilt of what she has done to Estella and to Pip. She understands that she has ruined Estella’s life by brainwashing her into disliking men. She ruined Pips life by doing this to Estella as Pip loves Estella but she is unable to return his love. Miss Havishams death shows the audience that she has got feelings and maybe couldn’t handle the guilt so she killed herself. Overall I think Wemmick is the only character that doesn’t change. Dickens effectively shows us the characters emotions and feelings and he made all of these events shape Pips future.
I enjoyed reading this novel and I noticed that the two characters that came across a great change during the novel, Magwitch and Miss Havisham, were the two characters that died. I also noticed Pip was present at both of their deaths and I think the reason Dickens did this was to bring out Pips true feelings and show the audience how much he really cared for them.