How Do The Roles Of Women Affect The Lives of Pip and Laurie?

"You bring me tomorrow morning early that file and them wittles. You fail and your heart and liver shall be tore out and ate."

Poor Pip feels bewildered after being mugged but his own parents then hurt him even more when he returns home. "Mrs Joe has been out a dozen times looking for you". Pip is now unstable as he "looked in great depression at the fire". Mrs Gargery then storms in after being "on the rampage" and looses her composure with Pip. She beats him several times with the tickler. Pip's confusion and torment in this stage of the novel must be soul destroying. The emotion's aggravated by visiting a deceased mother which are then twisted and turned upside down by the invasion of his privacy by an escaped convict. Then shouted at and beating on return home from such an experience can only be described as a horrendous trauma.

Another early encounter with a female for Pip is that of his initial experience of Ms. Havisham when she invites him to Satis House to play.

Estella, who Pip has fallen immediately for but whom has treated him as if he were sub human, has led pip to Ms Havisham. Miss Havisham then greets him by asking, "Do you know what I touch here?" putting her hand on her left breast. She then encourages Pip to do the same.

"What do I touch?"

"Your Heart."

"Broken!"

This on it's own an eerie experience for a young boy having a fairly old women forcing him to caress her ancient breast. But this is not the only unpleasant experience Pip has during his first visit to Satis House. Pip is excited by the prospect of seeing more of the "pretty and very proud" Estella however she then treats him "with a carelessness that was far from complimentary" as if "she had been one and twenty and a queen." Pip's early childhood is riddled with torment and cruelties. The aforementioned are prime examples of the incidents that shape the path of Pip's life and his eventual coming of age. Laurie's early life is straightforward and the major incidents, which affect his future, happen with a clear sense of simplicity and kindness.

A possible theory of the success for both boys with the opposite sex is the discussion already touched on. The possibilities that the early encounters with women are responsible for the attitudes of both Laurie and Pip toward women in the latter stages of both their lives. For Laurie this is his traditional adolescence and for Pip his troublesome early manhood.

For Laurie women become second nature due to the majority of his time being spent with his all female family. His constant contact with them during his domestic based existence aids him positively meaning he can relate to women with ease. This is evident in his encounter with Rosie. Even though his "dry and dripping...icy hot" mixed feelings are running wild he takes the encounter completely in his stride as if the whole experience was no more than a dance. However although Laurie's composure never falters during his experience with Rosie (which we are only assuming is his loss of innocence) there are signs that Laurie had succumbed to the effects of sensual pleasures

" 'Rosie...'I said on my knees and shaking"

Laurie's loss of innocence (as it seems) can only be perceived as a pleasant mark on the time chart of his life as it appears there were no drawbacks.

However significant incidents with women for Pip are a world away from that of Laurie and his rural frolics. Pip had, up until one summer, no positive encounters with the female race his world had been of nothing more than neglect and emotional torment in his experiences with women. However he spends positive and pleasant time with Estella and is eager to be with her however his happiness is short lived. There is no competition for Estella in the form of noble man Bentley Drummle. Pip is horrified after declaring his love "the first time I saw you in this house" (Satis) to only to be told by Estella "Why not tell you the truth? I am to be married to him." Pip is heart broken as he drops his face "In grief".

The love and sensuality of both boys is a representation of the lives they both live. The life of Laurie, which interacts and is in harmony with the seasons and takes everything including love all in good experience. This is far away from the materialistic world of Pip in the heart of an urban existence as for out of sync with the natural world as one could have possibly got.

Yet another plus to Laurie's life and a drawback to Pip is the presence of someone to confide in and be close to. Laurie has a welded strong relationship with his mother.

"Mother was...a beautiful woman, strong, bounteous..."

Pip lacks a matriarchal figure in his life. Miss Havisham is the only advisory person to him. But even she cares nothing for Pip in here attempts to corrupt time. All of his favour for her is lost and her status to him is destroyed when he discovers she was never his benefactor. Pip then loses the closest thing to a mother he has had.

The use of Satis House and the kitchen in Laurie's home is comparable as these two focal points around which these matriarchal relationships take place. Laurie often resides there with his family:

" The day was over...When evening came we returned to the kitchen, back to its smoky comfort...to its wrappings of warmth and cooking."

Again the two centres of the novels are comparably different. Pip's first experiences scare him and make him uneasy in and around Satis House.

"I was half afraid...No glimpse of daylight was to be seen"

The two books when together turn the societies of the dusk and dawn of the 20th century upside down. The most chronologically advanced of the pair (Cider wit Rosie) is an almost pre Victorian rural age.

One "of silence...of white roads, rutted by hooves and cartwheels, innocent of oil and petrol"

This in comparison with Great Expectations. An urban novel at the forefront of the industrial revolution. In a world where money and material possessions are the mainstay of happiness. All in a hierarchical society.

The explanation for why the lives are so different is perhaps from the perspective that both novels are written from. Laurie Lee looks back on his childhood with rose tinted glasses and an extreme sense of nostalgia. His ability to filter his memories and include only the prominent and the pleasant memory give the book a honey coated glaze. However Great Expectations is a first hand (fictional) account of one boy's life filled with pain, torment, cruelty, emotional rupture and the harsh realities of an industrial and modern world.