Death in Lolly Willowes

"The word dropped into her mind like a pebble thrown into a pond. She had heard it so often, and now she heard in once more. The same waves of thought circled outwards, waves of startled thought spreading out on all sides, rocking the shadows of familiar things, blurring the steadfast pictures of trees and clouds, circling outward one after the other, each wave more listless, more imperceptible than the last, until the pond was still again. (219)

From this passage, occurring immediately after Satan says 'death' to Lolly, we can envision Lolly's mind being the pond and the pebble representing death. Satan wants to hunt Lolly and protect her. This puts her in the same position as all the women she met in London who have accepted the value system she has been trying to escape.

Death has been symbolized throughout the novel in the form of a stuffed bird and the leaves in autumn. It is seen as a cycle with the pond becoming still after the ripples and spring arriving after winter. The death of Lolly's freedom came when her father died. The finality of death is represented also by Sybil and Caroline. By leaving London, Lolly feels that she is again awake after sleeping for 20 years. Leaving London is the feminist equivalent of running from death. By choosing to behave neither aggressively or passively, Lolly can achieve her goals. One of the most important lessons from her encounters with death is that she learns to open herself up to nature by understanding it. Through this openness, she allows herself to be changed in order to live with nature. Lolly also finds autonomy and learns that she must be assertive to survive. She becomes still after the ripples...and she lives.

Questions of Sexuality in Lolly Willowes

Sylvia Townsend Warner's personal life and lifelong relationship with Valentine Ackland leads critics and Amazon.com shoppers to classify Lolly Willowes as a lesbian novel. I found this curious because, in my own reading of Lolly Willowes, nothing lead me to believe that either Laura or the novel by itself were lesbian in nature. 

It is true that Laura rejects marriage and the typical female role of the time, but she doesn't turn towards any other, more radical lifestyles. The unmarried "forward thinkers" of her time were creating art and making names for themselves, but joining them never even occurs to Lolly. She feels oppressed by masculine energy equates getting married to her death. Even so, the way that Laura rejects the few men that try to win her hand appears to be because she can't think of a single reason to get married, not because she has an overwhelming objection.

In Great Mop, Laura is presented with a view of open-ended, freewheeling sexuality. Dancing half naked with an entire village makes her feel exactly the same way that attending one of society's formal balls: awkward and out of place. She turns away from the sabbath just as she turns away from married life.

Laura Willowes shows no desire either for men or women throughout her life. Why, then, is this considered a lesbian novel? 

She's a WITCH!

Although the cover explicitly shows large outlines of witches on broomsticks, I was never really sold on the idea that Laura was going to be supernatural. I figured that Warner wanted to play off of the idea of the Salem Witch Trials persecuting women who did not follow societal norms. Even when she states she is now a witch after the kitten, obviously sent by the Devil, scratches her I still thought it was just Laura’s imagination running wild (similar to the werewolf story). I saw it as a more tangible way to show Laura’s growing independence and how society has hindered her thinking, giving it a negative connotation of witchery. I was unsure whether Laura seriously thought she was a witch or was somewhat parodying the idea as Warner presumably meant to.

After reading father and seeing how the whole town was involved in witchcraft and there was an actual Devil in charge of them, I realized I was imposing too many of my own thoughts on the text. Just as many of us wanted a larger feminist stand that the beginning of the book prefaced with Caroline, I expected more subversive tones of witchcraft and the supernatural after seeing such blatantly stereotypical figures on the cover (I suppose I thought they were going for irony). While just reading it at face-value, I found it hard to discover the meaning of the novel after our original idea of feminism is somewhat shattered by Laura’s liberation coming from her subservience to a male Devil.

The Devil however is “chill” as Danielle said. He is “undesiring” and has “indifferent ownership” of her creating a striking contrast with how Titus viewed his ownership of the land (symbolizing men’s ownership and “way of loving” in general). He wants to control and create it through his illustrations while the Devil allows Laura to make her own decisions. Titus also shows his desire for it when he mentions “I should like to stroke it” while the Devil is truly indifferent and leaves Laura to collect more souls. Although Laura’s “escape” from the expectations of femininity is through a traditional male rescuing female dynamic, it is still rather effective since they do not have a traditional relationship.

Passivity in Lolly Willowes

The problem with Lolly Willowes is that I was never able to reach beneath the surface of the novel. The writing is very sparse, as we discussed, but I feel like there is also very little character development. Lolly herself remains very static, from her life in the city to that in Great Mop; even as exciting and interesting things happen in her life, that is all they do: happen in her life. She barely reacts, and when she does, it is with almost unfailingly simple acceptance. Even when she considers taking a more active role, such as when she is trying to find a way to remove Titus from her life, it is from a very removed standpoint. She assumes the Devil will do the job for her, and even if he does not, her thoughts on Titus are not those of a relation or even an acquaintance. She simply thinks he should be gone, and in a very distant way wonders how that might come about. 

I had a hard time actually liking Laura. It wasn't that she did anything I disliked, or that she bored me, exactly, it was just that there never seemed to be anything there to like. Following her life was interesting, and I was fascinated by the character of Satan (who strikes me as the only one really worth looking closely at, considering how different he is from the stereotypical Milton-esque Satan we see everywhere in literature), but Laura herself just came off like a tour guide, there only to be our way around a novel that does not really need her. Everything happens to Laura, except for her move to Great Mop, which is the only real initiative she takes.

Feminism in Lolly Willowes (or lack thereof?)

Jumping off of the discussion we had about how Lolly Willowes fits into a feminist framework, during the first section of the book, I thought that the novel seemed to have a bit of a feminist theme running through it. The most salient piece of evidence that I can point to in support of that idea is the total ambivalence that Lolly shows toward the idea of marriage. She is not eager to marry, though her family may be eager to see her married, and she continually rebuffs any potential husband candidates that her family sends her way. Still, she was largely passive, letting herself be shuttled around from family member to family member, and when she made the decision to move to Great Mop, I thought that the development of the novel was going to show Lolly moving from passivity to activity, from allowing things to happen to her to making things happen (which fit in with my idea of a contemporary feminist theme). However, that is not what happened at the novel’s end. Instead, Lolly is finally free from her familial obligations, but she has been freed by a man (Satan).

At first, when I read the ending, I was a little frustrated. I had wanted Lolly to take on a more active role, instead of passively letting things happen to her. I wanted, in short, a story with a contemporary feministic bent. But when I thought about it more, I realized that I had pushed my own, contemporary reading on a book written over 80 years ago, and that probably wasn’t totally fair. In 2009, our ideas are very different from the prevailing ideas of the 1920s, and sometimes it’s hard to remember that. In fact, looking back at some of the things that Lolly says at the end of the book, it does seem somewhat progressive for the time period. When Lolly is talking to Satan, she says that she (and others) want to be witches not because they want to do trivial things like black magic or fly on brooms, but because they want to have a life to themselves, separate from everything else. She says that they want to be able to have their own thoughts, and do whatever they feel like doing day in and day out. Essentially, they want to have their own identity, not an identity that ties them to someone else (so-and-so’s aunt, so-and-so’s mother, so-and-so’s wife). I’m not too well-versed on the state of women’s rights in the 1920s, but to my understanding, women during that time were largely defined by their relationship to others, so in that respect, Lolly Willowes could be seen as possessing some feminist ideals (at least, for the time). Of course, the idea that women had to sell their soul to Satan to get this separate identity doesn’t lend as much support to a feministic reading of the novel.

Lollygagging Pipsqueak

The differences writing style and character develpment in Great Expectations are obviously quite numerous. This is my attempt to pinpoint some of them.

The most mentioned difference has been the way in which Dickens and Miller describe the events and circumstances of the story. This distinction is commonly made in the form of observation that Dickens delves in great depth into careful depiction of a scene while Miller minimizes the words she uses for the purposes of just description and focuses instead on moving the story forward.

However, what has not really been mentioned is that both authors use their techniques not to make the novels "easier reads", but rather to hide information from the reader until they choose to have it revealed. In Great Expectations for instance, Dickens will often introduce a questionable situation to the reader, yet because he effectively distracts the reader from questioning what is going on by providing a mountain of lengthy descriptive language. For instance, Miss Havisham is introduced for the first time in page after page of description about the yellowness of her room, the broken clocks, the cake, the cobwebs on the walls, the dust covering everything, and so on. It is not until (what feels like) two hundred pages later that we actually learn why the house is the way it is; before Herbert explains the story, the reader merely takes the state of the house and its inhabitant at face value, assuming they had always been as they are. In another example that was pointed out in class, when Pip receives news in London that his sister has died, our reaction was to realize that we had forgotten she was alive, even though she had been of pivotal importance in the first twenty chapters of the book.

In Lolly Willowes, on the other hand, Miller uses the opposite approach. Although she uses only one word where Dickens might use a hundred, it is still incredibly easy for the reader to forget information, even while they are reading it. For example, when we were asked in class what was laid down for Lolly at her birth, and how it was different from what was laid down for her brothers, we had to look back in the book just to remember that the information was given. The same was true for the question of what exactly Lolly had said to Mr. Arbuthnot in conversation with him, and what Caroline and Henry's reaction had been.

Whether it is Dickens burying the reader with pages of description to hide the lack or existance of one sentence of vital information, or Millers using only a single word from which the reader must draw an entire scene, the effect is the same, and the resulting mastery of control that each writer has over their readers is truly astonishing.

The Folly of Being Lolly Willowes

Sylvia Townsend Warner shows her skill in the deep understanding of human nature in the creation of Lolly. In the first third of the book, the reader understands that Lolly will have to overcome her family's expectations and those of society to find her true self. Warner's knowledge of human nature and their behaviors reveal that a woman raised in such extraordinary circumstances would turn out to be nothing less that extraordinary, which isn't desired by society during this period in history. Warner clearly details why someone like Lolly would have difficulty fitting into society and would not be marriage material.

Until her father dies, Laura had leads a relatively unsupervised existence. Neither of her parents or caregivers insured that she was educated. Her mother being 'invalidish' and generally unavailable, could not have posed has a suitable role model for Lolly. "Everard was a lover of womankind: he greatly desire a daughter, and when he got one she was all the dearer for coming when he had almost given up hope of her." (Warner, 15) Being so prized by her father permitted her the privilege of experiencing certain freedoms that not many other women of that period enjoyed, but some of those privileges were detrimental.

Laura was not raised in the typical fashion for wealthy women born in the late 1800's, in rural England. Laura was taught to throw and catch by her much older brothers. She was often included in their role-playing games, although she generally played the damsel-in-distress role. Laura learned early that there were different options in life for men, than women. Laura lived in relative freedom on the grounds of her family home until her father's death. What she didn't not learn were the much needed social graces of the privileged class.

The conversations at the tea parties and balls in which Lolly had little to contribute had given others the impression that she was not very bright. Her tendency to remain quiet at gatherings and a physical appearance that made her look older than she was also contributed to her spinster status. At a time where very fair-skinned women were valued, Laura coloring was not so agreeable. "Laura was of a middle height, thin, and rather pointed. Her skin was brown, inclining to sallowness; it seemed browner still by contrast with her eyes, which were that shade of gray...(that) seems only a much diluted black." (Warner, 25) Only Lolly's father and her brothers would have considered her pretty. She was never taught to feign interest in subjects that truly did not matter or how to catch the attention of a young man. Unskilled in such social graces in a very proper and antiquated England would have been social annihilation.

Lollipops

After three weeks of reading and analyzing Dickens, moving to Lolly Willows is a relief. The dark, depressing voice of death that is omnipresent in Great Expectations is now replaced by a more playful and colorful tone in Lolly Willows. It seems as though we have made the transition from gloomy graveyards to happy ones.

Despite the obvious differences between Lolly Willows and Great Expectations, there are many deep set similarities. So far, one of the most prominent is the way that the main character stands out from his/her surroundings. Both Pip and Laura lose parents, both are either unable or unwilling to marry, and both have significantly lacking social lives. In a similar manner, they seem incapable of living in the world as “normal” people.

That said, Pip in Great Expectations makes himself an outsider because of his ambitions to become a member of the upper class, mainly so that he could marry Estella. In stark contrast, one of the strongest causes of Laura's outsider status so far is her refusal to marry or to be "trained" to be a proper wife. Instead, she chooses to place her joy in the peaceful, unaltered world. She is more than content with the relationships she is given, at least as long as her father is alive. While Pip needs to distance himself from Joe and Mrs. Joe in order to reach his goal, in Laura's ideal world she would need no one other than her family.

It will be interesting to see how Lolly Willows develops-whether Laura is able to find a way to fit into the world as Pip seemed to do, or if she will become progressively more outside as she pursues her own path.

Organic and Steel in London

One thing that struck me about Lolly Willowes was the form that her defiance of London and her family takes in the first few pages of the second part of the book and the way that Lolly realizes the extent of her displacement. Everything in London rattles and clashes, and the city is harsh and cold and sharp. The mechancal nature of London is emphasized in the "iron noises" of the household and the "demolition" at the end of the day. Even the life in London in mechanized- the lawyers have mousetrap mouths and the flowers are prepared in exactly the same way every day with tools that are laid out in an unwavering and organized manner. She realizes that she will never be as efficient as Caroline or as at home as she is in this harsh city environment even as she settles in. London even physically harms Lolly: the water makes her hands raw and red and she becomes susceptible to chilblains.

Lolly rebells against this cold, impersonal efficiency with her floral extravagances. Her personal space riots with flowers in winter that she collects from around the world. She brings chaotic life into her own space to ward off the environment of the city.

It isn't until she walks in on a slice of nature in the middle of the city that she realizes just how much pain she is in. The greengrocer's shop, with its casual arrangement and vegetable heaps, speaks to Lolly of human hands and changing seasons. Lolly was used to the wild organic nature of the county and the cold steel of the city enjoying the separation of travel, and the shock of juxtaposition sends Lolly's mind freewheeling into the possibility of a different life.

Language and Outsider Status

The first striking difference between the two novels is the use of language. In Great Expectations, Dickens uses Pip’s voice to give long explanations of his feelings that often explicitly show the reader the meaning he interprets. In Lolly Willows, Warner uses a third person omniscient narrator that employs short, terse sentences. Even the large type enhances this “choppy” (as Paul said) structure while the spacing highlights the sparse language. This forces the reader to look carefully into each word that is chosen in order to grasp the meaning of the text. Therefore, if one is just surface reading, it may seem very dry compared to Dickens’ more flowery language. Danielle explained Warner’s writing as “economical” since although not many words are used, her vocabulary seems very precise and each word seems to serve a distinct purpose.

These different styles influence how the reader views the character’s outsider status. We see Pip’s inner feelings of loneliness (like his first night of his “bright fortunes” alone in his room) and of how he responds to other people isolating him (rumpling his hair, being stared at, etc). Since we are not getting the other novel through Laura’s perspective we must rely on the few thoughts the omniscient narrator gives us and the reactions of those around her. Warner’s style then calls for the reader to become more involved.

At Lady Place, Laura is very content with her life managing the house, reading at her leisure, and exploring the land for interesting herbs and plants to brew home remedies with. Though she does not consider herself an outsider, the reader can see that others do. Her differences as a female are first addressed by her father’s special treatment of her and the duties later imposed on her by the townswomen’s insistence that she go to school to become a lady and find a husband. This does not really affect Laura because she still has the freedom to do what she enjoys.

This freedom is first threatened when Sybil comes in as the matriarch if the house and is later destroyed when she is sent to London to live with Henry and Caroline. In London, we see Laura start to identify as an outsider since she cannot maintain the identity she had at Lady Place. She cannot adequately help around the house since she is in Caroline’s domain, cannot peruse her own hobbies since she is always with Caroline doing “useful” needlework and embroidery, and cannot even maintain her name as she becomes simply “Aunt Lolly.” The addition of Aunt seems to emphasize that she is only a relation to Henry and not her own person. Lolly is a nickname that only accounts for only a portion of the name. It could then be seen that “Aunt Lolly” becomes a character that is only a portion of Laura.

Laura's (Lolly's) Outsider Status

I’m not sure if we have a blog post due today, but I figured I would write one just in case. While I was reading Lolly Willowes, I began thinking about how Laura is presented as an outsider in the book, and I found myself comparing her outsider status to Pip’s in Great Expectations. To me, the crucial, defining difference between the two was that while Pip’s outsider status was largely due to factors of circumstance, Laura seems to create her station as an outsider. Pip aspires to fit in – the bulk of his concerns seem to focus on societal perception of him. Laura, on the other hand, seems to have a more internal focus. She ignores the prevailing public notion that a woman of a certain age should get married, even when there are many around her (including family) who try to urge her to do so. She wants to continue living with her father in Lady Place, and I get the sense that had her father not died, she would have continued to do so until her own death, because she does not seem very connected to Caroline and Henry nor overly eager about living with them. I found it interesting when she talked about returning to Lady Place to visit James after her father’s death, saying that being back at the place she used to call home was like having a “clear sheet of glass” between herself and her surroundings. This, I think, really highlights the idea that with her father gone, she is more of an outsider than ever before – living with people she doesn’t really relate to, and being told to do things she doesn’t really want to do.

Judgement of Pip and Havisham

I believe that it is very easy to be unfairly critical of the characters in Great Expectations in general. We often hold these characters up to how we think an ideal character should be, and we forget that Dickens has intentionally written common human faults and emotions into these characters.

It is easy, for instance, to write off Miss Havisham as a stereotypical crazy old woman, serving the same "purpose" as the Bronte mad wife in the attic. In reality, I believe Dickens' character to be posessing so much more realism than this soap opera stereotype. The main feeling the reader receives about Miss Havisham is not one of madness, but of bitterness. Miss Havisham is a direct victim of the evils and cruelty of the upper class, a cruelty that we see portrayed in so many ways in Great Expectations. Each of us as readers have expressed our dislike of the London characters, who have corrupted Pip and who treat the lower class Joe with disgust and distain. Miss Havisham is driven by feelings similar to our own. Her way of dealing with it may appear extreme, but her treatment and betrayal by the upper class is just as extreme. What we see as her madness is merely a more intense version of the similar reaction that which we ourselves feel towards the Londoners.

Similarly, it is easy for the reader to harshly judge Pip for his shame of Joe and the lower class in general, which some may call a betrayal. Once again, however, I view Pip as a victim. Throughout his entire life pip has been treated with disgust by those around him. As a child, his own sister and her friends called him a menace and said he was not worthy of their bringing him up as well as they did. Obviously he holds a bitterness towards those who have treated him so badly, and he seeks a way to overcome their cruelty. In meeting Miss Havisham, he notices that Pumblechook and his sister bow down to her very name, because of her wealth and standing. Finally, then, he sees a way to ascend above those who have done him so much wrong in his life, and his dream is to become a member of the upper class. However, when he finally attains his dream, his problems are not solved. He is not accepted by the upper class because of his "commonness". Once again he seeks to rise to their level by driving out all remaining connection to his previous life, namely Joe and Biddy. No matter what he does, however, he is not fully accepted into the Londoners' group. Worse, when he visits his old town, he discovers that in him absense, Pumblechook has been using Pip's advance for personal gain. Thus have all of Pip's attempts to escape the cruelty of others been used against him, and he has alienated the only characters who have always treated him with kindness, Joe and Biddy.

A Sense Of Belonging

Finding a place where you feel a sense of belonging is the most important concern in every story involving an orphan. Pip strives to end his outsider status through improved social standing and education. In Great Expectations, the prevailing culture values people based on the attainment of a certain social status, not for any enduring moralistic attributes. This rigid, arbitrary evaluation permits the wealthier characters to completely ignore personal growth by resolving some of their mental defects. The characters of lower social standing thereby appear more balanced and sympathetic.

Pip attempts to change his outsider status by spending a great deal of time with Herbert Pocket, learning to become a gentleman. Pip and Herbert go to the theater and attend church at West Minister Abbey. Pip engages Matthew Pocket to further educate him. He ends up spending time with people who really don't like him (Bentley Drummle, Mrs. Camilla and Georgianna), who only indulge his presence because they believe he has money. It seems that Pip mainly attempts to change his outsider status by spending time with the 'right' people, perhaps because he isn't quite ready to admit that he misses Joe and Biddy.

London should have been a wonderful place for Pip, being a young, wealthy gentleman, especially since he was now free from his uninspiring apprenticeship, his abusive sister, and other repressive people like Pumblechook. While in London, Pip finds his trus self by finally learning to place virtues like kindness and loyalty above any immature desires for social advancement.

Limbo

The fundamental cause for Pip’s outsider status is his dissatisfaction with his current state in life. While it certainly does not help that his entire family is dead and he has few living biological connections, even if they were alive Pip would be equally lost. In his efforts to become part of the upper class Victorian society, Pip finds it necessary to strip himself of everything not upper class which, unfortunately, is everything he knows.

Pip is an outsider because he refuses to accept his social status. He is unable to reconcile himself with the fact that that he really is a member of the lower class society. Instead, he is insulted by comments to that effect and tries even harder to leave all traces of his background behind. We even see Joe, Pip’s moral role model, being shunned by Pip when he is around people, such as Drummle, who might look down on his connection to people of such low social standing. Pip finds himself losing connections to his lower class background but never really gains entrance into the upper class life he seeks.

Pip never makes it into the upper class, but removes himself from the lower class. As a result, he is left in some limbo state between the two. In his efforts to become a member of the upper class, he fails not only in joining that class but also in maintaining any ties to society. Ironically, Pip’s own social ambitions are the cause of his status.

Jack of Two Worlds, Master of None

While in London, Pip strives to become more like the upper class, but his previous life haunts him and prevents him from fully integrating himself into society. No matter how much he changes his mannerisms, style of dress, or spending habits, he still has, at his core, a large bit of the corse and common Pip he once was. He has emotionally invested himself in two completely dissimilar worlds, and this make it that much harder for him to fit in in either.

Because of his jump in station, Pip finds himself an outsider in his own hometown, no longer able to simply exist. He cannot stop constantly checking himself and making sure that everyone around him recognizes his newfound status. His efforts to ensconce himself in London upper crust both fail to make him part of his new world and remove him yet further from his original home.

One thing that struck me as an excellent example of Pip's double outsider status was his fear of the Avenger speaking to Trabb's boy in town. Though only a brief part of chapter 28, Pip's debate about the young man in his employ stands out because of the absurdity of it all. Pip has a theoretically useful servant, but his qualms about perception prevent him from taking advantage of a resource that he possesses. He's afraid both of Miss Havisham seeing his London excesses and of the Avenger, a part of his life in London, finding too much about his previous life. His unwillingness to cross pollinate what he treats as two separate lives or to completely divide them, as Wemmick does, means that he will never be able to be relaxed and at home in either. His constant fear of being found out about one thing or another and his inability to commit fully to either life both hamper his efforts to advance himself in society and contribute to his outsider nature.

The problem with Pip is that, while very secure in the belief that he is of the utmost importance to the world, he is incredibly susceptible to the thoughts and opinions of others. No matter where he goes, Pip judges himself based on the actions of those around him, as well as their opinions of him; when living with Joe and Mrs. Joe as a commoner, he judges himself against their lack of manners and Miss Havisham's perceived grandeur. When living in London, he is bombarded by the scorn of high society and the unavoidable fact that he is not, in fact, of their class. This causes him to readjust his character in order to play to this newer and better stage. However, the very fact that Pip tries so hard to "fit in" makes him even more of an outsider, because his actions are so obviously an attempt to tear himself away from his past that they are crass and almost pathetic. 

His treatment of Joe is despicable, even though he once associated Joe with goodwill and kindness; Pip doesn't want this tangible evidence of his common beginnings messing up his new life, but even though he acts as though he has risen far above Joe on the social totem pole, he fails to gain the respect of those around him. Even as he is repeatedly humiliated in London, Pip completely fails to see the parallels between his treatment of those he sees as below him and the treatment he himself is subjected to. He doesn't seem to realize that Jaggers, Estella and co. look down on him just as much as he looks down on Joe and his somewhat grubby roots. This willful blindness is, of course, fed by his fervent belief that he and Estella are meant for each other, which makes it much harder for Pip to understand his position as the permanent outsider in her world.

Pip as an Outsider

I will say this for Pip – he certainly tries hard to fit in. Ultimately though, I think he is unsuccessful. When he comes into money, he seems to think that the way to be a “gentleman” – the way to fit in with the London crowd – is to turn his back on everything that he once knew. Joe and Biddy get pushed to the side to make way for new, higher class acquaintances. However, none of these “higher class” people seem to think of him as a gentleman. To them, Pip is simply a common boy who somehow came into a bit of money. First impressions are hard to shake, and especially in the cases of Miss Havisham and Estella, I think that they believe “once a common boy, always a common boy”. It doesn’t matter how he dresses or how quickly he learns social niceties, because they will always see him as poor, orphaned Pip. Because he tries so hard to fit in with the high class crowd and turns his back on the people he grew up with, Pip seems to alienate himself even further, because now, he doesn’t even really fit in with Biddy and Joe, nor does he want to fit in with them (which is something Biddy implies when she tells Pip at Mrs. Joe’s funeral that she does not believe he will come back to visit Joe as he says he will). Some of the London people he is surrounded by seem to accept him, but they are the ones who seem to lack the power that the others have (Wemmick is not as good at his job as Jaggers is, and Herbert has to be helped by Pip to secure a job). The ones who seem to have power, or control over others (Miss Havisham, Estella, Jaggers), seem to regard him in the same condescending way that Pip has come to regard Joe and Biddy. Perhaps if Pip seemed to expect something different of his time in London, he might be considered to “fit in” – after all, he does make good friends in Wemmick and Herbert. However, Pip’s own definition of fitting in and being a “gentleman” seems to involve impressing people who remain mightily unimpressed by him, and so unless he changes his own definition of what it is to be a gentleman and live up to his great expectations, he will continue to be an outsider.

Being a Gentleman (Superficially)

Pip’s outsider status grows substantially as he goes to London to become a gentleman. He seems to be in some strange middle ground between the classes. He is not part of the lower-class anymore since he “came into property” and now has “expectations” (on whole the lower-class seems more complacent while the upper-class is always striving to gain societal status). This is really seen when he is afraid to let the townspeople see him in his new clothing and when the tailor’s boy mocks him.

Pip of course doesn’t want to fit into the lower-class anymore and tries desperately to enter the upper-class. He can never fully enter since there is always an emphasis on his mysterious benefactor and the fact he was not born rich and with a title. But this does not dissuade the little idealist and Pip only tries harder to emulate a gentleman. His idea of a gentleman seems to include having unsubstantial manners, spending money, and living lavishly.

I say unsubstantial manners because table etiquette and the other menial pleasantries Pip learns from Herbert don’t seem to carry any weight compared to qualities such as loyalty and compassion that a “true gentleman” (if we want to also be idealistic and romantic) should develop. This lack of true manners is seen in how he condescends to Biddy, Joe, and Magwitch. I suppose this is also, in a slightly twisted way, part of Pip trying to be a gentleman and overcome his outsider status. By rejecting his past connections with the lower-class he can somewhat rise socially.

I was surprised by how much debt Pip was in due to his “lavish habits” that “corrupted the simplicity of [Herbert’s] life.” How did Pip suddenly develop these habits? He grew up as an orphan, he didn’t have anything lavish. I suppose his spending is an overcompensation as he tries to fit into his idea of a gentleman. I found the section about him and Herbert reviewing their debt equally ridiculous. They apparently only need their debt to be neatly ordered in a symmetrical pack to feel better. This idea of order and structure fits into the greater scheme of being an established gentleman with place and purpose.

Place is also emphasized in the young gentlemen’s club, Finches of the Grove. They seem to imitate everything Pip thinks is gentlemanly since they follow menial rules and traditions in order to “dine expensively once a fortnight, to quarrel among themselves as much as possible.” Although Pip seems like he has overcome his outsider status at the meetings, it is only because he is with among other boys trying to become gentlemen. His friction with the wealthy and titled Drummle also shows how he is still very much on the outside of high society.

Pip

While I’ve been reading, I’ve been thinking about Pip (both the younger Pip presented to us through the unfolding plot and the older narrator), and the reader’s relationship to him. I think that it is somewhat natural to relate to the main character of a novel, because it is through his (or her) eyes that we are seeing the story’s events. And while there are certainly aspects of Pip’s character or his circumstances that make you want to root for him, he also proves to be very unlikeable at times. He’s an orphan raised by a horrific older sister who, given the choice, would have nothing to do with him – and this certainly engenders some pity. But he is so singularly obsessed with becoming a “gentleman” that he lashes out at Biddy (and I think Biddy, along with Joe, is one of the two truly likeable characters in this novel). Biddy, who is nothing but kind and thoughtful, is attacked by Pip, seemingly for no other reason than a jealousy stemming from the fact that she has a greater aptitude for learning than he does (and education is closely linked to higher societal status for Pip). And though Pip values Joe’s friendship, he seems to regard him with an attitude bordering on condescension at times. And even more frustrating, these actions arise as part of a desperate bid to become a gentleman to impress Estella, who has been, on the whole, rude, condescending, and manipulative. Estella loves to make Pip feel lowly and common, and Pip then treats Biddy and Joe in similar fashion, as if trying to convince himself that because he is less common than them, he actually belongs in Estella’s world and not theirs. It’s been interesting to read Great Expectations so far, because I vacillate between rooting for Pip and wanting him to be taken to task for his behavior. He’s definitely a complex character, and how he negotiates the situation he has fallen into is at the heart of the tension in the novel. Pip is stuck between two worlds, and through his bleak portrayal of Estella, Miss Havisham, and the “higher society”, Dickens seems to suggest the latter world is less grand than it may appear to Pip. His desire to be a part of this world, however, is what drives some of his less-than-admirable behavior, and I can’t help but feel that he will learn his lesson. It will be interesting to see how and when that will happen.

Social Class in Part I

Part I of Great Expectations deals very directly with social class, and specifically to the way in which Pip is able to upset the balance of social power that each character derives for themself. Although one can say that the backbone of the class structure in the novel is based on the wealth of a given character, there is also great deal of power assumed by some characters based solely on their psychology, and is thus easily subject to change.

There appears to be two distinct social levels at the novel's outset. The higher of the two is made up of Mrs. Joe, with the later addition of such characters as Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle. The lower of the two is headed primarily by Mr. Joe. This distinction is a psychological one; wealth is constant among all the characters at this point, but social dominance is assumed by Mrs. Joe and derived from her psychological dominance in the household.

Later, a third social tier is added, to be inhabited by Miss Havisham and Estelle. This tier is separated from the other two by both wealth and psychological factors. It may be important to note that the members of this tier are also physically separate from the other two, and no one with the exception of Pip is allowed to cross the divide that exists at the gates of Satis House.

There is also the hint of a fourth tier, or at least of a sub-level, present in part I. This tier would consist of such characters as the Camillas and Miss Sarah Pocket. This division is psychological, and is apparent in the way in which these characters appear to grovel in the presence of Miss Havisham, and in the disgust with which the latter treats the former.

Pip is the wildcard of the group. He quite clearly starts out at the very bottom of the pile, lower even than Mr. Joe. However, certain events soon accellerate his rise to the very top group. His education pushes him above poor Joe's level psychologically, and his close dealings and monetary gift from Miss Havisham bring him into the sphere dominated by Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook. Elements outside the social network such as the prisoner, the stranger, and the mysterious benefactor, also serve to separate Pip from the the normal rigidity of the class structure and he is flung suddenly into the very highest tier by his "great expectations", to join the ranks of Miss Havisham and Estelle.

As a note: if one admits the existance of the sub-level of the Camillas and Miss Pocket, evidence exists to suggest that Pip has transcended that group as well. In his last meeting with Miss Havisham, he runs into Miss Sarah Pocket. Her speechlessness at his appearance and her look of "jealous dismay" at his "great expectations" gives the indication that Pip has now surpassed her psychologically, if not monetarily as well.

The good, the bad and the ugly

At this point (in my opinion), I see Dickens overall theme being that wealth can be corrupting and that there is much good to be found in those who work hard. I find Joe Gargery to be the most likeable character in the novel at this point. He grew up in a home with a alcoholic father and was never able to receive a proper education because he worked to support his mother. Instead of bashing Mrs. Joe with her 'tickler,' which I am sure would not be a difficult accomplishment for a sweaty, muscular blacksmith, he takes her abuse, providing a level of stability in the home, while at the same time being Pip's only true friend. I admire his amiable nature and his loyalty.

Uncle Pumblechook is the revoltingly greedily character who advocates raising a child with a heavy hand, then mistakenly drinks a medicinal tonic after Pip has taken the brandy for the convict. Later Pumblechook is quick to volunteer to take Pip to Miss Havisham's, in hopes there might be some monetary gain in the act. Every act he performs to this point is completely self-serving. This character seems to have no real motivation for being despicable, except for the desire to improve his financial status.

Pip meets an escaped convict and gives him food, in an encounter which seems to be haunting Pip much longer than it should. His behavior sets of a dichotomy of symbolism in the marshes, where we see both childhood innocence and adult peril. I find these images the most beautiful in the novel because it contributes to the gothic feel. Along with the madwoman (Miss Havisham), the villain (the convict?), the hero (Joe), darkness, death, decay, madness, and secrets, this novel has a very Gothic sense.

Identity

One thing that has really bothered me about Great Expectations is the lack of female names. The women seem to only have identities in relation to their husbands or a male family member. This is most prevalent when Pip addresses his own sister by Mrs. Joe. Although she is a powerful and frightening woman who beats her husband and controls the household, she is still only identified with reference to the abused husband. Similarly, Pip’s mother is “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above” and his school teacher is only referred to as “Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt.” This emphasizes the inequalities in gender and the lack of individual identity in most of the women. Even Miss Havisham with her distinctive personality is still dependant on a man (or lack of) to give her the identity of a perpetual bride.
Conversely, male Pip tries to create his own identity starting with his name when he says, “So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip." This is a very romantic notion and is magnified in Pip’s strong sense of self. This assurance is shaken however when he later allows his identity to be shaped by Estella calling him common. This prompts Pip to try and better himself by getting an education. It is uncertain whether he wants to actually improve or if he just wants Estella’s opinion of him to improve showing that much of Pip’s identity is also influenced by the opposite sex.
Similarly, many of the characters try to create an ideal self for others’ benefit. Joe wears clothes that don’t seem to “belong” to him, Mrs. Joe acts pleasantly in company, and everyone at Miss Havisham’s party seems completely obsessed with appearances. Once Pip becomes aware of his commonness he too becomes rather superficial. He is embarrassed of Joe, a snob toward Biddy, and is completely preoccupied with the idea that Estella might see him doing something “common.” However, in retrospect, Pip seems to realize how horribly he acted so it will be interesting to see when this change occurs.

Them's fightin' words!

Thus far in Great Expectations we have had two unrelated fight scenes that are remarkably similar in a few key ways. The first of these, Pip's fistfight with the "pale young gentleman," takes place early on in his visits with Miss Havisham and the second, much later. Nevertheless, these two incidents share too many features to simply be coincidental to my mind. In both of these scenes, the aggressor had not been a key plot point or even mentioned prior to picking a fight and, in both Pip's fight and Joe's, he seems bent on starting a fight for the sake of fighting alone. Additionally, both fights, once over, are scarcely remembered, let alone spoken about.

These similarities, along with a few more superficial ones, for instance, that both the pale gentleman and Orlick end up with wounded noses, struck me. These two scenes are so similar to my mind that the differences that they do have stand out and highlight the growing rift between Pip and Joe. Joe fights for very solid reasons: his wife and his forge. After he has won his fight, he backs off and returns to his trade, completely unfazed by what had happened between him and Orlick. In sharp contrast, Pip is given no real reason to fight the pale gentleman other than that young man's insolence and general offensiveness and is convinced that he will suffer some great punishment for his actions.

Joe is so often called upon to be Pip's foil in the first section of Great Expectations that it isn't really surprising that his steady and grounded nature acts to contrast Pip's flights of fancy and moral turbulence. What I found particularly interesting, in light of our recent discussions, was that these two incidents that appear so parallel in the novel occur at completely different times in Pip's life. This connection illustrates, for me at least, one of the features of plot that greatly enhances the storyline itself.

Death is everywhere

Throughout Great Expectations, the theme of death is almost overwhelming. So far, the entire work is littered with both direct and subtle references to it. The book opens with a young boy in a graveyard, mourning over his parents and siblings whom he never met. Pip revisits this desolate place where he is accosted by a convict, who “started up from among the graves” and is described as “a fearful man, all in course grey, with an iron on his leg.” The way the convict is introduced is more the way we would expect a ghost to be depicted. Later in the book, we are introduced to Ms. Havisham, who lives in a castle that is closer to a graveyard then a home, as a woman who was “faded and yellow” and “had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes” and even further “had shrunk to skin and bone” (58). All the clocks in the room were stopped, and the dimly lit dungeon seemed eerily empty.

Dickens continues to develop the theme with his use of imagery as well. He tends to depict events and places in a way that leaves the scene feeling dark and empty. References to the cold, dark, and deserted fill his descriptions. These are not the only things that overwhelmed me with the dreariness of the novel. In a more subtle way, we see Pip struggling to escape his own situation which in a sense represents death to him. In his Pip’s mind, life as a commoner and being himself is not something his ego can reconcile. However, Pip struggles greatly to advance his social status, and his highest hopes of Ms. Havisham are crushed when she helps him become apprenticed to Joe.

We still have yet to see if Pip is able to escape this world of death, but thus far the bleakness of the novel only makes me wonder what is to come…

Well, I'm posting the first blog post... which is exciting and mildly intimidating. But now I'll actually do what I'm supposed to do. We've been discussing Pip's narcissism, and that's something that really struck me about the book. At first, I liked Pip because he was the main character and because he was plucky. Now, though, as he's entering his teenage jackass years, it's far more apparent... I was really upset with his treatment of Biddy, because he was so quick to judge her and to insult her in a really passive-aggressive way (telling her that, oh, things would be so much better for him if he could just fall in love with her and then going on about how gorgeous Estella is) even while he moped about how Estella herself made him feel awful about himself by reminding him of his commonness... which is basically what he's doing to Biddy. Pip thinks a great deal about everything around him, but only in direct relation to him. When he was a little kid, it struck me as less... I don't know, less of a problem, because when you're a kid you don't need to be so conscious of other people. It's not expected. But as he gets older, and maintains the same personality, it's more jarring. Pip doesn't really get more mature. I mean, eventually he must, because he's telling the story from far in the future and he's obviously using sarcasm and is even self-deprecating half the time, but in the story so far we can't actually see any signs of his "growing up". Maybe that's what London is for.

Meanwhile, what is Estella up to? She's been studying in Europe for the past... five years? I want to know where she came from, what Miss Havisham really wants her to do with Pip. How does she feel about all this childhood emotional train crashing? We only get Pip's perspective, again, when considering her, and since he can't really read her, it's unclear what her actual motives (if any) are.