Charles Dickens is famous for his unforgettable characters. Some of his most renowned characters are to be found in 'Great Expectations' a truly classic novel.

Authors Avatar

Connor Witherington 10T – Mrs Stephens.

G.c.s.e Coursework – Great Expectations

Charles Dickens is famous for his unforgettable characters. Some of his most renowned characters are to be found in ‘Great Expectations’ a truly classic novel.

Pip is a genuinely nice character. His mother and father, and this is what it says on his fathers gravestone “Georgina wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias and Roger, were also dead and buried.” This immediately makes the reader feel sympathy towards Pip because it is very traumatic to lose one family member let alone seven! So he was left with his sister Mrs Joe Gargery, who is married to Joe Gargery a blacksmith. She raised him ‘by hand’ to keep him in order. She thinks that Pip owes her for all that she’s done for him. She is very sarcastic and vindictive, but Joe Gargery is a very quiet, kind man who loves and cares for Pip like his own son. He wants to take Pip under his wing and make him a blacksmiths apprentice. Similarly it is Pips dream to work with Joe. Joe is like a father figure to Pip, almost like the father he never met. This gives the reader a sense of satisfaction knowing that Pip has someone to depend on. Pip imagined his father to be a ‘square, stout, dark man with curly black hair,’ he thinks this because of the  shape of the letters on his gravestone. Alternatively he thinks of his mother as a ‘freckled and sickly woman.’ He knows that the assumptions of the looks of his mother are probably wrong when he says ‘I drew a childish conclusion’. Whereas Miss Havisham is a rich eccentric woman who has an extremely extravagant personality, with an odd background. She was in love in her early life and was due to be married but the day came and her husband to be left her standing at the altar, he also stole a large amount of money from her. This turned her love to hatred and made her hate the male race. She lived her life in such an odd way, this is shown when Pip says “No glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it”- referring to her house and he saw that her “watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine” the very time she was to be married. This was symbolic that her life had ended at that time. When Pip says “I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes”

Join now!

She was going to have children but she couldn’t bring herself to ever love another man. She adopted a young girl called Estella and had evil plans to mould her into her own image having the same hatred and bitterness towards males. Miss Havisham successfully twists Estellas mind, this is shown to the reader when Estella say’s  “With this boy! Why, he is a common labouring boy!” This shows that she has become a vindictive snob.  The reader cant help but feel sorry for Estella, because she never had a choice in her personality. She wasn’t allowed to socialise, so ...

This is a preview of the whole essay