In Great Expectations we can see how the women who fit Dickens' ideas were rewarded with happy lives, usually in the form of marriage, like Biddy. On the other hand, the women who did not conform to these ideas were punished in one way or another. Even though not all of Dickens' attitudes reflected what was typical of the period, many did. Great Expectations is a reflection of those attitudes that were most likely encouraged by the women in his life.
The female characters physical appearance plays a big part, as it symbolised the personality of each character. All three women have different features Estella being the youngest. Mrs Joe Gargery was seen as cruel and evil to Pip and her husband, she is not seen as a good looking woman “had such prevailing redness of skin”, Dickens was trying to show that her appearance connotes her personality and that if someone is not good looking they tend to be evil. This trend is shown with Miss Havisham as well, “white hair and worn face,” Miss Havisham is also seen as an evil character as she hates all men and wishes for Estella to break Pips heart. Miss Havisham’s appearance is seen as cruel when Pip describes her “waxworks and skeletons.” She also wears her wedding dress from all those years back and her house is unchanged with the clocks set to 8.45, the time she was jilted at the altar. This is an example of gothic imagery which is dark and shows that Miss Havisham is sinister and unlike a true Victorian woman. As the story is written in first person narrative from Pip’s points of view the description of Miss Havisham is more terrifying as Pip is a young boy at the time.
On the other hand Estella is seen as beautiful is Pip’s eyes, “beautiful and self possessed” However she is described as a “statue” because she lacks the ability to show her feelings, this is effective as it is a simile. She is in some ways horrible to Pip but not as much as Miss Havisham and Mrs Joe Gargery and this is why she is not unattractive but is seen as an unreal person.
All the female characters are bad mannered in different ways; you can see this by the dialogue spoken to other characters. Mrs Joe is exceptionally rude to Pip, Joe, and Orlick. Although Orlick is helping her she still calls him a “fool.” For a Victorian woman to call a man such thing is out of ordinary, as women are meant to be respectful. She talks to Pip in a very bad manner “If it warn’t for me you’d have been to the churchyard long ago,” this shows that she regrets looking after Pip and even though he is her brother she is not kindly to him and beats him. This relates to Dickens idea of women disrupting the balance of the society as women are not meant to beat their husbands.
Estella is also disrespectful towards Pip as she repeatedly calls him “boy” which can be very insulting. She is very proud “why, he is a common labouring-boy!” she thinks that she is above everyone. This is because of the way Miss Havisham has bought her up conditioning her to hate men. Miss Havisham only speaks kindly to Estella; “Well? You can break his heart.” She is determined to use Estella as her revenge on men. Pip is Miss Havisham’s toy, someone she can allow Estella to practise on and for this reason she does not speak to Pip as harshly as any of the other female characters and she also does not deny her involvement with the money Pip receives.
All the women do not have very good relationships with men, as Dickens is trying to show that only stereotypical Victorian women have good relationships with the opposite sex. Miss Havisham is a key example of this; she does not seem do have any relationship with any one apart from Estella and Pip. As like the other characters she has trouble showing her feelings so we do not see any sign of her loving Estella. Whereas we do see her attitude towards Pip “She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her” Here we see that she is telling Pip to be kind to Estella, this is an example of manipulation she uses with Pip so Estella can break his heart.
Estella seen as a “statue” does not have relationships with any one apart from Miss Havisham, although she does not show any signs of affection she does respect Miss Havisham. Although Pip tries very hard to please her, she denies him happiness as she is taught to be cold – hearted towards men. “I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned” this is when Estella makes Pip feel bad about his appearance, from this we can see how unkind she is.
Mrs Joe is the only female character that is married, but her marriage is far from perfect. Pip sees this “I suppose that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand,” here Pip is implying that Mrs Joe beats her husband as well as Pip, for the Victorian time this was very uncommon and did not follow Dickens’ idea of a Victorian women. Her relationship with Pip is not much different, even though they are brother and sister he is treated as an outsider to her, “My sister made a dive at me” here we see that she treats Pip very badly.
The women all get their comeuppance in very different ways. Mrs Joe is beaten by Orlick for being rude to him. She is receiving he comeuppance, especially when she incites him to be a man in an attempt to emasculate him and because of this Orlick hurts her “her hearing was greatly impaired, her memory also” as a result of this Mrs Joe eventually dies. Miss Havisham gets caught on fire, which is a sign that she is going to hell “Whirl of fire blazing all about her” She realises that she has led Estella on the wrong path “I should have loved her” , but it is too late. Miss Havisham also dies.
Estella does not die, but she marries a rich man that does not love her and beats her, “I have been broken”, as a result of this she turns into a better person losing some of her beauty but now gaining humanity “The freshness of her beauty may indeed gone” Estella also did not disturb the social balance as much as Miss Havisham and Mrs Joe and therefore she survived at a cost.
A Victorian reader of the text would find that all the character getting some form of punishment is good; where as a modern audience would feel for the characters, such as Estella and Mrs Joe that were beaten and would have some sympathy compared to a Victorian reader.
Dickens shows with his female characters that every one that does bad, gets some form of punishment and that you get what you deserve.