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klenaIT'S DONE!
However, I'm over my word limit by about...no, exactly 71 words. So, anyone who can help me trim it slightly? Much obliged.
HERE IS SAID MONSTROSITY
“Dickens’s characters have no mental life. They say perfectly the thing they have to say, but they cannot be conceived as talking about anything else. They never learn, never speculate.” (Orwell). Does Great Expectations support this claim?
The idea stated in the above question, that the characters “have no mental life”, is not applicable to just Orwell, Henry James also makes a very similar point. He argues that Dickens has “created nothing but figures. He has added nothing to our understanding of human character”#, but is this an adequate criticism? To an extent, the argument hinges upon personal response of the reader to the novel and where our personal sympathies lie. Great Expectations has been classified as Bildungsroman but how could it be described as such without progression over the course of the novel? Yet it is impossible to deny that there are characters within Great Expectations that are stuck in a type of inertia, unable to advance beyond their own little worlds. Even the phrases that characters use are reiterated constantly, for example Pumblechook’s “May I? May I?” as well as references to Pip being “raised by hand” and the idea of “broken” people and hearts. This does support Orwell and James’s critique that Great Expectations is full of people who are not really alive and stuck in a kind of stasis.
Orwell continues to argue; “they say perfectly the thing they have to say…they never learn, never speculate”, a point with which I find myself disagreeing. Of course, as I have already stated, it relies upon personal perception and closer inspection of the text. Superficially, I agree, it can appear as though none of the characters have a mental life but, upon closer reading, I found that this wasn’t so. One can see that there is progression and advancement of the characters although it does vary in degrees from character to character. Some learn to a small extent and some never change and never learn but then, some have no need to.
This idea of characters having to grow and learn and advance has links to personal progression and development, attempts to make themselves better people in one form another, be it financially or in social standing or in behaviour. Yet some characters do not grow because there is no real need for them to - several have reached the full of their potential and are content. Biddy and Joe are perhaps the best cases for this point, over the course of the novel they never really change and never really aspire to either, with the exception of Biddy’s desire to better herself through education. Pip tries to encourage Biddy to teach Joe, “he is rather backward in some things”, but Biddy understands that Joe is happy as he is; “he may be too proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well and with respect.”
Both are content with their lives in ways that Pip, Miss Havisham, Magwitch and even to some extent, Estella are not. It is subject to debate whether or not Mrs. Joe is discontent but, none-the-less, she changes. She is the bane of Pip’s childhood, a figure at the beginning who takes pleasure in establishing that she had “brought me up ‘by hand’ ” and who was to “be much in the habit of laying it upon…me.”. Even in chapter 29, Magwitch’s footstep upon the stair causes Pip to connect it “with my dead sister”, even after years which emphasises just how much of an effect Mrs. Joe had upon young Pip. During his youth, there is an undeniable predictability to her behaviour, so much so that Joe and Pip have a code in reference to when she is in particularly foul form and, as even Pip notes, had a “trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-butter…that never varied.” This ritualistic behaviour draws us back to Orwell and James’s points about characters never learning and having “no mental life.” Yet, Mrs. Joe does grow emotionally after Orlick’s attack upon her however, can this truly be considered emotional growth if it wasn’t self initiated? The turning point for Mrs. Joe’s nature is that she was struck dumb after the attack, thus needing to suffer physically before she could grow as a character and a person. The attack upon her begins her redemptive process (for we cannot deny that the progress and growth in Great Expectations has a very clear link to redemption) which begins with her accepting Orlick warmly in the house:
“she manifested the greatest anxiety to be on good terms with him…She watched
his countenance as if she were particularly wishful to be assured that he took kindly
to his reception, she showed every possible desire to conciliate him”.
Her growth process and release finally ends in the arms of Joe saying “once ‘Pardon’ and once ‘Pip.’ ” In comparison to this growth, characters such as Pumblechook, Orlick and Drummle never grow but, in the cases of Orlick and Drummle, they end up stimulating the growth of others. Pumblechook, on the other hand, never learns because he associates advancement in life with increase in wealth and an elevation in personal status, almost representing the Marxist idea of commodity fetishism#.
As Orwell writes, “they say perfectly the thing they have to say” which I find speaks of Pip. Pip seeks to better himself by becoming a gentleman in order to obtain Estella despite knowing how unhappy she makes him and has hurt him; “thinking how happy I should be if I lived here with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.“ Pip equates happiness with Estella and a rise in station despite the fact that he knows Estella only hurts him and tells him honestly she cannot love; “You address nothing in my breast, you touch nothing there.” To some point, he views Estella as a commodity, something to obtain as is the status of gentleman. However Orwell argues that Dickens only succeeds portraying the upper classes “when he depicts them as mental defectives.”# Therefore, it could be argued that the society that produced the commodity, in this case the upper classes and Estella, are defective and there is a feeling of defamiliarisation due to this. Pip eventually comes to realise this after the discovery of Magwitch as his patron and moves forward by helping Herbert with his business and Magwitch with his escape which finally culminates when Pip expresses his love for Estella; “to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil.” This confession provokes a particularly strong physical reaction in Pip; “the rhapsody welled up within me, like blood from an inward wound, and gushed out”, accentuating the hold she has over Pip, especially with the juxtaposition of ‘unhappiness’ and ‘rhapsody’ used. Pip does “speculate” and he does “learn” especially once he forges an identity for himself in India, free from being Magwitch’s (and Pumblechook’s) commodity and bound by Estella and the past, therefore Pip, in himself, disproves Orwell’s argument.
Neil Gaiman said, through one of his characters; “Sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And in the end, there were, perhaps limits to how much he could let himself change,”# an idea which repeats itself throughout the course of Great Expectations. It could be applied to many characters but there are characters that end up dying, despite their growth, Miss Havisham being perhaps the most prominent. Miss Havisham is broken when we first encounter her and she has been for years. Her half-finished appearance is also symbolic of how she is not quite whole but has adjusted to this incomplete life: “I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago…had lost its lustre” and that there is “no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.” She also takes a pride in being broken when she first meets Pip: “She uttered [broken] with an eager look,…and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast to it.” Unlike other characters in the novel, Miss Havisham starts to grow after realising how she has broken Estella. She ‘created’ Estella to be a beauty and to “break their hearts my pride and hope” but instead the product was a woman who is no more than a shell; “I have no heart”, “”I have no softness there, no - sympathy - sentiment - nonsense.” After this realisation, which to an extent is an acknowledgement of her own brokenness, and after she is aflame, she repents; “What have I done!”, “when she first came, I meant to save her from misery like mine” and “write under my name, ‘I forgive her!’”
Estella is the last major protagonist to debate whether or not change, and she is possibly the hardest, especially in relation to the ending. Estella accepts that she is a product of Miss. Havisham’s; “I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not min, but the two together make me” but is honest about her standing and how she could be expected to love when she was taught to “turn against it, for it had blighted you”. Estella’s growth comes at the very end of Great Expectations, the very last to progress, but is it believable? If readers accept the ending, then it is, but is the manner in which Estella is forced to grow satisfying? It comes down, once again, to personal perception, and my perception was that, considering all the others in the novel that grew through suffering, yes I could accept this progress from her.
Thus I have found myself disagreeing with Orwell and James’s critiques of Great Expectations. Quite a large proportion of the characters that need to experience and learn do so and that just because the characters do not have explicit epiphanies or end up back where they begun their journeys does not mean that there is no “mental life” to them or that they “never learn, never speculate.” I hope to some degree I have managed to argue against this point, that the characters of Great Expectations are people who suffer and repent and attempt to better themselves and are not just “figures” as James wrote of them. Perhaps Estella says it best when she says: “I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
Just the bibliography to be done. :D
<3 WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~!!!!!
However, I'm over my word limit by about...no, exactly 71 words. So, anyone who can help me trim it slightly? Much obliged.
HERE IS SAID MONSTROSITY
“Dickens’s characters have no mental life. They say perfectly the thing they have to say, but they cannot be conceived as talking about anything else. They never learn, never speculate.” (Orwell). Does Great Expectations support this claim?
The idea stated in the above question, that the characters “have no mental life”, is not applicable to just Orwell, Henry James also makes a very similar point. He argues that Dickens has “created nothing but figures. He has added nothing to our understanding of human character”#, but is this an adequate criticism? To an extent, the argument hinges upon personal response of the reader to the novel and where our personal sympathies lie. Great Expectations has been classified as Bildungsroman but how could it be described as such without progression over the course of the novel? Yet it is impossible to deny that there are characters within Great Expectations that are stuck in a type of inertia, unable to advance beyond their own little worlds. Even the phrases that characters use are reiterated constantly, for example Pumblechook’s “May I? May I?” as well as references to Pip being “raised by hand” and the idea of “broken” people and hearts. This does support Orwell and James’s critique that Great Expectations is full of people who are not really alive and stuck in a kind of stasis.
Orwell continues to argue; “they say perfectly the thing they have to say…they never learn, never speculate”, a point with which I find myself disagreeing. Of course, as I have already stated, it relies upon personal perception and closer inspection of the text. Superficially, I agree, it can appear as though none of the characters have a mental life but, upon closer reading, I found that this wasn’t so. One can see that there is progression and advancement of the characters although it does vary in degrees from character to character. Some learn to a small extent and some never change and never learn but then, some have no need to.
This idea of characters having to grow and learn and advance has links to personal progression and development, attempts to make themselves better people in one form another, be it financially or in social standing or in behaviour. Yet some characters do not grow because there is no real need for them to - several have reached the full of their potential and are content. Biddy and Joe are perhaps the best cases for this point, over the course of the novel they never really change and never really aspire to either, with the exception of Biddy’s desire to better herself through education. Pip tries to encourage Biddy to teach Joe, “he is rather backward in some things”, but Biddy understands that Joe is happy as he is; “he may be too proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well and with respect.”
Both are content with their lives in ways that Pip, Miss Havisham, Magwitch and even to some extent, Estella are not. It is subject to debate whether or not Mrs. Joe is discontent but, none-the-less, she changes. She is the bane of Pip’s childhood, a figure at the beginning who takes pleasure in establishing that she had “brought me up ‘by hand’ ” and who was to “be much in the habit of laying it upon…me.”. Even in chapter 29, Magwitch’s footstep upon the stair causes Pip to connect it “with my dead sister”, even after years which emphasises just how much of an effect Mrs. Joe had upon young Pip. During his youth, there is an undeniable predictability to her behaviour, so much so that Joe and Pip have a code in reference to when she is in particularly foul form and, as even Pip notes, had a “trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-butter…that never varied.” This ritualistic behaviour draws us back to Orwell and James’s points about characters never learning and having “no mental life.” Yet, Mrs. Joe does grow emotionally after Orlick’s attack upon her however, can this truly be considered emotional growth if it wasn’t self initiated? The turning point for Mrs. Joe’s nature is that she was struck dumb after the attack, thus needing to suffer physically before she could grow as a character and a person. The attack upon her begins her redemptive process (for we cannot deny that the progress and growth in Great Expectations has a very clear link to redemption) which begins with her accepting Orlick warmly in the house:
“she manifested the greatest anxiety to be on good terms with him…She watched
his countenance as if she were particularly wishful to be assured that he took kindly
to his reception, she showed every possible desire to conciliate him”.
Her growth process and release finally ends in the arms of Joe saying “once ‘Pardon’ and once ‘Pip.’ ” In comparison to this growth, characters such as Pumblechook, Orlick and Drummle never grow but, in the cases of Orlick and Drummle, they end up stimulating the growth of others. Pumblechook, on the other hand, never learns because he associates advancement in life with increase in wealth and an elevation in personal status, almost representing the Marxist idea of commodity fetishism#.
As Orwell writes, “they say perfectly the thing they have to say” which I find speaks of Pip. Pip seeks to better himself by becoming a gentleman in order to obtain Estella despite knowing how unhappy she makes him and has hurt him; “thinking how happy I should be if I lived here with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.“ Pip equates happiness with Estella and a rise in station despite the fact that he knows Estella only hurts him and tells him honestly she cannot love; “You address nothing in my breast, you touch nothing there.” To some point, he views Estella as a commodity, something to obtain as is the status of gentleman. However Orwell argues that Dickens only succeeds portraying the upper classes “when he depicts them as mental defectives.”# Therefore, it could be argued that the society that produced the commodity, in this case the upper classes and Estella, are defective and there is a feeling of defamiliarisation due to this. Pip eventually comes to realise this after the discovery of Magwitch as his patron and moves forward by helping Herbert with his business and Magwitch with his escape which finally culminates when Pip expresses his love for Estella; “to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil.” This confession provokes a particularly strong physical reaction in Pip; “the rhapsody welled up within me, like blood from an inward wound, and gushed out”, accentuating the hold she has over Pip, especially with the juxtaposition of ‘unhappiness’ and ‘rhapsody’ used. Pip does “speculate” and he does “learn” especially once he forges an identity for himself in India, free from being Magwitch’s (and Pumblechook’s) commodity and bound by Estella and the past, therefore Pip, in himself, disproves Orwell’s argument.
Neil Gaiman said, through one of his characters; “Sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And in the end, there were, perhaps limits to how much he could let himself change,”# an idea which repeats itself throughout the course of Great Expectations. It could be applied to many characters but there are characters that end up dying, despite their growth, Miss Havisham being perhaps the most prominent. Miss Havisham is broken when we first encounter her and she has been for years. Her half-finished appearance is also symbolic of how she is not quite whole but has adjusted to this incomplete life: “I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago…had lost its lustre” and that there is “no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.” She also takes a pride in being broken when she first meets Pip: “She uttered [broken] with an eager look,…and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast to it.” Unlike other characters in the novel, Miss Havisham starts to grow after realising how she has broken Estella. She ‘created’ Estella to be a beauty and to “break their hearts my pride and hope” but instead the product was a woman who is no more than a shell; “I have no heart”, “”I have no softness there, no - sympathy - sentiment - nonsense.” After this realisation, which to an extent is an acknowledgement of her own brokenness, and after she is aflame, she repents; “What have I done!”, “when she first came, I meant to save her from misery like mine” and “write under my name, ‘I forgive her!’”
Estella is the last major protagonist to debate whether or not change, and she is possibly the hardest, especially in relation to the ending. Estella accepts that she is a product of Miss. Havisham’s; “I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not min, but the two together make me” but is honest about her standing and how she could be expected to love when she was taught to “turn against it, for it had blighted you”. Estella’s growth comes at the very end of Great Expectations, the very last to progress, but is it believable? If readers accept the ending, then it is, but is the manner in which Estella is forced to grow satisfying? It comes down, once again, to personal perception, and my perception was that, considering all the others in the novel that grew through suffering, yes I could accept this progress from her.
Thus I have found myself disagreeing with Orwell and James’s critiques of Great Expectations. Quite a large proportion of the characters that need to experience and learn do so and that just because the characters do not have explicit epiphanies or end up back where they begun their journeys does not mean that there is no “mental life” to them or that they “never learn, never speculate.” I hope to some degree I have managed to argue against this point, that the characters of Great Expectations are people who suffer and repent and attempt to better themselves and are not just “figures” as James wrote of them. Perhaps Estella says it best when she says: “I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
Just the bibliography to be done. :D
<3 WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~!!!!!
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 10:45 am (UTC)But if you just want to edit out actual content...I have no idea. It's too early in the morning to think about.