Explore how chapter 49 of Great Expectations fits into the overall scheme of the text. How important is it to understanding the author's themes of: gentlemen and the role of women in Victorian society?

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Explore how chapter 49 of Great Expectations fits into the overall scheme of the text. How important is it to understanding the author’s themes of: gentlemen and the role of women in Victorian society?

In this essay I will explore how chapter forty-nine fits into the overall scheme of Dickens’s ‘Great Expectations’. In addition I will also describe how this chapter helps readers to understand two important themes of this novel: what it means to be a ‘Victorian gentleman’ and Dickens’s comments on the role of women in Victorian society.

‘Great Expectations’ is a novel about what it is to be a true gentleman; it also explores the life of a young boy and his quest to become a gentleman. This can be illustrated by when pip explains to biddy his tutor “ I want to be a gentleman… I am disgusted with my calling and with my life” this shows that pip is not happy with his life and wants to change it. He doesn’t want to grow up to be a customary worker like Joe, his sister’s husband; he wants to be a gentleman.

Chapter forty-nine is a crucial point in the development of the plot. At this point, Pip visits miss Havesham who feels guilty for having caused Estella to break his heart. She also realizes what she has done and what she has bought Estella up to be like “. ‘I remarked a new expression on her face, as if she were afraid of me’. This chapter shows how much their relationship has changed through out the story, and in showing this, Dickens is commenting on how class distinction can be distorted and in particular, how a true gentleman should behave.

The themes explored through the novel and especially in chapter forty-nine echo most of dickens novels for example “Pickwick papers” and “Jane Eyre” focus on a young boy often orphaned who has to discover a place in the intimidating world. Further there may be an autobiographic element to this as Pips voyage from the marshes to the status of gentleman has a significant reference to Dickens own life as his own father was placed in a debtor’s prison. Dickens was distraught by this and haunted for life by status and class. This was shown by dickens by setting the novel in the Victorian period when dickens was a small child.

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Throughout the novel Dickens focuses on many different male characters from all different social classes. In Pip, we see a young orphaned boy whop tries to better him self and receive a high status in life. This voyage is essentially about Pip learning about the true concept of what a gentleman is meant to be. The reason dickens has used this theme is because it is from his past experiences, but also reflects Victorian curiosity in trying to classify what it meant to be a true gentleman. As Samuel Smiles discussed in ‘Self-help’, published in 1859 ‘Riches and rank have ...

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