The name Satis House comes from Latin: sufficient or enough. It is located in the word satisfied. The house, which was probably built in the peak of the Industrial Revolution, which started in England during the 16th century. At the property’s pinnacle (when Miss Havisham’s father was alive) it probably had a lively, busy productive air.
However, due to Miss Havisham’s rage and disappointment because of her lover’s betrayal she and her property lays in despair and disrepair. The crumbling, decrepit stones of the house, as well as the darkness and dust that pervade it represents the general decadence of the lives of its inhabitants and of the upper class as a whole. The foundations of Pip’s “Great Expectations” are built on Satis house that is why his perception of becoming a gentleman is flawed and crumbles gradually through the novel.
Dickens is being ironic in calling Miss Havisham’s house “Satis” (Ch. 8 p. 45). There can be no satisfaction there for Miss Havisham, Estella or Pip.
Satis was also the Egyptian goddess who guarded the Egypt’s border with Nubia and was associated with the floods of the River Nile. This could suggest the erratic and destructiveness of Miss Havisham. There is a connection to surplus amounts of liquid when Estella comments about the amount of beer in the rundown Brewery saying, “there’s enough of [the beer]…to drown the…house” (Ch. 8 p. 45).
One finds it curious that Dickens made this comment. As the world’s fascination of Egypt and its mythological origins was located post 1900 and hit its peak with the discovery of Tutankhamun in 1922 by Howard Carter. There are many comments of and about Egypt and certain symbols attached to it such as mummies and cats in Dickens’ works such as On Duty with Inspector Field, Births. Mrs Meek, of a Son, Little Dorrit, and David Copperfield. One can only assume that Dickens would have known about a demi-god called Satis.
Sati or satis – by extension from the mythic Sati – located in Hinduism, is a term used for the death, voluntary or involuntary, of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands in . It bears an emotional comparison to Miss Havisham's entombing herself in Satis House because of the loss of her intended husband.
The term is also extended to refer to the widow herself. For this usage, the term is often written using the old English spelling of suttee. Though supposed to be voluntary, it is believed to have been often enforced on the widow by various social pressures, or by the use of drugs. Although, Miss Havisham was never married her actions are reminscent of a widow.
“Miss Havisham’s house…of old brick, and dismal” (Ch. 8 p. 44) surroundings are Pip’s initial reaction to the house. The use of “old brick” (Ch. 8 p. 44) to describe the house seems obvious, but can be interpreted differently. One may suggest that the “old brick” (Ch. 8 p. 44) is the Victorian sentiments of harshness and frigidness that occupies the owner of the house and still can be felt in Britain today.
Neither the characters nor the readers are meant to like this place. It is described in a “dark” (Ch. 8 p. 45) and “dismal” (Ch. 8 p. 45) way. It is highly reminiscent of a prison with “a great many bars to it” (Ch. 8 p. 44) and even “some of the windows had been walled up” (Ch. 8 p. 44). The repetition of bars when describing the house is beguiling. Is it locking someone out, or locking some in? Is it protecting the owner or punishing the owner? One cannot escape, yet one lives there. Satis House is Miss Havisham: symbiotic and paradoxical. The terrifying house is an allegory to its owner.
Nonetheless, Estella shines in this environment “like a star” (Ch. 8 p. 49). In this atmosphere of oppression and darkness, Pip is puzzlingly drawn in by Estella’s gravitas. This is where she feels at home: a crumbling house built on foundations with no love.
Inside the house, no daylight is permitted. Satis House is “dark” (Ch. 8 p. 46) and hollow. One may even suggest that Pip and the reader enters Miss Havisham’s cocoon, or (more specifically and ironically) coffin. Corpses “fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen” (Ch. 8 p. 50), and Pip likens Miss Havisham to a “corpse” (Ch. 8 p. 50). Is this why she does not let light into the house? She cannot bear to see the light, as it reminds her of the world outside. This isolation causes her to be unsound as she randomly exclaims “Ha!”. She also has a sadistic pleasure with her witch-like quality to scare Pip by asking whether he is “afraid” (Ch. 8 p. 48) of a woman who has never seen the sun since he was born.
On her decaying body, Miss Havisham’s wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and degeneration. The wedding dress and the wedding feast denotes Miss Havisham’s past. Miss Havisham’s wedding dress and her bizarre surroundings foreshadow the revelation of her past and her relationship with Estella. Foreshadowing is the use of clues by the author to prepare readers for events that will happen later in the novel. Dickens uses this technique throughout Great Expectations.
One finds it interesting that Dickens uses colour to denote the passing of time. There is repetition of things “which ought to be white” (Ch. 8 p. 48). Such as Miss Havisham’s stockings, shoes, and dress which was “once white, now yellow” (Ch. 8 p. 50). The purity of white and the decay and discolouration of yellow shows instantly the passing of time. One usually associates this with old books or newspapers, not people.
The wedding feast, which is scattered in the room, suggests fertility and birth. There are many examples of imagery, which oppose this idea. For example by describing objects as “pale” (Ch. 8 p. 50) and “decayed” (Ch. 8 p. 50). The physical decay of Satis House and Miss Havisham relates to its moral decay. This contradiction of ideas, which “ought” (Ch. 8 p. 48) to be something but is something else continues throughout this chapter. It shows Miss Havisham as a conflicting character.
The clocks throughout the house “had stopped at twenty minutes to nine” (p. 48) symbolising her determined attempt to freeze time by refusing to change anything from the way it was when she was jilted on her wedding day.
The brewery next to the house indicates the connection between commerce and wealth. Miss Havisham’s fortune is not the product of an aristocratic birth but of a recent success in industrial capitalism. This is ironic, as Pip looks to Miss Havisham something to aspire to, but she is just an heiress gaining from her father’s enterprise. The Industrial Revolution created a very rich bourgeois class, which resulted in the upper-middle classes. These were industrialists and factory owners.
Moreover, the beer, which the brewery used to produce, is now “sour” (Ch. 8 p. 45) and there is enough to “drown” (Ch. 8 p. 45) Satis House. Is not the house already drowned in bitterness?
The dilapidated brewery is where Pip sees “a figure hanging by the neck” (Ch. 8 p. 53): an image of Miss Havisham hanging from a wooden beam. This terrifying image is repeated again in Chapter 49. Pip after this always returns to Satis House in Chapter 8 and in Chapter 49. In the latter chapter, Pip saves Miss Havisham from burning. Yet, in Chapter 8 Pip is burning with the ambition to become a gentleman and to overcome injustice.
Chapter 8 introduces two major antagonists that structure the life of Pip: Miss Havisham and Estella. They both redeem themselves later in the novel.
Estella is an utterly ironic creation, one that darkly undermines the notion of romantic love and serves as a bitter criticism against the class system in which she is mired. Unlike the warm, winsome, kind heroine of a traditional love story, Estella is cold, cynical and manipulative.
Estella is a “beautiful” (Ch. 8 p. 46) young girl. She has been brought up as a young lady, but uses her education to talk down to Pip and make him feel inferior. By criticising him with disdain, she is “a scornful young lady” (Ch. 8 p. 49). Estella is cruel to Pip yet loyal to Miss Havisham. She is bitter and twisted due to the strange upbringing she has received from Miss Havisham. Estella does not fully realise that she is being used by the old woman and that she is, herself, little more than an agent for Miss Havisham’s revenge.
Estella represents Pip’s first longed-for ideal of life among the upper classes. Yet, ironically, life among the upper classes does not represent salvation for Estella. Instead, she is victimised twice by her adopted class by Miss Havisham and Drummle. In this way, Dickens uses Estella’s life to reinforce the idea that one’s happiness and well-being are not deeply connected to one’s social position: had Estella been poor, she might have been substantially happier.
Dickens is famous for his characternyms and Estella is no different. Estelle is French for star; Dickens does use this imagery when discussing her. A star is lonely and distant, yet very beautiful. Pip refers to her as “a star” (Ch. 8 p. 49). Stars are the giver of light and therefore life, but can easily destroy it. This seems relevant as Estella can love, but destroys it easily. When a star collapses, it turns into a black hole: an oblivion, which nothing, not even light, can escape. One could suggest she is a black hole, but Dickens could not have meant this, as black holes were not known in Victorian times. A modern audience would know this and could affect their perception on this character.
Estella has been educated as an accomplished and sophisticated young lady. She warns Pip time and again that she has “no heart” (Ch. 29 p. 195) and can never have anyone. She tells Pip that he is the only one to be so warned and that she makes fools of all the other men. She seems to become tired of this way of life and almost self-destructive in her determination to marry such a brutal and ill-mannered man as Bentley Drummle. Even Miss Havisham tries to dissuade her. At the end of the novel, she is a widow and has little property left. Her hard experiences seem to have softened her, and she implies that she regrets having rejected Pip’s love for her. She has learnt her lessons through suffering and it “has been stronger than all other teaching…I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape” (Ch. 59 p. 399).
She is contrite and humble as she confesses that she realises what she threw away when she rejected Pip’s love. She feels that the best she can hope for is that they can be friends. She is too humble to expect more.
Miss Havisham is a bitter old woman. She wants to take revenge on all men for the wrong that was done to her by one man. She sits in the clothes she should have worn for her wedding and surrounded by decaying things in a darkened room. She has adopted a young girl, Estella, whom she plans to use to exact her revenge.
The reader first encounters this in the rotting Satis House. She has deliberately let the house fall into bad repair because of the disappointment of her wedding day.
She feeds her revenge by never allowing herself to forget what had happened to her, for example: by wearing the wedding dress; allowing the wedding feast to rot around her; stopping the clocks at the moment of her abandonment and keeping daylight out of the house
The name Havisham can suggest many ideas. By using words that rhyme with a name, or sound similar one can deduce the character. Such as Miss Havisham being a sham; that nothing is real just a twisted thought. However, I believe in two other words that tell the audience about the character are lavish and ravish. Something which is lavish is in great quantity of richness, and ironically very generous. Yet, the other word, ravish, also describes Miss Havisham’s potentially lovely and delightful side. This means that Dickens used her name to be incredibly ironic.
Miss Havisham sadistically delights in the way that Estella torments Pip and likes to keep her relatives guessing as to whom she will leave her money when she dies. Miss Havisham knows very well that Pip thinks for a very long time that she is his benefactress. She also lets him believe that she intends him for Estella. This is cruel, as Miss Havisham knows that Estella has been brought up to despise men and that consequently she could never make Pip happy.
Miss Havisham continues with her plan to use Estella as an instrument of revenge on the male sex until she comes to realise she has created a monster. She accuses Estella of being hard and ungrateful but Estella says she cannot give her love as she was never given it herself. When Pip declares his love for Estella she finally feels remorse for she had done. To make amends she tries to delay Estella’s wedding to Drummle.
She tries to undo some of the harm she has done by helping Pip with his plan for Herbert and on Pip’s recommendation she leaves some money to Matthew Pocket, the only relative who told her the truth about her wedding. At the end of her life, she is distraught with guilt for what she has done to Estella and to Pip. Having wasted more than half of her own life, she finally regrets having partially destroying the lives of Estella and Pip.
She is redeemed at the end of the novel when she realises that she has caused Pip’s heart to be broken in the same manner as her own; rather than achieving any kind of personal revenge, she has only caused more pain. Miss Havisham immediately begs Pip for forgiveness, reinforcing the novel’s theme that bad behaviour can be redeemed by contrition and sympathy.
Pip is the most important character in Great Expectations. He is both the protagonist, whose actions create the plot of the novel and the narrator, whose thoughts and attitudes form the audience’s insight into the story. Therefore, by developing an understanding of Pip’s character, the reader will develop in understanding Great Expectations.
Pip is narrating the story many years after the events had occurred; thus, there are two Pips in Great Expectations: the narrator and the character. Dickens makes it the utmost of importance that the reader can distinguish both by the narrator having qualities of perspective and maturity while communicating the character feelings and actions. This dexterously executed distinction is best seen in the early parts of the novel when Pip is a child.
At the start of the novel, Pip is an innocent boy who has been brought up to respect his elders and betters. He is a kind-hearted child as is seen in the episode in which he brings the convict the file and the food. He is also rather gullible and really believes that a terrible second man will tear his liver out when he sleeps unless he does as he has been told. This gullibility can be seen again when he visits Miss Havisham’s house and is taken in by the charms of Estella.
The name Pip instead of Phillip Pirrip shows the child-like romanticism of this character. It also the seed of a fleshy fruit, maybe Dickens wanted to suggest how Pip grows through the novel. The novel itself is highly reminiscent of a bildungsroman. A coming-of-age tale is a bildungsroman, a German word that refers to a type of novel in German literature that follows the life of the protagonist. German writers Wolfram von Eschenbach and Hans Grimmelshausen made this theme popular. They wrote literary works based on a folktale about a foolish person who goes out into the world to find adventure and suffers mistakes and disappointments before gaining sense and understanding. In a bildungsroman, the action usually ends positively, after one or more of the characters learn valuable lessons difficultly. One believes that Great Expectations is not a true bildungsroman, as the action does not result in a happy ending. The readers are lead to believe that Pip and Estella will get married, yet this is just an assumption. In addition, this is proven by Dickens’ original ending whereby Pip and Estella do not live happily ever after.
Once he has met Estella, he begins to change. Because she has referred to him as “common” (Ch. 8 p. 60), he becomes dissatisfied with the life at the forge. Pip soon begins to feel that the life of a blacksmith is not good enough for him and he starts to be quite snobbish. When he finds out that he is to come into a great fortune, Pip is very quick to drop the people who had been his friends and family in case they embarrass him when he is a gentleman. He feels some pangs of guilt about this, but does it anyway.
Pip is eager to become a gentleman. He is a good pupil but becomes a snob in the process. When Joe visits him, he does little to put him at ease and is embarrassed by him and ashamed of him. He deceives himself as to his reasons for failing to call on Joe and Biddy on his visits to Satis House.
He learns how to spend money freely and runs up large bills. He is aware, however, that he has encouraged Herbert to spend money he cannot afford and it is to his credit that he secretly arranges to help him in a business career. He later feels that this is the only good thing to have come out of his “expectations”.
His blind obsession with Estella and his belief that they are destined for each other is shattered by the arrival of his real benefactor and by Estella’s marriage to Drummle.
By helping Magwitch, Pip demonstrates selflessness and compassion, and the truth about his good fortune and its origins brings him humility. He is prepared to return to the forge to make an honest living and believes he would like to settle down with Biddy. However, this plan is forestalled by Joe and Biddy’s marriage and he goes abroad, convinced that he will remain a bachelor. His chance meeting with Estella after eleven years seems to offer the possibility of happiness after all. Is that not all of our “great expectations”?
There are several themes that are explored or introduced in this chapter that affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and class.
Dickens creates the theme and shows learning this lesson, largely by discovering ideas of —ideas that quickly become both the thematic centre of the novel and the psychological mechanism that encourages much of Pip’s development. Fundamentally, Pip is an idealist; whenever he can envisage something that is better than what he already has, he instantaneously wishes to acquire the improvement. When he sees , he desires to be an affluent gentleman; when he thinks of his moral inadequacies, he yearns to be good; when he recognises that he cannot read, he wants to learn how. Pip’s craving for self-improvement is the key source of the novel’s title: because he believes in the prospect of advancement in life, he has “Great Expectations” about his future.
Self-knowledge or self-discovery is an important theme in the novel. Pip rejects his humble origins at the forge and “considers” (Ch. 8 p. 50) to become a gentleman at the end of Chapter 8. Although he is given material wealth and is taught table manners and how to speak in a different way, he loses much in the process. It is only though hardship, loss and the example of the “genteelly” (Ch. 8 p. 51) Joe that he comes to humbly realise the worthlessness of his previous behaviour and the emptiness of his ambitions. Joe does not change. He realises that he is in his element at the forge and he never loses his basic decency and honesty. Estella is aware of what she is doing but makes the mistake of thinking that she cannot be hurt by such a destructive way of life. Her experiences with Drummle and the passing of time bring her to realise what she lost when she rejected Pip’s love.
There is an underlying theme of natural justice in the events of the story. Loyalty and goodness are rewarded. We feel that true and faithful Herbert deserves his happy marriage to Clara and that Joe and Biddy deserve their happiness together. We may also believe that Pip and Estella can be allowed a happy future when they have paid the price of their vanity and folly. Magwitch is an instrument of justice in his way. He tries to reward Pip for helping him in the marches. He makes Compeyson pay the ultimate price for his past crimes, which the legal system had failed to do. The legal system itself is seen to be brutal, arbitrary, corrupt and open to manipulation by the likes of Jaggers. However, Jaggers has tried to counter the effects of this system by saving one little girl, Estella, from its horrors.
Nevertheless, there is theme of the Victorian lower-classes “perpetual conflict with injustice” (Ch. 8 p. 52). Some may say that he was biased, as Great Expectations was semi-autobiographical. Yet, others state that he was trying to highlight the injustices experienced in Victorian society.
Dickens explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging from the most shameful criminals (Magwitch) to the unfortunate peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to the middle class (Pumblechook) to the very rich (). The theme of social class is vital to the novel’s plot and to the eventual moral theme of the book—Pip’s awareness that wealth and class are less significant than love, loyalty, and inner worth. Pip attains this understanding when he is ultimately capable to identify that, even though the esteem in which he holds Estella, one’s social status is in no way linked to one’s real character. , for instance, is an upper-class ruffian, while Magwitch, a victimised convict, has a profound inner worth.
One must acknowledge the novel’s handling of social class. In addition, how the class system is portrayed based on the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England. Dickens frequently overlooks the nobility and the hereditary aristocracy in favour of characters whose fortunes have been acquired through commerce. Miss Havisham’s family fortune was made through the brewery that is still connected to her manor. Therefore, by relating the theme of social class to the idea of work and self-advancement, Dickens ingeniously emphasises the novel’s core theme of ambition and self-improvement.
The theme of is explored throughout the novel largely through the characters of the convicts and the criminal lawyer: . From the handcuffs Joe mends at the smithy to the gallows at the prison in London; the imagery of crime and criminal justice infuses the book, becoming a significant symbol of Pip’s inner struggle to reunite his own inner moral principles with the institutional justice system. Overall, just as social class becomes a shallow standard of value that Pip must learn to look beyond in finding a better way to live his life, the external trappings of the criminal justice system (police, courts, jails, etc.) become a superficial standard of morality that Pip must learn to look beyond to trust his inner conscience.
Magwitch, for example, scares Pip at first simply because he is a convict, and Pip feels guilty for helping him because he is afraid of the police. However, to the end of the novel, Pip has discovered Magwitch’s inner nobility, and is able to forget about his external status as a criminal. Provoked by his conscience, he helps Magwitch to escape the law and the police. As Pip has learned to trust his conscience and to value Magwitch’s inner character, he has substituted a superficial value with an internal one.
Human values are seen to prevail over wealth and position. Miss Havisham’s wealth brings her no comfort at all. She uses it as a tool to upset her grasping relatives and to work her revenge on the male sex through Estella. Bentley Drummle has wealth but is a brutal and stupid bully, a worthless human being. Wemmick may talk about the importance of portable property but his greatest happiness lies in his warm human relationships and his simple pleasures in Walworth. Pip’s wealth and position bring him no good at all except for the opportunity to help Herbert. The human values of Joe and the forge, of Wemmick’s Walworth sentiments and of Herbert’s love for Clara are those, which bring happiness.
Pride and the desire for revenge are shown to be extremely destructive. Miss Havisham feeds these destructive forces by keeping around her reminders of her humiliation and betrayal. Her life is distorted. She lives in the dark and she ruins the lives of Estella and Pip through her selfish obsession.
In conclusion, the chapter prepares the reader for the novel to follow by establishing new characters; settings; themes and introducing a pivotal turn in the protagonist’s development.
The chapter introduces two new characters in the novel with are critical to the novel. These antagonists, like others Pip struggles against, redeem themselves near the end of the novel. Pip’s encounter with these new characters and setting profoundly influences his thoughts and his “expectations” of life. Moreover, Pip has openly discussed his “perpetual conflict with injustice” (Ch. 8 p. 52), which will continue until the end of the book.
The reader’s perception of the character, Pip, has identified the first steps of puberty. The realisation Pip experiences of his “vulgar appendages” (Ch. 8 p. 51) and that “he was a common labouring-boy; that [his] hands were coarse, that [his] boots were thick; that [he] had fallen in the despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks; that [he] was much more ignorant than [he] had considered [himself] last night, and generally that [he] was in a low-lived, bad way” (Ch. 8 p. 54) shows him struggling with the reality of this. It also shows Dickens’ use of sentence structure, which increases pace and emphasises vital points to the reader.
The themes are developed in conjunction with the establishment of new settings and characters. By introducing Miss Havisham and Estella, the reader is immersing into Dickens’ social satire on Victorian values. Without these antagonists, Dickens cannot make his point about the importance of love and loyalty over wealth and social positioning; especially when Estella was born with convicts as parents and Miss Havisham inheriting her wealth through the Industrial Revolution.
The social and historical background of this chapter is conveyed strongly. The reader fully acknowledges the importance of commerce and wealth relating to power and Victorian social hierarchies. This is through the introduction of Miss Havisham and Estella. By this, the reader can see the divide that existed within the society: Estella, (lowest level of society adopted by the upper-middle class), Pip (the lower classes), Pumblechoock (the middle-class) and Miss Havisham (the bourgeois class – heightening the importance of capitalism and industrialisation).
It is important to note that Dickens’ moral point would not have been so strong if he included nobility or the gentry; that is why there are none in the novel. Miss Havisham is just that – Miss, not a Lady or a Dame or a Marchioness. Titles aside, Miss Havisham is presented as an aristocratic character and perceived by other characters “as if [she] were a queen” (Ch. 29 p.193). Dickens did this only to substitute the absence of a noble character and to strengthen his moral theme.
Nonetheless, the question remains: is Great Expectations still relevant today? Undoubtedly, yes. What Dickens portrays in Great Expectations and Chapter 8 is that the moral theme of the book—Pip’s awareness that wealth and class are less significant than affection, loyalty, and inner worth. As a society today, we are bombarded with celebrity, brands and a culture where anyone can be “famous for fifteen minutes” (Andy Warhol). This introduction of this class and its stupendous wealth appeals to many people of today. This novel, this chapter tries to make the reader understand that one’s social status is in no way linked to one’s real character.