Dickens use of repeating the word ‘Hammer’ or ‘Hammering’ enforces on us the idea that Joe was beaten regularly. However, even though Joe knows his father beat him, he still provided a reason for it, saying it was due to the drink. Perhaps because of Joes past and his reluctance to be like his father, this has lead to Joe being weak with women and letting them walk over him. This makes us feel merciful towards Joe and hope he gets a better life.
Due to Joe’s past, he didn’t get any schooling as a child. His father would go after him and his mother when they had left. Joe would be in school and his father would take him and his mother home and beat them. Joe then wouldn’t be enrolled again in school.
“Consequence, my mother and me, we ran away from my father, several times; and then my mother, she’d go out to work, and she’d say ‘Joe,’ she’d say, ‘now, please God, you shall have some schooling- child’ and she’d put me to school. But my father were that good in hart that he couldn’t abear to be without us. So, he’d come with a most tremenjous crowd and make such a row at the doors of the houses where we was, that they used to give us up to him. And then he took us home and hammered us. Which you see, Pip,” said Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of the fire, and looking at me, “were a draw-back on my learning.
This extract from page 46 reinforces the fact that Joe wanted to learn, but yet again, his father took it from him.
Joe’s father died and not long after so did his mother. Joe sits and tells Pip of what were his intentions to have a poem engraved on his father’s tombstone, yet after his mother died all the money was for his mother.
“ ‘… It were my intentions to have had it cut over him; but poetry costs money, but it how you will, small or large, and it were not done. Not to mention bearers, all the money that could be spared were wanted for my mother. She were in poor elth, and quite broke. She weren’t long following, poor soul, and her share of peace came round at last.’ Joe’s blue eyes turned a little watery…”
Thinking back about his mother brings Joe to tears. This evokes on us the impression that Joe is lonely yet compassionate, and that as he has a wife he is clinging on to what he has left so he isn’t lonely.
Introduced in chapter eight is Miss Havisham. Pip is standing outside Miss Havisham’s house when we first get a glimpse of what her character is like. A lot of Dickens novels written in the 19th century had one thing in common. The characters personality was shown in their house. Miss Havisham’s house for instance is described on page 55.
“ … We came to Miss Havisham’s house, which was of old brick, and dismal, and has a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred.
From reading this paragraph, Dickens has already described Miss Havisham to a great extent. ‘Old brick’ This is used to show that Miss Havisham has passed her youth and is getting on in her life. ‘Many iron bars to it’ This is used to show that Miss Havisham is a recluse. She doesn’t ever leave and the usage of iron bars makes the house seem like a prison keeping her in there. “There was a court-yard in front, and that was barred; so, we had to wait…until someone should come to open it.” This adds to the eeriness of the house as well, but also reflects Miss Havisham’s character. Old. Deserted. Alone.
Entering the house, Pip follows Estella, who collected him, to Miss Havisham’s room. Her room is quite big and grand, “And found myself in a pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles…in it was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass, and that I made out a first sight to be a fine lady’s dressing-table.” This description makes us feel that Miss Havisham is a fine woman, who is upper class.
In Great Expectations, Dickens depicts an eccentric character in Miss Havisham. The unmarried Miss Havisham seems to conform to and deny the sociel standards of unmarried women in the Victorian Times. Spinsters and old maids had particular attitudes in these times. Miss Havisham, along with several other female characters in the novel, shows the fact that unmarried women were growing in their number.
Miss Havisham seems a particularly creepy figure as she sits at a in an old, yellowed wedding gown. The room seems to be frozen in time, and Miss Havisham, dressed as a bride, looks more like a corpse. When Pip sees Miss Havisham, she is still wearing her wedding dress.
“She was dressed in rich materials – satins, and lace, and silks – all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white vail, dependant from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white.”
Making Miss Havisham wear her wedding dress at first gives us the impression that she maybe is meant to be getting married that day. However we do soon find out that she has been in her dress for years. This shows us that Miss Havisham is depressed.
Throughout the next 10 or so chapters, Pip leaves and moves to London with the money from an unknown source. Pip becomes a gentleman living with his friend.
In Chapter 27, Joe Gargery comes to visit Pip in London. After Pip reads the letter from Joe’s new wife, he then says “Let me confess exactly with what feelings I looked forward to Joes coming. Not with pleasure...” This sentence shows us that Pip had grown up and matured also. And even become a snob. Pip now looks down on Joe as he is common and not a gentleman like Pip. These few lines spoken by Pip start to make us feel a bit distant from him as he is now so different, it’s as if the reader doesn’t know this man.
When Pip arrives, he greets Joe saying “How are you Joe?” to which Joe replies “Pip, how air you Pip?” Joe's speech is a garbled attempt at sounding over-eloquent. It could read as if Joe is mimicking Pip, trying to say that he is posh, however, I think that all Joe is trying to do is act more upper class than he is infront of Pip so as not to embarrass him. However, he does. Joe then says “Us two being alone now sir-” as to which Pip interrupts. By calling Pip "Sir," and he seems to use his hat to divert his nervous energy, and it's constantly falling on the floor. This passage makes the reader feel uncomfortable for both Pip and Joe as the use of dramatic irony sets in. We know what both the characters are thinking and feeling, yet they do not.
In Chapter 48, we read that Pip has to travel back to meet Miss Havisham. She has requested to meet with him. In chapter 49 Pip arrives at Miss Havisham’s house. On of the first few lines we read are after Miss Havisham say “Thank you” to Pip and we read that Pip “remarked a new expression on her face, as if she were afraid of me.” This shows automatically that there has been a role reversal. Earlier Pip had been weak and timid and now it is as if Miss Havisham is the child.
The cruelty of her actions seems to have finally hit her, and she breaks down, crying "What have I done!" and even falls to her knees before Pip and begs his forgiveness.
Dickens uses Miss Havisham in this Chapter as if she had ‘seen the light’ and wants to repent her sins. At first in the book we don’t really like her, but now as she repents we grow fond of her and do indeed like her.
Pip leaves the room, though returns a few minutes later on some odd presentiment. Just as he walks through the door, the old woman's dress catches fire, and Pip wrestles her to the ground to smother the flames. Both of them are burned, Miss Havisham so badly that she is wrapped in gauze and laid out on the bridal table, in a sort of hideous echo of her normal white bridal gear. The doctor warns that there is danger of her going into nervous shock.
To conclude. Charles Dickens, one of the great writers of his time, uses many different techniques in Great Expectations to manipulate the reader’s feelings towards a character, such as repetition, confusion, the use of colours and dramatic irony. He uses his techniques to make us feel sorry for the ‘bad’ characters yet he controls this so that by the end we do Infact like them, which is why he is know worldwide for his work today.
By Jack Cooper
