Dickens also uses exaggeration to make the reader feel fearful. The cows with ‘a clerical air’ acting with an ‘accusatory manner’ show us just how panicked Pip is – cows cannot actually look in any ‘way’. Dickens uses this to amplify Pip’s fear.
Dickens tries to isolate the reader by his descriptions of the bleak marshes. This emphasises the solitude of the place and makes the reader lonely. Pip is overpowered by the cold of the marshes.
‘The damp cold seemed riveted (to my feet) as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet.’
This comparison of the cold with the convict’s leg iron reminds us of the terrifying convict. As well as drawing a link, not obvious to the first time reader, that Pip’s life will forever be connected with the Magwitch’s the passage helps create the strong association between the marsh and Magwitch. Pip begins the book fearful of both. By the end, however, Pip is no longer frightened of the marshes or Magwitch. This is shown through the language. Dickens makes the marshes beautiful instead of threatening with the ‘red large moon’ and the ‘ribbon of clear sky’. He uses metaphors to make the marshes more poetic for example - ‘piled mountains of cloud’. Dickens also uses personification.
‘She had ascended’
By making the moon a person he shows how Pip is no longer isolated in the marshes and how he no longer feels an overwhelming loneliness. Pip himself says ‘a stranger would have found them insupportable’ which implies that he does not find them unbearable himself. His changed attitude to the marsh reflects his changed attitude to Magwitch.
Satis House is a very different location to the marshes. Dickens uses Satis House to underline a number of important themes. First, Satis House provides a setting for Miss Havisham, and an explanation of how she has become what she is. Secondly, the House provides an atmosphere of mouldering gloominess and of gothic horror. In the 19th century when Dickens wrote ‘Great Expectations’, there was a gothic revival in literature, architecture, and art. Gothic novels from this time inspired Dickens, and created a taste amongst his readership that he was eager to supply. Finally, the house serves as a reminder that riches are of no value, for in the end death is inevitable. Dickens uses the setting to develop these themes, and he uses many methods to create these effects.
Satis House provides the perfect setting for Miss Havisham. The whole house is an outward manifestation of her life. The ‘airless’, ‘oppressive’ house echoes Miss Havisham’s own character. Just as she has not changed from her wedding gown for many years, so the house has not changed. Miss Havisham is said to have a ‘diseased’ mind. She has not left the house for many years and its atmosphere has greatly affected her.
‘In shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more… in seclusion she had secluded her self from a thousand natural and healing influences.’
Both she and the house are seen as equal, similar in their derangement.
In Satis House, Dickens creates an atmosphere of mouldering doom, and satisfies the taste of his readers for novels with a gothic and sensationalist feel. He does this through graphic descriptions that repulse the reader.
‘Every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould’.
He chooses to dwell on details that create a more revolting image. The description of the wedding cake is particularly repulsive.
‘I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it.’
Dickens chooses to describe spiders, as many people are scared of them, thus creating a more disgusting picture. Dickens uses similes to create a festering atmosphere.
‘Seeming to grow, like a black fungus’
Fungi are normally associated with decay and thus this simile presents a powerful image. Dickens also uses exaggeration to create a more intense atmosphere. It is physically impossible for a cake to have lasted for that length of time without having been totally consumed. By having the cake still swarming with life a few decades later, Dickens conjures up the atmosphere he is seeking to create.
Finally, in Satis House, Dickens provides a comment on the hollowness of riches. A central theme of ‘Great Expectations’ is that higher class does not bring a better life and Satis House provides an illustration of this theme. Although Satis House seems from the outside grand and superior, inside it is mouldering and oppressive.
‘It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces.’
Dickens uses Satis House to say that being of a higher class is not always better as is shown at the end – Pip is not happier as a gentleman, in fact he would have been a much nicer person had he not been given his ‘expectations’.
Wemmick’s House is in stark contrast to Miss Havisham’s. Dickens uses the description of Wemmick’s house to provide comic relief to lighten the novel. The location is also used to present the character of Wemmick in a different way. Wemmick is seen earlier in the book as a man with ‘a post box mouth’ in other words one who never smiles, just grimaces, whereas at the house he is very different.
One of the ways that the comic effect is created is by the huge gap between the reality of Wemmick’s house and Wemmick’s ideas about it. In actuality Wemmick’s house is no more than a ‘little wooden cottage’, however he has ‘cut out and painted like a battery mounted with guns’ the top of it in the pretence that he is the owner of a castle. Wemmick’s elevated views of his house and the views of the ‘Aged P’ are very humorous.
‘This spot and these beautiful works upon it ought to be kept together by the Nation after my son’s time, for the people’s enjoyment.’
The naivety and wishful thinking of the pair is so heart-warming and hopeless it provides comedy for the reader, who can look down on the pair.
Dickens builds up Wemmick’s house to be incredible and then cuts it down.
‘He had constructed a fountain in it, which, when you set a little mill going and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent that it made the back of your hand quite wet’
Dickens builds up the fountain to be something much bigger than it is. In reality it only trickles and splutters enough to wet the back of your hand, it is not ‘powerful’ in the least and this is also comic.
The contrast between this amusingly pretentious cottage, and the serious world of Jaggers’ office provides a metaphor for Wemmick’s dual character. Wemmick is a different person when at home. As he approaches Jaggers’ offices Wemmick gets ‘dryer and harder’ and ‘his mouth tightened into a post office again’. The drawbridge shows this separation of work and home.
‘After I have crossed the bridge I hoist it up–so–and cut off the communication’
The drawing up of the bridge can be seen as a metaphor for this detachment from his job.
Dickens creates many locations in ‘Great Expectations’ and one of Dickens’ most powerful gifts is for description. He is able to create different effects using many methods, to create a powerful sense of location. He does this not just for its own sake but also to help illustrate themes in the plot or aspects of the major characters.
