Great Expectations Literary Analysis

Another boring post I know, but it's the end of the week and I don't always have time to reminiscence about things I did when I was little. So have fun reading this if you want to.

Pip lives with his sister, and her husband, Joe. Pip has always wanted to be just like Joe, but then something changes; he meets a girl named Estella. Estella isn’t very fond of Pip, but Pip is in love with Estella. Estella doesn’t like him because she thinks that he is very “common”. This causes him to have Great Expectations. Pip doesn’t want to be common anymore, he wants to be part of the highest social class that he can; he wants to be a gentleman. This is one theme of Great Expectations; society and social ranks are the basis of life.

“Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took a jewel from the table, and tried its effect upon her fair bosom and against her pretty brown hair. ‘Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it well. Let me see you play cards with this boy.’

 ‘With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring-boy!’

 I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer - only it seemed so unlikely – ‘Well? You can break his heart.’

 ‘What do you play, boy?’ asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.

 ‘Nothing but beggar my neighbor, miss.’

‘Beggar him,’ said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

 It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.

So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal dress looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust.

 ‘He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!’ said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. ‘And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!’

 I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

 She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy labouring-boy.” Page 62-63, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

This passage is significant to the book because it tells you Estella’s first impression of Pip. That first impression that she made of him determined the course of the whole book. Her calling him “common” is what made him want to change; in that short amount of time he fell in love with her. If Pip had not met Estella then the book would have been completely different. Pip would not have had his Great Expectations. He would not have had a benefactor and he would not have become a gentleman.

The imagery in this passage tells you what the room looks like that Estella, Miss Havisham, and Pip are in. It describes Miss Havisham’s never worn wedding shoes and her worn wedding dress. He says “She must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust.” This describes what Miss Havisham looks like. This shows the theme because Pip enters this huge mansion of Miss Havisham and when he gets inside it is all covered in spider webs and everything is dusty and discolored. She has a high social class but once you get inside you wouldn’t entirely believe so. Her high social status allows her to waste all of these materials at her expense.

When Pip is narrating this passage of the book I think that he is kind of in wonder and sad. He is in wonder because he is in this huge unfamiliar mansion and there are these shoes that have never been worn, that used to be white, that are now yellow, that are covered in dust. I think he is sad and shocked when Estella starts to say that he is so common. He has never thought of himself like that before and it makes him desperately want to change himself.

The theme that society and social ranks are the basis of life is displayed by this passage. Pip hears what Estella says to him and immediately wants to change his social rank. He wants to be less common. This is the first thing that really sets his whole life in motion. It is kind of what leads to his getting a benefactor, because it made him want to be better.

This first meeting at Miss Havisham’s set the pace for the whole book. It changed the way Pip looked at himself and everyone around him. It gave him his Great Expectations. Society and social rank are very important in life and Estella certainly makes it so that Pip wants to be higher in society.