When pip meets Miss Havisham, Dickens makes it seem like it is a nice, rich room, however we soon find out it is a dull, lifeless room that hasn’t seen light in years : ‘. Dickens uses long, descriptive sentences here to introduce the setting and mood of the room. Dickens slowly gives us information bit by bit so we build a picture of what is going on. He slowly reveals that Miss Havisham has been jilted at the alter.
Wemmick’s home reflects his personality in the way that he likes to be secure and safe. Wemmick is one of the most memorable of Dickens’s characters, as he is slightly out of the ordinary and has his own way of doing things. Wemmick keeps his work and his home life very separate, this is shown by ‘the office is one thing, and private life another’. He doesn’t like to speak about work when he is at home and doesn’t like to speak about home when he is at work. Wemmick likes to be secure; a lot of his possessions and his house, or ‘castle’ show this.
When Dickens describes Magwitch, he describes him to look mean and scary; this is because it is Pip telling us from when he was a boy. Dickens tries to make the reader feel a bit sorry for Magwitch because he is soaked, has torn clothes and is limping.
Miss Havisham is misunderstood when we first see her, as, under first impressions, Pip thinks it is a nice, clean place. Dickens slowly reveals that all is not as it seems and that actually the place is dust filled and hasn’t seen sunlight in a long time, ‘faded and yellow’. Dickens shows us Mrs Havisham as a beautiful woman in a brides dress at first, and then, slowly, we realise that in fact Miss Havisham is aged and worn: ‘had been white long ago’.
Wemmick is a very memorable because we can imagine him as a real person. Dickens makes it so the reader likes Wemmick, because he is a jolly and different type of person. Wemmick is very proud of his work and inventions as he says: ‘and my own jack of all trades’.
Magwitch creates a tone with the way he speaks when he is talking to Pip, he is trying to sound very scary to Pip, so Pip will get him some food. There are some words that Magwitch pronounces incorrectly: ‘wittles’ and ‘pecoolier’, this adds to the sympathy we gradually build up for him. He uses over-exaggerated threats which make him look like a story book character, ‘ill have your heart and liver out!’.
Miss Havisham speaks in an upper class tone, this gives the reader a stronger image of what sort of woman she is. She speaks in a superior tone to Pip, as she knows she is of a higher class than him. ‘Broken!’ implies that she is a very dramatic woman, and wants Pip to know that she has been hurt by her experience.
Wemmick speaks differently at home than he does at work, this links with his policy of keeping work and home completely separate. He speaks casually at home, not worrying about speaking properly as he can relax at home; this is shown by ‘looks pretty; don’t it?’. His speech shows that he is working class and does not have the upper-class tone that Miss Havisham’s does.
Magwitch’s background is working class; he is poor and has been in prison. Prisons of the 19th century were horrible places to be; they carried lots of diseases and were extremely unhygienic. Miss Havisham is from an upper class background. She is very wealthy, however remains unmarried. Marriage for women in those days was more important than it is today because it used to be the men making all the money while the women looked after the house; however Miss Havisham has plenty of money so her problem is that she is lonely. Wemmick is in the working class and works in the prison as a clerk, the conditions of prisons in those days was very bad, which may be the reason why he keeps his home life and work life completely separate.
Dickens achieves making his characters both striking and memorable by describing them in heavy detail, but not making it boring by having too much. In my opinion Wemmick is the most memorable character as I could imagine him being real.
