Dickens believed reform was needed to alleviate poverty, which he felt was the main cause of crimes against person and poverty. Dickens thought that the judicial system was designed to protect the rich and elite. He particularly abhorred the brutality surrounding these punishments
An Extract From Charles Dickens letter to the Times News Paper
I went there with the intension of observing the crowd gathered to behold it… I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the intense crowed collected at this execution this morning could be imagined by no man….The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murders to it faded in my mind.
I think that Charles Dickens creates an excellent setting to affect his characters different behavioural patterns. He uses a range of different techniques to accomplish this such as imagery. Some examples of this are where it says “this bleak place over grown with nettles” I think this is an excellent example of just some of the bits of imagery he uses.
By placing Pip in a bleak place bleak meaning barren and desolate and then to make this place over grown with nettles will undoubtedly stir emotions and provoke a reaction with any character especially Pip. Doing this will also create a tense atmosphere. Pip is placed in a scenario where he doesn’t know his parents or his five brothers due to circumstances beyond his control; he has suffered tremendous loss at such a young age. Then he’s placed in a unfruitful setting where there’s nobody around. This is an excellent combination if you are trying to get a entertaining and interesting reaction from one of your characters the climax of all these different factors working together is when Pip breaks down crying the text decries him as a being a bundle if shivers this has clearly effected both Pips behaviour and his feelings.
I as a reader was made to share Pip’s experiences in many ways I think that the way that Charles Dickens skips in and out of reality is extremely effective more to the people he aimed his novel at than me today. People of the Victorian period would have been able to relate to many aspects of the first few pages; the feature of infant mortality and the notorious gibbet would have been very real topics to them. Charles Dickens uses very descriptive language to try and explain things to the reader as much as possible this in its self-makes the reader feel more involved and makes the text appear more real. Another way Charles Dickens helped me share Pip’s experiences was through imagery I thought that painting a mental picture in my mind was very beneficial in trying to help me share Pip’s feeling and emotions. I particularly felt in Pip’s shoes when the animals were frightening him.
The next time we meet Pip he describes the setting he’s in as being a “rimy morning” and “damp”. I think that Pip is in his bedroom looking out on to the marshes I say this because in the same paragraph Pip says, “I’ve seen the damp lying outside of my window.” I homed in on the word my in this statement and that’s why I came to that conclusion. I can only assume that Pip is the same age he was when he had his experience in the church graveyard. The reason I say this is because Pip doesn’t seem to have developed in any way, he’s still seems to be the immature child he was when went to visit his mother, father, and siblings at the graveyard and doesn’t seem to have changed any.
Since the last time we met Pip he was told to steal some food for a convict that escaped from the “hulks”. Hulks were huge prison ships that were anchored around a mile out to sea the reason for this was that hardly any people were able to swim at this time let alone poor people. The food on the hulks was so bad that most men melted candle wax into there soup to try to make it more nourishing. Early prisons in this period were so crowded and dirty, that’s why hulks came about I think that they were made to try to ease the heavy burden that was on the shoulders of the English prison system.
Because petty theft was such a big deal then Pip found it almost impossible to steal from his sister’s larder. We know that Pips steeling for understandable reasons and doesn’t deserve to be punished, but I think Charles Dickens is showing his target audience that Pip even though he’s only a child he feels exceptionally guilty when he steals something. He knows what could happen to him he knows that, ridiculous that it may seem he could be brained with a hot iron whipped by both his elder sister and the legal system and even hung like many children were at that time. The question I think Charles Dickens wants his audience to ask in their minds is should children or adults even, lose there life over something as trivial as theft?
Imagery is used in this area of the novel a lot to try to make the reader feel what Pip is experiencing. Personification is also used to convey Pips hallucinations in this area of the text also. When Pip leaves his sisters home with the food that Magwitch the convict requested he describes the mist that he earlier described as being “light and every where” as being “heavier” maybe like a barrier he was up against? Pip says, “Instead of me at running at everything everything seemed to run at me and this was very disagreeable to a guilty mind” These are prime examples of how Charles Dickens makes the setting literally come alive when using Imagery. He painted this picture in my mind so effectively and clearly it was unbelievable.
An example of personification is when Charles Dickens makes Pip think that the animals are actually talking to him. He gives the animals human feelings and makes them try to influence Pip into feeling guilty and bad about stealing the food from the larder. “The cattle came upon me with like suddenness staring out of their eyes and steaming out of there nostrils” Charles Dickens has made the animals on the marsh adopt human anger the animals almost seem to be lividly angry at Pip. “Holloa, young thief” said a black ox. Notice that the ox referred to Pip as a thief and not by his first name I think that the cattle is Pip’s acting conscience and deep down Pip thinks he is a thief and a ghastly person.
‘Dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist ’as if they cried as plainly as could be, A boy with some body else’s pork pie! stop him!” I that Pip has undoubtedly been affected by the setting so much in fact he begins to hallucinate and panic frantically
I was made to share Pip’s experiences by the various uses of imagery and personification in this section of the novel. I found this section very entertaining because Charles Dickens made the settings he created come alive very well by him extensively using masses of description in his sentences. In this area of the novel he doesn’t say it was a Monday morning he says “It was a rimy morning and very damp.” He doesn’t say there was some damp out side my window he says “ I had seen the damp lying on the out side of my window as if some goblin had been crying there all night” this is also another example personification Charles Dickens has given a mythical creature in this case a goblin a human feeling . The way that his sentences are always so descriptive and interesting really appeal to me and that’s how I shared Pips feelings in this particular part of the novel.
Pip is a few months older when he journeys with Uncle Pumblechook to Satis house. We know that Satis house is fairly close to where Pip lives because in the text it says, “Within quarter of an hour we had arrived at Satis house.” When Pip sees the house for the first time he describes it more like a prison complex than a grand manor house he says it was made from “Old brick” and looked “Dismal.” He then goes on to say that; the house was “surrounded by iron bars.” I think that Pip has become far more alert and aware of his surroundings Pip even notices that some windows on the forth floor of the house had been bricked up. When Pip is introduced to Miss Havisham he describes her as being “dressed in rich materials satins and lace and silks all of white, her shoes were white and she had a long white veil dependent from her hair.” However, this is a false impression Pip has just been in the day light and he is now in a dark room his eyes have not yet adjusted. A few moments later Pip describes the same clothes he recently described as being rich material, as being spoilt “Everything in view which ought to be white was white long ago and had lost its lustre and is now faded yellow.” “The bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress.” I think that this misconception that Pip had was an extremely clever thing for Charles Dickens to do. In the space of literally four lines, he turned what the reader thought to be a beautiful bride into an ugly mess and this is what most brought this part of the novel most alive for me. Pip has clearly been affected by this setting because it was the setting of the dark room Miss Havisham was in that literally put him in the dark about what Miss Havisham really looked like this use of imagery was very effective.
Pip describes Miss Havisham as being like a Skelton he says, “Once I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a Skelton in the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and Skelton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me.” The message that I personally think that Charles Dickens is trying to get across to the attended reader is its not only poor people that are unhappy and miserable rich people can be to even if your dressed in the finest clothes, you can have the most expensive jewellery on but you can still be discontented. I think that Miss Havisham is very much like a corpse. She attempted to stop time and shut life out. However time has passed on and treated her cruelly
While Pip is exploring the house grounds, he comes across a brewery “Which is as dead as the main house”. Pip makes it very clear that the area is completely deserted “There were no pigeons in the dove cot, no horses in the stable, no pigs in the sty, no malt in the store house, no smell of grains, and no beer in the copper or vat. While wondering around Pip begins fantasizing about Estella he sees her everywhere he looks “But she seemed to be every where” Pip is now in a garden he describes as being “Rank” he says the garden is “Over grown with nettles.” The garden we are told is at the distant end of the brewery and behind a small wall but Pips still over comes all these obstacles. He says with his own mouth that the garden is rank just because he thinks he sees Estella he’s willing to go anywhere or do any thing. I think that Pips crush on Estella is gradually developing into an infatuation. Pip says how he was “Oppressed by the gloom” of the brewery for some body to state this so strongly they must have been affected by there surroundings and setting. Pip is being stifled by the setting and wants to leave. Charles Dickens uses imagery to make Estella appear to be angelic to the reader “I saw her pass among the extinguished fires and ascend some light on the iron stairs, and go out by the gallery overhead, as if she were going out in the sky” I thought that this was particularly effective and a great example of imagery.
When Estella leaves Pip ‘Or he stops fantasizing about her’ he finds him self in a strange place where he says an even stranger thing happened to him he looks up at a wooden beam and sees Miss Havisham hanging from it this is a clear reference to death. Pip has been affected so much by the figure he says, “At first I ran from it then I ran to it and my terror was greatest of all when it wasn’t there.” The way Charles Dickens fed the reader the sentence about Pip seeing somebody hanging from the beam made this section come alive for me: “Towards a great wooden beam in a low nook of the building near me on my right hand, and I saw a figure hanging there by the neck. A figure all in yellow white, with but one shoe on her feet; and it hung so, that I could see the faded trimmings of the dress were like earthy paper, and that the face was Miss Havisham” The setting has played tricks on Pip’s mind as he stills has the horrific image of Miss Havisham fresh in his mind from he first met her inside the house.
When Pip goes to Mr Jaggers Office for the first time he’s dressed in London business attire and is an up an coming gentlemen. References to crime and death in this section is where Pip describes Mr Jaggers leather chair looking like a coffin “Jaggers’s own high black high chair was a deadly black horse hair with rows of brass nails round it like a coffin.” The office was a dark place. Pip uses the word “Dismal” when describing it, he also says that there’s no light in the room other than a skylight not for the first time Pip feels the he is being watched in an accusing this time by buildings that appear to peeping in at him through the skylight. Pip came across a “Rusty Pistol” whilst in Jaggers office, Pistols were not uncommon in this period and many crimes such as murder and highway robbery involved them this might explain their presence.
The setting of Jaggers office I think has made Pip slightly anxious it’s nothing like he expected “There were not as many papers as I expected to see and there were some odd things about”.
Charles Dickens uses imagery to make Mr Jaggers look like a scary sort of person. Pip says that there were shoulder grease marks on the sides of the walls as if people were scared to go in the centre of the room with Mr Jaggers. he remembers even the one eyed man that was in the room before Pip who “shuffled out via the walls” Other references to death in the office are the two masks Pip sees on the wall Jaggers tells him that they were taken from the faces of his dead clients. However, at the time Pip thought they might be masks of Jaggers relatives, which made him appear even more scary. I thought that it was amazing how Jaggers presence dominates the room even though he is not actually there Pip finds it oppressive and leaves.
I think that Charles Dickens choose to write about crime and death because those two subjects effected everybody’s life in his time. He wanted to try and make things better for the working and poorer classes, he wanted to try and improve things and Dickens knew that things could change. The novel “Great Expectations” wasn’t actually set in the time Charles Dickens was living in it was set some time before. So things had already changed a great deal people were no longer being hung for minor offences there was really only one offence you could be hung for in Dickens time and that was murder so as you can see things had changed a great deal.
However, Dickens knew that improvements could still be made. The divide was getting even wider between the poor and the Rich the poor were getting poorer and the rich richer, mainly off the backs of the poor people who didn’t get paid a fare wage hence the need for poor houses, which were over run with infestation as well as people. Throughout the novel, Charles Dickens repeatedly writes about death. Many things had changed but one thing remained the need people had to actually see a hanging. I don’t think that Charles Dickens was particularly opposed to capital punishment but he did have a problem with people watching, as if it were a cheap form of entertainment which was exactly what it was to the poor that’s why I think that Dickens choose to make Miss Havisham such a exocentric horrid character. Somebody that was so rich could actually be unhappier than many poor people were. All in all, I think that Charles Dickens was successful when writing about crime and death.
