Victorian gender roles and Dickens’s image of women as represented in the female characters in "Great Expectations"

Universität Potsdam, Institut für Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Seminar: Great Expectations and Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Victorian gender roles and Dickens’s image of women as
represented in the female characters in "Great Expectations"

by

Anja Dinter

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

1. A short summary of Great Expectations 4

2. Victorian construction of gender 5

3. Dickens’s image of women 8

4. The female characters in Great Expectations 12

4.1 Estella 12
4.2 Mrs. Joe Gargery 14
4.3 Miss Havisham 16
4.4 Biddy 19

Bibliography 20

Introduction

The following work is an analysis of the female characters in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations especially with regard to Victorian gender constructions and Dickens’s image of women. Dickens’s biography and the depiction of very diverse female characters in his novels stimulated the idea of a closer analysis.
First of all, a short summary of Great Expectations is provided. Then, the Victorian construction of gender will be discussed. As will be shown, a very strict ideology regarding gender roles existed during the Victorian age. Obviously, Dickens must have been influenced by the ideas of his contemporaries which should then be presented in the novel. Another focus will be on how his relationships to women influenced his image of women and also, consequently, the depiction of his female characters in Great Expectations.
Finally the female characters, with reference to Victorian gender roles and Dickens’s image of women, will be analyzed in greater detail. The focus is on four women who I believe to be the most important female characters in the novel and powerful representatives of the author’s image of women and Victorian gender construction.

1. A short summary of Great Expectations

The story opens with the narrator, Pip, visiting the graveyard in which his parents and siblings are buried. Suddenly Pip is terrified by the runaway convict Magwitch who demands food and a file to free him from his leg iron. To steal what he was told, Pip runs home to his sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, and his adoptive father, Joe Gargery, a blacksmith.
Not long after this, Pip is invited by the wealthy and eccentric Miss Havisham to visit her and ‘play’. “Jilted in love years previously, she has had her clocks stopped and shut herself up, attired in her wedding dress, in rooms in Satis House.”¹ Pip’s role at Miss Havisham’s turns out to be as a toy for her adopted daughter Estella. Miss Havisham is raising the beautiful young girl to break men’s hearts in revenge for her own broken heart. Pip falls in love with Estella, who scorns Pip, and becomes self-conscious about his low social class and unpolished manners. From then on he is dreaming of becoming a gentleman.²
One day a London lawyer, Jaggers, comes to Pip’s village and announces that he has ‘great expectations’ of wealth and social advancement from an unknown benefactor, whom Pip supposes to be Miss Havisham.³ Joe releases Pip from his apprenticeship at the forge and he goes to London. In the mean time, one night, Mrs. Joe Gargery is being attacked by Orlick, leaving her dumb and paralyzed. In London, Pip lives beyond his allowances, turns his back on Joe and Biddy – a young woman who helps to take care of Mrs. Joe, who will later marry Joe – because he is embarrassed of his roots, and is frustrated in love when Estella favors Bentley Drummle.
Magwitch reappears one night and reveals himself to be Pip’s benefactor. Pip feels sick at heart when he realizes that his fortune didn’t come from Miss Havisham after all, and there’s no plan to marry him to Estella.⁴ Pip wants to help Magwitch and bring him abroad since, as a returned transportation convict, he is liable to execution if recaptured. Pip returns to Satis House to ask for money to set his friend Herbert up in business. Miss Havisham’s dress catches fire and Pip is burned putting out the flames. Asking for Pip’s forgiveness, Miss Havisham dies. Pip finds out that Estella is the daughter of Magwitch and the murderess Molly, whom Jaggers, having defended from the charge, maintains as a housekeeper.⁵
Magwitch’s escape fails and he’s supposed to be hanged but dies first. Pip, whose feelings for Magwitch have undergone a complete change, was at his side during his struggle with death. More and more Pip seems to realize what’s really important in his life and what being a gentleman should be all about.
He returns to the forge, wanting to propose to Biddy, whose true character he’s discovered, to find that she has married Joe. So, Pip joins Herbert in his shipping firm in Egypt and, years later, returns to England and meets Estella, now the widow of Drummle.⁶ It remains a matter of debate if Estella and Pip, in the end, walk towards a future together.

2. Victorian construction of gender

[...]

1 Schlicke 1999, p. 263

2 cf. Hughes, 1984, p. 6

3 cf. Schlicke 1999, p. 263

4 cf. Hughes 1984, p. 7-8

5 cf. Schlicke 1999, p. 263

6 cf. Schlicke 1999, p. 263