Female Models And Consequences In Great Expectations

In this paper, I criticize all the female characters of Great Expectations by looking closely at the wide differences between them and the main Victorian female models. I argue that, although apparently Mrs. Joe Gargery, Estella, Miss Havisham, Molly, and Biddy can resemble the canonical models, all of them have big differences with their patterns. Moreover, I assert that this distancing from the model is done to convey a message either positive or negative depending on the case. To finish, I conclude by claiming that getting across these alternatives inside of the Victorian feminine models was a great choice by Dickens. Thus, the prototypic examples of women's roles were broken and evolved, planting the seeds of change thanks to this distancing from the Ideal.

Literature is powerful. It is an astonishing source of freedom, ideas, and fears. Dickens is one of the masters of this art and displayed his skills in Great Expectations. Besides, the Victorian novel has the means to explore, challenge and reformulate its society’s conventions of femininity, among others. In this paper, I will examine the female characters of Great Expectations and read the meaning of the differences Dickens makes with the canonical female models.

Estella is beyond the femme fatale eventually, but not initially. She considers herself the candle which is surrounded by “moths and all sorts of ugly creatures” (328) and that can do nothing to “help it”. Her behavior is delicately inspired by Miss Havisham’s raising -that conducts her to despise men- and by her natural origins; being the daughter of a convict and a murderess awakes her sexual desires and disposition. An example of both factors is in her conversation with Pip in which the vocabulary is a key element: “Do you want me then,” said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry, look, “to deceive and entrap you?” (329).

Nevertheless, in the end, Estella evolves. After her horrible marriage, she stops being a “femme fatale” and her genuine female side comes to light. Thus, “It is appropriate that the figure walking in the garden is not another Miss Havisham, not another blighted and embittered life, but an older, warmer Estella” (Gribble, 1976: 137). Estella embodies femininity here and claims that women can be what they want to be, not only what they are supposed to.

Mrs. Joe Gargery runs for “the evil in the house”. She is an atypical woman as her role is to despotically rule at her home; not only she “cuts the bread”, but also governs the house. Dickens gets across the message that anyone can be a tyrant despite the gender - Bentley Drummle is despotic and has a detrimental effect on the atmosphere-. Moreover, it is remarkable the fact that Pip is “raised –and hurt- by a female hand” (Knoepflmacher, 1988: 82), claiming that woman can also be really tough, which is vital to make Pip sensitive (92).

Biddy is an improvement of the angel in the house. Dickens contradicts Ruskin, while the latter claims that “home is always round a woman”, Biddy is a teacher, and her role is essential for the learning of children. Furthermore, she goes beyond teaching, especially with Pip, as Knoepflmacher mentions “only at the end of the novel, when tutored by Biddy, will he assume a more mature masculine role” (1988:84).

Biddy is a wise woman that inspires peace, respect, and tenderness. She becomes a sort of Florence Nightingale that is “a nurturing female” and a “greater quiet” to Joe. She is a “ministering angel” (Ioannou, 2012: 148) for everybody, also for Pip, who acknowledges that she “will make a better world for me” (467) and that is “a guiding spirit at my side” (471). Biddy’s importance in the novel is crucial, Dickens says that women not only imply peace and fondness, but also knowledge.

Miss Havisham is an insane angel in the house. Initially, she displays “cruelty with “malignant enjoyment”: “do you feel that you have lost her?” (131), bringing confusion and fear into Pip’s life, but once her story is revealed the curtain falls and the true Miss Havisham appears. Her wedding trauma becomes comprehensible and explains her “man-hating” attitude that “deforms Estella and Pip” (Knoepflmacher, 1988: 84)

However, she cannot have a good ending. Although Dickens is well aware that women are subject to exploitation in the structure of patriarchal society, “he punishes Miss Havisham for involving others in her personal grief to destroy all men’s happiness” (Haruno, 2015: 34). In this passage, her self-consuming passion is initially expressed:

“I’ll tell you,” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, “what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self―humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter ― as I did!” (240)

Nevertheless, Dickens will go beyond in her desolation. Miss Havisham tearfully begs Pip to forgive her on her knees: “Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw in you a looking―glass that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not know what I had done. What have I done!” (399). Immediately after this, her wedding dress catches fire, and despite Pip’s desperate effort to put out the flames, she is seriously wounded and dies, still imploring his forgiveness. The fiercely burning fire may symbolize Miss Havisham’s self-consuming passion at its most. She embodies the dangers of self-isolation and represents the long-term damage men can inflict on women.

Last but not least, Molly represents the renovated gypsy woman. Although gypsies are often regarded as “people being predisposed to criminal behavior.” (Matthews, 2008: 11) and Molly has a criminal past, eventually, with the aid and compromise to Mr. Jaggers, she develops an attitude far beyond prejudices and demonstrates that these ideas about gypsies appear “when otherness is feared” (Matthews, 2008: 44).

All in all, Dickens conveys great improvements and differences in Victorian stereotypical models. Moreover, as Reynolds and Humble say “minor flaw and divergences from the ideal could become gradually incorporated into a new, more complex and multifarious model of femininity” (1993: 24). So, for instance, the development of Biddy might inspire many women to go beyond being angels in the house and become saviors of the world away from the four walls.