VICTORIAN ERA

(1837-1901)
1848-1860: The Pre-Raphaelites
1880-1901: Aestheticism and Decadence

REALISM
As a literary trend, arose in 19thC, in reaction to Romanticism, dominating in French, English and
American literature
The truthful treatment of material, fidelity to reality in its representation in literature-verisimilitude
The choice of common, everyday situations and average characters
The use of simple, clear language, with few metaphoric expressions
The objective attitude on the part of the author
The actual speech of people belonging to a certain social group used as an important means of
characterization
Industry/The expansion of the Empire/Evolution/Middle classes/Grim working conditions, bad living
conditions and great poverty in urban slums/Family values/General education/Extended
parliamentary representation/Utilitarianism = the greatest possible happiness for the greatest number
of people/The suffragette movement vote for women campaign
 CHARLES DICKENS
(1812-1870)

In 1849, Dickens began to write David Copperfield, a novel based on his early life experiences. Like
Dickens, David works as a child, pasting labels onto bottles. David also becomes first a law clerk, then a
reporter, and finally a successful novelist. Mr. Micawber is a satirical version of Dickenss father, a likable
man who can never scrape together the money he needs. Many of the secondary characters spring from
Dickenss experiences as a young man in financial distress in London.
David Copperfield is set in early Victorian England against a backdrop of great social change. The
Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had transformed the social
landscape and enabled capitalists and manufacturers to amass huge fortunes. Although the Industrial
Revolution increased social mobility, the gap between rich and poor remained wide. London, a teeming
mass of humanity lit by gas lamps at night and darkened by sooty clouds from smokestacks during the day,
rose in dark contrast to Britains sparsely populated rural areas. More and more people moved from the
country to the city in search of the opportunities that technological innovation promised. But this migration
overpopulated the already crowded cities, and poverty, disease, hazardous factory conditions, and
ramshackle housing became widespread. Dickens acutely observed these phenomena of the Industrial
Revolution and used them as the canvas on which he painted David Copperfield and his other urban novels.
Bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel)
NARRATOR An older David Copperfield narrates the story of his childhood from his happy
home in London.
POINT OF VIEW David writes in the first person, limiting his viewpoint to what he sees in
his youth and his attitude at that time.
TONE David reflects upon his youth fondly and remembers his nave youth wistfully.
SETTING (TIME) 1800s
SETTING (PLACE) England
PLOT
Now a grown man, David Copperfield tells the story of his youth. As a young boy, he lives
happily with his mother and his nurse, Peggotty. His father died before he was born. During Davids early
childhood, his mother marries the violent Mr. Murdstone, who brings his strict sister, Miss Murdstone, into
the house. The Murdstones treat David cruelly, and David bites Mr. Murdstones hand during one beating.
The Murdstones send David away to school.
Peggotty takes David to visit her family in Yarmouth, where David meets Peggottys brother, Mr. Peggotty,
and his two adopted children, Ham and Little Emly. Mr. Peggottys family lives in a boat turned upside
downa space they share with Mrs. Gummidge, the widowed wife of Mr. Peggottys brother. After this
visit, David attends school at Salem House, which is run by a man named Mr. Creakle. David befriends and
idolizes an egotistical young man named James Steerforth. David also befriends Tommy Traddles, an
unfortunate, fat young boy who is beaten more than the others.
Davids mother dies, and David returns home, where the Murdstones neglect him. He works at Mr.
Murdstones wine-bottling business and moves in with Mr. Micawber, who mismanages his finances. When
Mr. Micawber leaves London to escape his creditors, David decides to search for his fathers sister, Miss
Betsey Trotwoodhis only living relative. He walks a long distance to Miss Betseys home, and she takes
him in on the advice of her mentally unstable friend, Mr. Dick.
Miss Betsey sends David to a school run by a man named Doctor Strong. David moves in with Mr.
Wickfield and his daughter, Agnes, while he attends school. Agnes and David become best friends. Among
Wickfields boarders is Uriah Heep, a snakelike young man who often involves himself in matters that are
none of his business. David graduates and goes to Yarmouth to visit Peggotty, who is now married to Mr.
Barkis, the carrier. David reflects on what profession he should pursue.
On his way to Yarmouth, David encounters James Steerforth, and they take a detour to visit Steerforths
mother. They arrive in Yarmouth, where Steerforth and the Peggottys become fond of one another. When
they return from Yarmouth, Miss Betsey persuades David to pursue a career as a proctor, a kind of lawyer.
David apprentices himself at the London firm of Spenlow and Jorkins and takes up lodgings with a woman
named Mrs. Crupp. Mr. Spenlow invites David to his house for a weekend. There, David meets Spenlows
daughter, Dora, and quickly falls in love with her.
In London, David is reunited with Tommy Traddles and Mr. Micawber. Word reaches David, through
Steerforth, that Mr. Barkis is terminally ill. David journeys to Yarmouth to visit Peggotty in her hour of
need. Little Emly and Ham, now engaged, are to be married upon Mr. Barkiss death. David, however,
finds Little Emly upset over her impending marriage. When Mr. Barkis dies, Little Emly runs off with
Steerforth, who she believes will make her a lady. Mr. Peggotty is devastated but vows to find Little Emly
and bring her home.
Miss Betsey visits London to inform David that her financial security has been ruined because Mr.
Wickfield has joined into a partnership with Uriah Heep. David, who has become increasingly infatuated
with Dora, vows to work as hard as he can to make their life together possible. Mr. Spenlow, however,
forbids Dora from marrying David. Mr. Spenlow dies in a carriage accident that night, and Dora goes to live
with her two aunts. Meanwhile, Uriah Heep informs Doctor Strong that he suspects Doctor Strongs wife,
Annie, of having an affair with her young cousin, Jack Maldon.
Dora and David marry, and Dora proves a terrible housewife, incompetent in her chores. David loves her
anyway and is generally happy. Mr. Dick facilitates a reconciliation between Doctor Strong and Annie, who
was not, in fact, cheating on her husband. Miss Dartle, Mrs. Steerforths ward, summons David and informs
him that Steerforth has left Little Emly. Miss Dartle adds that Steerforths servant, Littimer, has proposed to
her and that Little Emly has run away. David and Mr. Peggotty enlist the help of Little Emlys childhood
friend Martha, who locates Little Emly and brings Mr. Peggotty to her. Little Emly and Mr. Peggotty
decide to move to Australia, as do the Micawbers, who first save the day for Agnes and Miss Betsey by
exposing Uriah Heeps fraud against Mr. Wickfield.
A powerful storm hits Yarmouth and kills Ham while he attempts to rescue a shipwrecked sailor. The sailor
turns out to be Steerforth. Meanwhile, Dora falls ill and dies. David leaves the country to travel abroad. His
love for Agnes grows. When David returns, he and Agnes, who has long harbored a secret love for him, get
married and have several children. David pursues his writing career with increasing commercial success.
Character List
-David Copperfield - The protagonist and narrator of the novel. David is innocent, trusting,
and nave even though he suffers abuse as a child. He is idealistic and impulsive and remains honest and
loving. Though Davids troubled childhood renders him sympathetic, he is not perfect. He often exhibits
chauvinistic attitudes toward the lower classes. In some instances, foolhardy decisions mar Davids good
intentions.
-Agnes Wickfield - Davids true love and second wife, the daughter of Mr. Wickfield. The calm and gentle
Agnes admires her father and David. She suffers patiently through Davids other romances, and although
she loves David, she is not overcome by jealousy. Agnes always comforts David with kind words or advice
when he needs support.
-James Steerforth - A condescending, self-centered villain. From his boyhood, Steerforth possesses a
restless energy that he can neither satisfy nor divert. He charms both women and men for the feeling of
power it gives him. He also abuses David, although David is too enraptured with him and too grateful for his
patronage to notice.
-Clara Peggotty - Davids nanny and caretaker. Peggotty is gentle and selfless, opening herself and her
family to David whenever he is in need. She is faithful to David and his family all her life, never abandoning
David, his mother, or Miss Betsey. In her kind motherliness, Peggotty contrasts with the cruel and unloving
Miss Murdstone.
-Little Emly - Peggottys unfaithful niece, who is sweet but also coy and vain. Little Emlys desire to be a
lady causes her to disgrace herself by running away from her family.
-Uriah Heep - A two-faced, conniving villain who puts on a false show of humility and meekness to
disguise his evil intentions. Uriah is motivated by his belief that the world owes him something for all the
humiliations he suffered as a young man. Ultimately, Uriahs veneer of humility proves as empty as his
morals.
-Miss Betsey Trotwood - Davids eccentric, kind-hearted aunt. Although Miss Betseys intentions are
mysterious at the beginning of the novel, her generosity toward David soon becomes clear, and she acts as
Davids second mother.
-Dora Spenlow - Davids first wife and first real love. Dora is foolish and giddy, more interested in playing
with her dog, Jip, than in keeping house with David. Because David cannot bear to displease Dora, he
permits her to retain the pouty habits of a spoiled child.
-Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins Micawber - An unlucky couple crippled by constantly precarious finances. Although
Mr. Micawber never succeeds at supporting his own family, he is generous and industrious in serving others.
Mrs. Micawber stands by her husband despite his flaws and regardless of the hardships they suffer.
-Tommy Traddles - Young Davids simple, goodhearted schoolmate. Traddles works hard but faces great
obstacles because of his lack of money and connections. He eventually succeeds in making a name and a
career for himself.
-Clara Copperfield - Davids mother. The kind, generous, and goodhearted Clara embodies maternal caring
until her death, which occurs early in the novel. David remembers his mother as an angel whose independent
spirit was destroyed by Mr. Murdstones cruelty.
-Mr. Edward Murdstone and Miss Jane Murdstone - The cruel second husband of Davids mother, and
Murdstones sister. The Murdstones are strict and brutal not only toward David, but to his mother as well.
Together, they crush Davids mothers spirit.
-Mrs. Steerforth and Rosa Dartle - Steerforths mother and her ward, the orphan child of her husbands
cousin. Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle are cruel and bitter toward the world and also haughty and proud, as
evidenced by their overwhelming fondness for Steerforth and their disdain of David.
-Mr. Peggotty, Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge - The simple relatives of Davids nurse, Clara Peggotty. Mr.
Peggotty, Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge represent the virtues of simple people. Mr. Peggotty and Ham are
sailors, Mrs. Gummidge a sailors widow. They are devoted and loving to each other and David.
-Doctor Strong and Annie Strong - A man and woman who exemplify the best of married life. Doctor
Strong and Annie are faithful and selfless, each concerned more about the other than about himself or
herself. Their deep love for each other enables them to survive Uriahs attempts to disrupt their bliss.
ANALYISIS OF MAJOR CHARACTERS
David Copperfield
Although David narrates his story as an adult, he relays the impressions he had from a youthful point of
view. We see how Davids perception of the world deepens as he comes of age. We see Davids initial
innocence in the contrast between his interpretation of events and our own understanding of them. Although
David is ignorant of Steerforths treachery, we are aware from the moment we meet Steerforth that he
doesnt deserve the adulation David feels toward him. David doesnt understand why he hates Uriah or why
he trusts a boy with a donkey cart who steals his money and leaves him in the road, but we can sense Uriahs
devious nature and the boys treacherous intentions. In Davids first-person narration, Dickens conveys the
wisdom of the older man implicitly, through the eyes of a child.
Davids complex character allows for contradiction and development over the course of the novel. Though
David is trusting and kind, he also has moments of cruelty, like the scene in which he intentionally distresses
Mr. Dick by explaining Miss Betseys dire situation to him. David also displays great tenderness, as in the
moment when he realizes his love for Agnes for the first time. David, especially as a young man in love, can
be foolish and romantic. As he grows up, however, he develops a more mature point of view and searches
for a lover who will challenge him and help him grow. David fully matures as an adult when he expresses
the sentiment that he values Agness calm tranquility over all else in his life.
Uriah Heep
Uriah serves a foil to David and contrasts Davids qualities of innocence and compassion with his own
corruption. Though Uriah is raised in a cruel environment similar to Davids, Uriahs upbringing causes him
to become bitter and vengeful rather than honest and hopeful. Dickenss physical description of Uriah marks
Uriah as a demonic character. He refers to Uriahs movements as snakelike and gives Uriah red hair and red
eyes. Uriah and David not only have opposing characteristics but also operate at cross-purposes. For
example, whereas Uriah wishes to marry Agnes only in order to hurt David, Davids marriages are both
motivated by love. The frequent contrast between Uriahs and Davids sentiments emphasizes Davids
kindness and moral integrity.
While Davids character development is a process of increased self-understanding, Uriah grows in his desire
to exercise control over himself and other characters. As Uriah gains more power over Mr. Wickfield, his
sense of entitlement grows and he becomes more and more power-hungry. The final scenes of the novel, in
which Uriah praises his jail cell because it helps him know what he should do, show Uriahs need to exert
control even when he is a helpless prisoner. But imprisonment does not redeem his evilif anything, it
compounds his flaws. To the end, Uriah plots strategies to increase his control. Because he deploys his
strategies to selfish purposes that bring harm to others, he stands out as the novels greatest villain.
James Steerforth
Steerforth is a slick, egotistical, wealthy young man whose sense of self-importance overwhelms all his
opinions. Steerforth underscores the difference between what we understand as readers and what David
seesand fails to seein his youthful navet. David takes Steerforths kindness for granted without
analyzing his motives or detecting his duplicity. When Steerforth befriends David at Salem House, David
doesnt suspect that Steerforth is simply trying to use David to make friends and gain status. Though
Steerforth belittles David from the moment they meet, David is incapable of conceiving that his new friend
might be taking advantage of him. Because Steerforths duplicity is so clear to us, Davids lack of insight
into Steerforths true intentions emphasizes his youthful innocence. Steerforth likes David only because
David worships him, and his final betrayal comes as a surprise to David but not to us.
THEMES
The Plight of the Weak
-Throughout David Copperfield, the powerful abuse the weak and helpless.
-Dickens focuses on orphans, women, and the mentally disabled to show that exploitationnot pity
or compassionis the rule in an industrial society
-Dickens draws on his own experience as a child to describe the inhumanity of child labor and
debtors prison.
-His characters suffer punishment at the hands of forces larger than themselves, even though they are
morally good people. The arbitrary suffering of innocents makes for the most vividly affecting scenes of the
novel.
Equality in Marriage
-In the world of the novel, marriages succeed to the extent that husband and wife attain equality in
their relationship.
-Dickens holds up the Strongs marriage as an example to show that marriages can only be happy if
neither spouse is subjugated to the other. Indeed, neither of the Strongs views the other as inferior.
Conversely, Dickens criticizes characters who attempt to invoke a sense of superiority over their spouses.
-Dickens, we see, does not challenge his societys constrictive views about the roles of women.
However, by depicting a marriage in which a man and wife share some balance of power, Dickens does
point toward an age of empowered women.
Wealth and Class
-Throughout the novel, Dickens criticizes his societys view of wealth and class as measures of a
persons value
-Many people in Dickenss time believed that poverty was a symptom of moral degeneracy and that
people who were poor deserved to suffer because of inherent deficiencies. Dickens, on the other hand,
sympathizes with the poor and implies that their woes result from societys unfairness, not their own
failings.
-Dickens does not go so far as to suggest that all poor people are absolutely noble and that all rich
people are utterly evil.
-wealth and class are are unreliable indicators of character and morality.
-Dickens invites us to judge his characters based on their individual deeds and qualities, not on the
hand that the cruel world deals them.
 MOTIFS
Mothers and Mother Figures
-good mother figures produce good children while bad mothers yield sinister offspring.
-This moral connection between mothers and children indicates Dickenss belief that mothers have
an all-important role in shaping their childrens characters and destinies.
-Dickenss treatment of mother-child relationships in the novel is intended to teach a lesson. He
warns mothers to love their children only in moderation and to correct their faults while they can still be
fixed.
Accented Speech
-Dickens gives his characters different accents to indicate their social class
Physical Beauty
-physical beauty corresponds to moral good
-Those who are physically beautiful, like Davids mother, are good and noble, while those who are
ugly, like Uriah Heep, Mr. Creakle, and Mr. Murdstone, are evil, violent, and ill-tempered.
-Dickens suggests that internal characteristics, much like physical appearance, cannot be disguised
permanently.
- Rather, circumstances will eventually reveal the moral value of characters whose good goes
unrecognized or whose evil goes unpunished.
-In David Copperfield, even the most carefully buried characteristics eventually come to light and
expose elusive individuals for what they really are.
-In this manner, for almost all the characters in the novel, physical beauty corresponds to personal
worth.
SYMBOLS
The Sea
-The sea represents an unknown and powerful force in the lives of the characters in David
Copperfield, and it is almost always connected with death
-Like death, the force of the sea is beyond human control. Humans must try to live in harmony with
the seas mystical power and take precautions to avoid untimely death.
Flowers
-Flowers represent simplicity and innocence
-flowers stand as images of rebirth and healtha significance that points to a spring like quality in
characters associated with their blossoms.
-Flowers indicate fresh perspective and thought and often recall moments of frivolity and release.
Mr. Dicks Kite
-Mr. Dicks enormous kite represents his separation from society
-The kites carefree simplicity mirrors Mr. Dicks own childish innocence, and the pleasure the kite
offers resembles the honest, unpretentious joy Mr. Dick brings to those around him.

Great Expectations is set in early Victorian England, a time when great social changes were sweeping the
nation. The Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had transformed the
social landscape, enabling capitalists and manufacturers to amass huge fortunes. Although social class was
no longer entirely dependent on the circumstances of ones birth, the divisions between rich and poor
remained nearly as wide as ever. London, a teeming mass of humanity, lit by gas lamps at night and
darkened by black clouds from smokestacks during the day, formed a sharp contrast with the nations
sparsely populated rural areas. More and more people moved from the country to the city in search of
greater economic opportunity. Throughout England, the manners of the upper class were very strict and
conservative: gentlemen and ladies were expected to have thorough classical educations and to behave
appropriately in innumerable social situations.
TYPE OF WORK Novel
GENRES Bildungsroman, social criticism, autobiographical fiction
NARRATOR Pip
POINT OF VIEW First person
SETTING (TIME) Mid-nineteenth century
SETTINGS (PLACE) Kent and London, England
TONE Comic, cheerful, satirical, wry, critical, sentimental, dark, dramatic, foreboding, Gothic,
sympathetic
PLOT
Pip, a young orphan living with his sister and her husband in the marshes of Kent, sits in a cemetery
one evening looking at his parents tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs up from behind a
tombstone, grabs Pip, and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg irons. Pip obeys, but the
fearsome convict is soon captured anyway. The convict protects Pip by claiming to have stolen the items
himself.
One day Pip is taken by his Uncle Pumblechook to play at Satis House, the home of the wealthy dowager
Miss Havisham, who is extremely eccentric: she wears an old wedding dress everywhere she goes and keeps
all the clocks in her house stopped at the same time. During his visit, he meets a beautiful young girl named
Estella, who treats him coldly and contemptuously. Nevertheless, he falls in love with her and dreams of
becoming a wealthy gentleman so that he might be worthy of her. He even hopes that Miss Havisham
intends to make him a gentleman and marry him to Estella, but his hopes are dashed when, after months of
regular visits to Satis House, Miss Havisham decides to help him become a common laborer in his familys
business.
With Miss Havishams guidance, Pip is apprenticed to his brother-in-law, Joe, who is the village blacksmith.
Pip works in the forge unhappily, struggling to better his education with the help of the plain, kind Biddy
and encountering Joes malicious day laborer, Orlick. One night, after an altercation with Orlick, Pips
sister, known as Mrs. Joe, is viciously attacked and becomes a mute invalid. From her signals, Pip suspects
that Orlick was responsible for the attack.
One day a lawyer named Jaggers appears with strange news: a secret benefactor has given Pip a large
fortune, and Pip must come to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman. Pip happily
assumes that his previous hopes have come truethat Miss Havisham is his secret benefactor and that the
old woman intends for him to marry Estella.
In London, Pip befriends a young gentleman named Herbert Pocket and Jaggerss law clerk, Wemmick. He
expresses disdain for his former friends and loved ones, especially Joe, but he continues to pine after Estella.
He furthers his education by studying with the tutor Matthew Pocket, Herberts father. Herbert himself helps
Pip learn how to act like a gentleman. When Pip turns twenty-one and begins to receive an income from his
fortune, he will secretly help Herbert buy his way into the business he has chosen for himself. But for now,
Herbert and Pip lead a fairly undisciplined life in London, enjoying themselves and running up debts. Orlick
reappears in Pips life, employed as Miss Havishams porter, but is promptly fired by Jaggers after Pip
reveals Orlicks unsavory past. Mrs. Joe dies, and Pip goes home for the funeral, feeling tremendous grief
and remorse. Several years go by, until one night a familiar figure barges into Pips roomthe convict,
Magwitch, who stuns Pip by announcing that he, not Miss Havisham, is the source of Pips fortune. He tells
Pip that he was so moved by Pips boyhood kindness that he dedicated his life to making Pip a gentleman,
and he made a fortune in Australia for that very purpose.
Pip is appalled, but he feels morally bound to help Magwitch escape London, as the convict is pursued both
by the police and by Compeyson, his former partner in crime. A complicated mystery begins to fall into
place when Pip discovers that Compeyson was the man who abandoned Miss Havisham at the altar and that
Estella is Magwitchs daughter. Miss Havisham has raised her to break mens hearts, as revenge for the pain
her own broken heart caused her. Pip was merely a boy for the young Estella to practice on; Miss Havisham
delighted in Estellas ability to toy with his affections.
As the weeks pass, Pip sees the good in Magwitch and begins to care for him deeply. Before Magwitchs
escape attempt, Estella marries an upper-class lout named Bentley Drummle. Pip makes a visit to Satis
House, where Miss Havisham begs his forgiveness for the way she has treated him in the past, and he
forgives her. Later that day, when she bends over the fireplace, her clothing catches fire and she goes up in
flames. She survives but becomes an invalid. In her final days, she will continue to repent for her misdeeds
and to plead for Pips forgiveness.
The time comes for Pip and his friends to spirit Magwitch away from London. Just before the escape
attempt, Pip is called to a shadowy meeting in the marshes, where he encounters the vengeful, evil Orlick.
Orlick is on the verge of killing Pip when Herbert arrives with a group of friends and saves Pips life. Pip
and Herbert hurry back to effect Magwitchs escape. They try to sneak Magwitch down the river on a
rowboat, but they are discovered by the police, who Compeyson tipped off. Magwitch and Compeyson fight
in the river, and Compeyson is drowned. Magwitch is sentenced to death, and Pip loses his fortune.
Magwitch feels that his sentence is Gods forgiveness and dies at peace. Pip falls ill; Joe comes to London to
care for him, and they are reconciled. Joe gives him the news from home: Orlick, after robbing
Pumblechook, is now in jail; Miss Havisham has died and left most of her fortune to the Pockets; Biddy has
taught Joe how to read and write. After Joe leaves, Pip decides to rush home after him and marry Biddy, but
when he arrives there he discovers that she and Joe have already married.
Pip decides to go abroad with Herbert to work in the mercantile trade. Returning many years later, he
encounters Estella in the ruined garden at Satis House. Drummle, her husband, treated her badly, but he is
now dead. Pip finds that Estellas coldness and cruelty have been replaced by a sad kindness, and the two
leave the garden hand in hand, Pip believing that they will never part again. (NOTE: Dickenss original
ending to Great Expectations differed from the one described in this summary. The final Summary and
Analysis section of this SparkNote provides a description of the first ending and explains why Dickens
rewrote it.)
Character List
Pip - The protagonist and narrator of Great Expectations, Pip begins the story as a young orphan boy
being raised by his sister and brother-in-law in the marsh country of Kent, in the southeast of England. Pip is
passionate, romantic, and somewhat unrealistic at heart, and he tends to expect more for himself than is
reasonable. Pip also has a powerful conscience, and he deeply wants to improve himself, both morally and
socially.
Estella - Miss Havishams beautiful young ward, Estella is Pips unattainable dream throughout the
novel. He loves her passionately, but, though she sometimes seems to consider him a friend, she is usually
cold, cruel, and uninterested in him. As they grow up together, she repeatedly warns him that she has no
heart.
Miss Havisham - Miss Havisham is the wealthy, eccentric old woman who lives in a manor called
Satis House near Pips village. She is manic and often seems insane, flitting around her house in a faded
wedding dress, keeping a decaying feast on her table, and surrounding herself with clocks stopped at twenty
minutes to nine. As a young woman, Miss Havisham was jilted by her fianc minutes before her wedding,
and now she has a vendetta against all men. She deliberately raises Estella to be the tool of her revenge,
training her beautiful ward to break mens hearts.
 Abel Magwitch (The Convict) - A fearsome criminal, Magwitch escapes from prison at the
beginning of Great Expectations and terrorizes Pip in the cemetery. Pips kindness, however, makes a deep
impression on him, and he subsequently devotes himself to making a fortune and using it to elevate Pip into
a higher social class. Behind the scenes, he becomes Pips secret benefactor, funding Pips education and
opulent lifestyle in London through the lawyer Jaggers.
Joe Gargery - Pips brother-in-law, the village blacksmith, Joe stays with his overbearing, abusive
wifeknown as Mrs. Joesolely out of love for Pip. Joes quiet goodness makes him one of the few
completely sympathetic characters in Great Expectations. Although he is uneducated and unrefined, he
consistently acts for the benefit of those he loves and suffers in silence when Pip treats him coldly.
Jaggers - The powerful, foreboding lawyer hired by Magwitch to supervise Pips elevation to the
upper class. As one of the most important criminal lawyers in London, Jaggers is privy to some dirty
business; he consorts with vicious criminals, and even they are terrified of him. But there is more to Jaggers
than his impenetrable exterior. He often seems to care for Pip, and before the novel begins he helps Miss
Havisham to adopt the orphaned Estella. Jaggers smells strongly of soap: he washes his hands obsessively as
a psychological mech-anism to keep the criminal taint from corrupting him.
Herbert Pocket - Pip first meets Herbert Pocket in the garden of Satis House, when, as a pale young
gentleman, Herbert challenges him to a fight. Years later, they meet again in London, and Herbert becomes
Pips best friend and key companion after Pips elevation to the status of gentleman. Herbert nicknames Pip
Handel. He is the son of Matthew Pocket, Miss Havishams cousin, and hopes to become a merchant so
that he can afford to marry Clara Barley.
Wemmick - Jaggerss clerk and Pips friend, Wemmick is one of the strangest characters in Great
Expectations. At work, he is hard, cynical, sarcastic, and obsessed with portable property; at home in
Walworth, he is jovial, wry, and a tender caretaker of his Aged Parent.
Biddy - A simple, kindhearted country girl, Biddy first befriends Pip when they attend school
together. After Mrs. Joe is attacked and becomes an invalid, Biddy moves into Pips home to care for her.
Throughout most of the novel, Biddy represents the opposite of Estella; she is plain, kind, moral, and of
Pips own social class.
Dolge Orlick - The day laborer in Joes forge, Orlick is a slouching, oafish embodiment of evil. He
is malicious and shrewd, hurting people simply because he enjoys it. He is responsible for the attack on Mrs.
Joe, and he later almost succeeds in his attempt to murder Pip.
Mrs. Joe - Pips sister and Joes wife, known only as Mrs. Joe throughout the novel. Mrs. Joe is a
stern and overbearing figure to both Pip and Joe. She keeps a spotless household and frequently menaces her
husband and her brother with her cane, which she calls Tickler. She also forces them to drink a foul-
tasting concoction called tar-water. Mrs. Joe is petty and ambitious; her fondest wish is to be something
more than what she is, the wife of the village blacksmith.
Uncle Pumblechook - Pips pompous, arrogant uncle. (He is actually Joes uncle and, therefore,
Pips uncle-in-law, but Pip and his sister both call him Uncle Pumblechook.) A merchant obsessed with
money, Pumblechook is responsible for arranging Pips first meeting with Miss Havisham. Throughout the
rest of the novel, he will shamelessly take credit for Pips rise in social status, even though he has nothing to
do with it, since Magwitch, not Miss Havisham, is Pips secret benefactor.
Compeyson - A criminal and the former partner of Magwitch, Compeyson is an educated,
gentlemanly outlaw who contrasts sharply with the coarse and uneducated Magwitch. Compeyson is
responsible for Magwitchs capture at the end of the novel. He is also the man who jilted Miss Havisham on
her wedding day.
Bentley Drummle - An oafish, unpleasant young man who attends tutoring sessions with Pip at the
Pockets house, Drummle is a minor member of the nobility, and the sense of superiority this gives him
makes him feel justified in acting cruelly and harshly toward everyone around him. Drummle eventually
marries Estella, to Pips chagrin; she is miserable in their marriage and reunites with Pip after Drummle dies
some eleven years later.
Molly - Jaggerss housekeeper. In Chapter 48, Pip realizes that she is Estellas mother.
Mr. Wopsle - The church clerk in Pips country town; Mr. Wopsles aunt is the local schoolteacher.
Sometime after Pip becomes a gentleman, Mr. Wopsle moves to London and becomes an actor.
Startop - A friend of Pips and Herberts. Startop is a delicate young man who, with Pip and
Drummle, takes tutelage with Matthew Pocket. Later, Startop helps Pip and Herbert with Magwitchs
escape.
Miss Skiffins - Wemmicks beloved, and eventual wife.
ANALYSIS OF MAJOR CHARACTERS
Pip
As a bildungsroman, Great Expectations presents the growth and development of a single character, Philip
Pirrip, better known to himself and to the world as Pip. As the focus of the bildungsroman, Pip is by far the
most important character in Great Expectations: he is both the protagonist, whose actions make up the main
plot of the novel, and the narrator, whose thoughts and attitudes shape the readers perception of the story.
As a result, developing an understanding of Pips character is perhaps the most important step in
understanding Great Expectations.
Because Pip is narrating his story many years after the events of the novel take place, there are really two
Pips in Great Expectations: Pip the narrator and Pip the characterthe voice telling the story and the person
acting it out. Dickens takes great care to distinguish the two Pips, imbuing the voice of Pip the narrator with
perspective and maturity while also imparting how Pip the character feels about what is happening to him as
it actually happens. This skillfully executed distinction is perhaps best observed early in the book, when Pip
the character is a child; here, Pip the narrator gently pokes fun at his younger self, but also enables us to see
and feel the story through his eyes.
As a character, Pips two most important traits are his immature, romantic idealism and his innately good
conscience. On the one hand, Pip has a deep desire to improve himself and attain any possible advancement,
whether educational, moral, or social. His longing to marry Estella and join the upper classes stems from the
same idealistic desire as his longing to learn to read and his fear of being punished for bad behavior: once he
understands ideas like poverty, ignorance, and immorality, Pip does not want to be poor, ignorant, or
immoral. Pip the narrator judges his own past actions extremely harshly, rarely giving himself credit for
good deeds but angrily castigating himself for bad ones. As a character, however, Pips idealism often leads
him to perceive the world rather narrowly, and his tendency to oversimplify situations based on superficial
values leads him to behave badly toward the people who care about him. When Pip becomes a gentleman,
for example, he immediately begins to act as he thinks a gentleman is supposed to act, which leads him to
treat Joe and Biddy snobbishly and coldly.
On the other hand, Pip is at heart a very generous and sympathetic young man, a fact that can be witnessed
in his numerous acts of kindness throughout the book (helping Magwitch, secretly buying Herberts way
into business, etc.) and his essential love for all those who love him. Pips main line of development in the
novel may be seen as the process of learning to place his innate sense of kindness and conscience above his
immature idealism.
Not long after meeting Miss Havisham and Estella, Pips desire for advancement largely overshadows his
basic goodness. After receiving his mysterious fortune, his idealistic wishes seem to have been justified, and
he gives himself over to a gentlemanly life of idleness. But the discovery that the wretched Magwitch, not
the wealthy Miss Havisham, is his secret benefactor shatters Pips oversimplified sense of his worlds
hierarchy. The fact that he comes to admire Magwitch while losing Estella to the brutish nobleman
Drummle ultimately forces him to realize that ones social position is not the most important quality one
possesses, and that his behavior as a gentleman has caused him to hurt the people who care about him most.
Once he has learned these lessons, Pip matures into the man who narrates the novel, completing the
bildungsroman.
Estella
Often cited as Dickenss first convincing female character, Estella is a supremely ironic creation, one who
darkly undermines the notion of romantic love and serves as a bitter criticism against the class system in
which she is mired. Raised from the age of three by Miss Havisham to torment men and break their hearts,
Estella wins Pips deepest love by practicing deliberate cruelty. Unlike the warm, winsome, kind heroine of
a traditional love story, Estella is cold, cynical, and manipulative. Though she represents Pips first longed-
for ideal of life among the upper classes, Estella is actually even lower-born than Pip; as Pip learns near the
end of the novel, she is the daughter of Magwitch, the coarse convict, and thus springs from the very lowest
level of society.
Ironically, life among the upper classes does not represent salvation for Estella. Instead, she is victimized
twice by her adopted class. Rather than being raised by Magwitch, a man of great inner nobility, she is
raised by Miss Havisham, who destroys her ability to express emotion and interact normally with the world.
And rather than marrying the kindhearted commoner Pip, Estella marries the cruel nobleman Drummle, who
treats her harshly and makes her life miserable for many years. In this way, Dickens uses Estellas life to
reinforce the idea that ones happiness and well-being are not deeply connected to ones social position: had
Estella been poor, she might have been substantially better off.
Despite her cold behavior and the damaging influences in her life, Dickens nevertheless ensures that Estella
is still a sympathetic character. By giving the reader a sense of her inner struggle to discover and act on her
own feelings rather than on the imposed motives of her upbringing, Dickens gives the reader a glimpse of
Estellas inner life, which helps to explain what Pip might love about her. Estella does not seem able to stop
herself from hurting Pip, but she also seems not to want to hurt him; she repeatedly warns him that she has
no heart and seems to urge him as strongly as she can to find happiness by leaving her behind. Finally,
Estellas long, painful marriage to Drummle causes her to develop along the same lines as Pipthat is, she
learns, through experience, to rely on and trust her inner feelings. In the final scene of the novel, she has
become her own woman for the first time in the book. As she says to Pip, Suffering has been stronger than
all other teaching. . . . I have been bent and broken, butI hopeinto a better shape.
Miss Havisham
The mad, vengeful Miss Havisham, a wealthy dowager who lives in a rotting mansion and wears an old
wedding dress every day of her life, is not exactly a believable character, but she is certainly one of the most
memorable creations in the book. Miss Havishams life is defined by a single tragic event: her jilting by
Compeyson on what was to have been their wedding day. From that moment forth, Miss Havisham is
determined never to move beyond her heartbreak. She stops all the clocks in Satis House at twenty minutes
to nine, the moment when she first learned that Compeyson was gone, and she wears only one shoe, because
when she learned of his betrayal, she had not yet put on the other shoe. With a kind of manic, obsessive
cruelty, Miss Havisham adopts Estella and raises her as a weapon to achieve her own revenge on men. Miss
Havisham is an example of single-minded vengeance pursued destructively: both Miss Havisham and the
people in her life suffer greatly because of her quest for revenge. Miss Havisham is completely unable to see
that her actions are hurtful to Pip and Estella. She is redeemed at the end of the novel when she realizes that
she has caused Pips heart to be broken in the same manner as her own; rather than achieving any kind of
personal revenge, she has only caused more pain. Miss Havisham immediately begs Pip for forgiveness,
reinforcing the novels theme that bad behavior can be redeemed by contrition and sympathy.
THEMES
Ambition and Self-Improvement
-The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are more
important than social advancement, wealth, and class.
 -ambition and self-improvementideas that quickly become both the thematic center of the novel
and the psychological mechanism that encourages much of Pips development
-Pip is an idealist; whenever he can conceive of something that is better than what he already has, he
immediately desires to obtain the improvement
-Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectationsmoral, social, and
educational.
Social Class
-Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens explores the class system of Victorian England, ranging
from the most wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to
the middle class (Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss Havisham)
-The theme of social class is central to the novels plot and to the ultimate moral theme of the
bookPips realization that wealth and class are less important than affection, loyalty, and inner worth.
-Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the novels treatment of social class is that the
class system it portrays is based on the post-Industrial Revolution model of Victorian England. Dickens
generally ignores the nobility and the hereditary aristocracy in favor of characters whose fortunes have been
earned through commerce. In this way, by connecting the theme of social class to the idea of work and self-
advancement, Dickens subtly reinforces the novels overarching theme of ambition and self-improvement.
Crime, Guilt, and Innocence
-The theme of crime, guilt, and innocence is explored throughout the novel largely through the
characters of the convicts and the criminal lawyer Jaggers.
-In general, just as social class becomes a superficial standard of value that Pip must learn to look
beyond in finding a better way to live his life, the external trappings of the criminal justice system (police,
courts, jails, etc.) become a superficial standard of morality that Pip must learn to look beyond to trust his
inner conscience. As Pip has learned to trust his conscience and to value Magwitchs inner character, he has
replaced an external standard of value with an internal one.
MOTIFS
Doubles
-One of the most remarkable aspects of Dickenss work is its structural intricacy and remarkable
balance. Dickenss plots involve complicated coincidences, extraordinarily tangled webs of human
relationships, and highly dramatic developments in which setting, atmosphere, event, and character are all
seamlessly fused.
-In Great Expectations, perhaps the most visible sign of Dickenss commitment to intricate dramatic
symmetryapart from the knot of character relationships, of courseis the fascinating motif of doubles
that runs throughout the book. From the earliest scenes of the novel to the last, nearly every element of Great
Expectations is mirrored or doubled at some other point in the book. There are two convicts on the marsh
(Magwitch and Compeyson), two invalids (Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham), two young women who interest
Pip (Biddy and Estella), and so on
-This doubling of elements has no real bearing on the novels main themes, but, like the connection
of weather and action, it adds to the sense that everything in Pips world is connected. Throughout Dickenss
works, this kind of dramatic symmetry is simply part of the fabric of his novelistic universe.
Comparison of Characters to Inanimate Objects
-Throughout Great Expectations, the narrator uses images of inanimate objects to describe the
physical appearance of charactersparticularly minor characters, or characters with whom the narrator is
not intimate.
-This motif, which Dickens uses throughout his novels, may suggest a failure of empathy on the
narrators part, or it may suggest that the characters position in life is pressuring them to resemble a thing
more than a human being. The latter interpretation would mean that the motif in general is part of a social
critique, in that it implies that an institution such as the class system or the criminal justice system
dehumanizes certain people.
SYMBOLS
Satis House
-In Satis House, Dickens creates a magnificent Gothic setting whose various elements symbolize
Pips romantic perception of the upper class and many other themes of the book
-On her decaying body, Miss Havishams wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and
degeneration. The wedding dress and the wedding feast symbolize Miss Havishams past, and the stopped
clocks throughout the house symbolize her determined attempt to freeze time by refusing to change anything
from the way it was when she was jilted on her wedding day. The brewery next to the house symbolizes the
connection between commerce and wealth: Miss Havishams fortune is not the product of an aristocratic
birth but of a recent success in industrial capitalism. Finally, the crumbling, dilapidated stones of the house,
as well as the darkness and dust that pervade it, symbolize the general decadence of the lives of its
inhabitants and of the upper class as a whole.
The Mists on the Marshes
-The setting almost always symbolizes a theme in Great Expectations and always sets a tone that is
perfectly matched to the novels dramatic action. The misty marshes near Pips childhood home in Kent, one
of the most evocative of the books settings, are used several times to symbolize danger and uncertainty.
Bentley Drummle
-Although he is a minor character in the novel, Bentley Drummle provides an important contrast with
Pip and represents the arbitrary nature of class distinctions.
-Drummles negative example helps Pip to see the inner worth of characters such as Magwitch and
Joe, and eventually to discard his immature fantasies about wealth and class in favor of a new understanding
that is both more compassionate and more realistic.

LEWIS CARROL
(1832-1898)

Lewis Carrolls book Alices Adventures in Wonderland was not originally written for the general
public but for a single child: Alice Pleasance Liddell, second daughter of the Dean of Christ Church College,
Oxford
Language: Part of the way Carroll shows Wonderland to be a strange place is the way the inhabitants
twist the meaning of words. Carroll plays with language by including many puns and other forms of word
play.
According to his own account, Lewis Carroll composed the story that became Alices Adventures in
Wonderland on a sunny July day in 1862. He created it for the Liddell sisters while on a boating trip up the
Thames River. Although the book and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
have since become timeless classics, they nonetheless clearly reflect their Victorian origins in their
language, their classconsciousness, and their attitude toward children.
The early Victorian era marked the emergence of a large middle-class society for the first time in the
history of the Western world. With this middle-class population came a spread of socalled family values:
polite society avoided mentioning sex, sexual passions, bodily functions, and in extreme cases, body parts.
They also followed an elaborate code of manners meant to distinguish one class from another. By the 1860s,
the result, for most people, was a kind of stiff and gloomy prudery marked by a feeling that freedom and
enjoyment of life were sinful and only to be indulged in at the risk of immorality. Modern critics have
mostly condemned the Victorians for these repressive attitudes.
Many upper-middle-class Victorians had a double view of childhood. Childhood was regarded as the
happiest period of a persons life, a simple and uncomplicated time. At the same time, children were also
thought to be best seen and not heard. Some Victorians also neglected their children, giving them wholly
over into the care of nurses, nannies and other child-care professionals. Boys often went away to boarding
school, while girls were usually taught at home by a governess. The emphasis for all children, but
particularly girls, was on learning manners and how to fit into society. Children learned their catechism,
learned to pray, learned to fear sinand their books were meant to aid and abet the process, states Morton
N. Cohen in his critical biography Lewis Carroll.They were often frightened by warnings and threats, their
waking hours burdened with homilies. Much of the childrens literature were purposeful and dour. They
instilled discipline and compliance.
This emphasis on manners and good breeding is reflected in Alices adventures. Most early Victorian
fairy-stories and other works for children were intended to promote what contemporaries believed was
good and moral behavior on the part of children. Carrolls Alice books take a swipe at this Victorian
morality, in part through their uninhibited use of nonsense and wordplay (a favorite Victorian pastime) and
in part through direct parody.
TYPE OF WORK Novella
GENRE Fairy tale; childrens fiction; satire; allegory
NARRATOR The narrator is anonymous and does not use many words to describe events in the
story.
POINT OF VIEW The narrator speaks in third person, though occasionally in first and second
person. The narrative follows Alice around on her travels, voicing her thoughts and feelings.
TONE Straightforward; avuncular
SETTING (TIME) Victorian era, circa publication date
SETTING (PLACE) England, Wonderland
PLOT
Alice sits on a riverbank on a warm summer day, drowsily reading over her sisters shoulder, when
she catches sight of a White Rabbit in a waistcoat running by her. The White Rabbit pulls out a pocket
watch, exclaims that he is late, and pops down a rabbit hole. Alice follows the White Rabbit down the hole
and comes upon a great hallway lined with doors. She finds a small door that she opens using a key she
discovers on a nearby table. Through the door, she sees a beautiful garden, and Alice begins to cry when she
realizes she cannot fit through the door. She finds a bottle marked DRINK ME and downs the contents.
She shrinks down to the right size to enter the door but cannot enter since she has left the key on the tabletop
above her head. Alice discovers a cake marked EAT ME which causes her to grow to an inordinately large
height. Still unable to enter the garden, Alice begins to cry again, and her giant tears form a pool at her feet.
As she cries, Alice shrinks and falls into the pool of tears. The pool of tears becomes a sea, and as she treads
water she meets a Mouse. The Mouse accompanies Alice to shore, where a number of animals stand
gathered on a bank. After a Caucus Race, Alice scares the animals away with tales of her cat, Dinah, and
finds herself alone again.
Alice meets the White Rabbit again, who mistakes her for a servant and sends her off to fetch his things.
While in the White Rabbits house, Alice drinks an unmarked bottle of liquid and grows to the size of the
room. The White Rabbit returns to his house, fuming at the now-giant Alice, but she swats him and his
servants away with her giant hand. The animals outside try to get her out of the house by throwing rocks at
her, which inexplicably transform into cakes when they land in the house. Alice eats one of the cakes, which
causes her to shrink to a small size. She wanders off into the forest, where she meets a Caterpillar sitting on
a mushroom and smoking a hookah (i.e., a water pipe). The Caterpillar and Alice get into an argument, but
before the Caterpillar crawls away in disgust, he tells Alice that different parts of the mushroom will make
her grow or shrink. Alice tastes a part of the mushroom, and her neck stretches above the trees. A pigeon
sees her and attacks, deeming her a serpent hungry for pigeon eggs.
Alice eats another part of the mushroom and shrinks down to a normal height. She wanders until she comes
across the house of the Duchess. She enters and finds the Duchess, who is nursing a squealing baby, as well
as a grinning Cheshire Cat, and a Cook who tosses massive amounts of pepper into a cauldron of soup. The
Duchess behaves rudely to Alice and then departs to prepare for a croquet game with the Queen. As she
leaves, the Duchess hands Alice the baby, which Alice discovers is a pig. Alice lets the pig go and reenters
the forest, where she meets the Cheshire Cat again. The Cheshire Cat explains to Alice that everyone in
Wonderland is mad, including Alice herself. The Cheshire Cat gives directions to the March Hares house
and fades away to nothing but a floating grin.
Alice travels to the March Hares house to find the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the Dormouse having
tea together. Treated rudely by all three, Alice stands by the tea party, uninvited. She learns that they have
wronged Time and are trapped in perpetual tea-time. After a final discourtesy, Alice leaves and journeys
through the forest. She finds a tree with a door in its side, and travels through it to find herself back in the
great hall. She takes the key and uses the mushroom to shrink down and enter the garden.
After saving several gardeners from the temper of the Queen of Hearts, Alice joins the Queen in a strange
game of croquet. The croquet ground is hilly, the mallets and balls are live flamingos and hedgehogs, and
the Queen tears about, frantically calling for the other players executions. Amidst this madness, Alice
bumps into the Cheshire Cat again, who asks her how she is doing. The King of Hearts interrupts their
conversation and attempts to bully the Cheshire Cat, who impudently dismisses the King. The King takes
offense and arranges for the Cheshire Cats execution, but since the Cheshire Cat is now only a head floating
in midair, no one can agree on how to behead it.
The Duchess approaches Alice and attempts to befriend her, but the Duchess makes Alice feel uneasy. The
Queen of Hearts chases the Duchess off and tells Alice that she must visit the Mock Turtle to hear his story.
The Queen of Hearts sends Alice with the Gryphon as her escort to meet the Mock Turtle. Alice shares her
strange experiences with the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, who listen sympathetically and comment on the
strangeness of her adventures. After listening to the Mock Turtles story, they hear an announcement that a
trial is about to begin, and the Gryphon brings Alice back to the croquet ground.
The Knave of Hearts stands trial for stealing the Queens tarts. The King of Hearts leads the proceedings,
and various witnesses approach the stand to give evidence. The Mad Hatter and the Cook both give their
testimony, but none of it makes any sense. The White Rabbit, acting as a herald, calls Alice to the witness
stand. The King goes nowhere with his line of questioning, but takes encouragement when the White Rabbit
provides new evidence in the form of a letter written by the Knave. The letter turns out to be a poem, which
the King interprets as an admission of guilt on the part of the Knave. Alice believes the note to be nonsense
and protests the Kings interpretation. The Queen becomes furious with Alice and orders her beheading, but
Alice grows to a huge size and knocks over the Queens army of playing cards.
All of a sudden, Alice finds herself awake on her sisters lap, back at the riverbank. She tells her sister about
her dream and goes inside for tea as her sister ponders Alices adventures.
Character List
Alice - The seven-year-old protagonist of the story. Alice believes that the world is orderly and stable, and
she has an insatiable curiosity about her surroundings. Wonderland challenges and frustrates her perceptions
of the world.
The White Rabbit - The frantic, harried Wonderland creature that originally leads Alice to Wonderland. The
White Rabbit is figure of some importance, but he is manic, timid, and occasionally aggressive.
The Queen of Hearts - The ruler of Wonderland. The Queen is severe and domineering, continually
screaming for her subjects to be beheaded.
The King of Hearts - The coruler of Wonderland. The King is ineffectual and generally unlikeable, but
lacks the Queens ruthlessness and undoes her orders of execution.
The Cheshire Cat - A perpetually grinning cat who appears and disappears at will. The Cheshire Cat
displays a detached, clearheaded logic and explains Wonderlands madness to Alice.
The Duchess - The Queens uncommonly ugly cousin. The Duchess behaves rudely to Alice at first, but
later treats her so affectionately that her advances feel threatening.
The Caterpillar - A Wonderland creature. The Caterpillar sits on a mushroom, smokes a hookah, and treats
Alice with contempt. He directs Alice to the magic mushroom that allows her to shrink and grow.
The Mad Hatter - A small, impolite hatter who lives in perpetual tea-time. The Mad Hatter enjoys
frustrating Alice.
The March Hare - The Mad Hatters tea-time companion. The March Hare takes great pleasure in
frustrating Alice.
The Dormouse - The Mad Hatter and March Hares companion. The Dormouse sits at the tea table and
drifts in and out of sleep.
The Gryphon - A servant to the Queen who befriends Alice. The Gryphon escorts Alice to see the Mock
Turtle.
The Mock Turtle - A turtle with the head of a calf. The Mock Turtle is friendly to Alice but is exceedingly
sentimental and self-absorbed.
Alices sister - The only character whom Alice interacts with outside of Wonderland. Alices sister
daydreams about Alices adventures as the story closes.
The Knave of Hearts - An attendant to the King and Queen. The Knave has been accused of stealing the
Queens tarts.
The Mouse - The first Wonderland creature that Alice encounters. The Mouse is initially frightened of Alice
and her talk about her pet cat, and eventually tells the story of Fury and the Mouse that foreshadows the
Knave of Hearts trial.
The Dodo - A Wonderland creature. The Dodo tends to use big words, and others accuse him of not
knowing their meanings. He proposes that the animals participate in a Caucus race.
The Duck, the Lory, and the Eaglet - Wonderland creatures who participate in the Caucus race.
The Cook - The Duchesss cook, who causes everyone to sneeze with the amount of pepper she uses in her
cooking. The Cook is ill-tempered, throwing objects at the Duchess and refusing to give evidence at the trial.
The Pigeon - A Wonderland creature who believes Alice is a serpent. The pigeon is sulky and angry and
thinks Alice is after her eggs.
Two, Five, and Seven - The playing-card gardeners. Two, Five, and Seven are fearful and fumbling,
especially in the presence of the Queen.
Bill - A lizard who first appears as a servant of the White Rabbit and later as a juror at the trial. Bill is
stupid and ineffectual.
The Frog-Footman - The Duchesss footman. The Frog-footman is stupid and accustomed to the fact that
nothing makes sense in Wonderland.
ANALYSIS OF MAJOR CHARACTERS
Alice
Alice is a sensible prepubescent girl from a wealthy English family who finds herself in a strange world
ruled by imagination and fantasy. Alice feels comfortable with her identity and has a strong sense that her
environment is comprised of clear, logical, and consistent rules and features. Alices familiarity with the
world has led one critic to describe her as a disembodied intellect. Alice displays great curiosity and
attempts to fit her diverse experiences into a clear understanding of the world.
Alice approaches Wonderland as an anthropologist, but maintains a strong sense of noblesse oblige that
comes with her class status. She has confidence in her social position, education, and the Victorian virtue of
good manners. Alice has a feeling of entitlement, particularly when comparing herself to Mabel, whom she
declares has a poky little house, and no toys. Additionally, she flaunts her limited information base with
anyone who will listen and becomes increasingly obsessed with the importance of good manners as she
deals with the rude creatures of Wonderland. Alice maintains a superior attitude and behaves with solicitous
indulgence toward those she believes are less privileged.
The tension of Alices Adventures in Wonderland emerges when Alices fixed perspective of the world
comes into contact with the mad, illogical world of Wonderland. Alices fixed sense of order clashes with
the madness she finds in Wonderland. The White Rabbit challenges her perceptions of class when he
mistakes her for a servant, while the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Pigeon challenge Alices notions of
urbane intelligence with an unfamiliar logic that only makes sense within the context of Wonderland. Most
significantly, Wonderland challenges her perceptions of good manners by constantly assaulting her with
dismissive rudeness. Alices fundamental beliefs face challenges at every turn, and as a result Alice suffers
an identity crisis. She persists in her way of life as she perceives her sense of order collapsing all around her.
Alice must choose between retaining her notions of order and assimilating into Wonderlands nonsensical
rules.
The Cheshire Cat
The Cheshire Cat is unique among Wonderland creatures. Threatened by no one, it maintains a cool,
grinning outsider status. The Cheshire Cat has insight into the workings of Wonderland as a whole. Its calm
explanation to Alice that to be in Wonderland is to be mad reveals a number of points that do not occur to
Alice on her own. First, the Cheshire Cat points out that Wonderland as a place has a stronger cumulative
effect than any of its citizens. Wonderland is ruled by nonsense, and as a result, Alices normal behavior
becomes inconsistent with its operating principles, so Alice herself becomes mad in the context of
Wonderland. Certainly, Alices burning curiosity to absorb everything she sees in Wonderland sets her apart
from the other Wonderland creatures, making her seem mad in comparison.
The Queen of Hearts
As the ruler of Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts is the character that Alice must inevitably face to figure out
the puzzle of Wonderland. In a sense, the Queen of Hearts is literally the heart of Alices conflict. Unlike
many of the other characters in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts is not as concerned with nonsense and
perversions of logic as she is with absolute rule and execution. In Wonderland, she is a singular force of fear
who even dominates the King of Hearts. In the Queens presence, Alice finally gets a taste of true fear, even
though she understands that the Queen of Hearts is merely a playing card. The Gryphon later informs Alice
that the Queen never actually executes anyone she sentences to death, which reinforces the fact that the
Queen of Heartss power lies in her rhetoric. The Queen becomes representative of the idea that Wonderland
is devoid of substance.
THEMES
The Tragic and Inevitable Loss of Childhood Innocence
Throughout the course of Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice goes through a variety of absurd
physical changes. The discomfort she feels at never being the right size acts as a symbol for the changes that
occur during puberty. Alice finds these changes to be traumatic, and feels discomfort, frustration, and
sadness when she goes through them. She struggles to maintain a comfortable physical size. In Chapter 1,
she becomes upset when she keeps finding herself too big or too small to enter the garden. In Chapter 5, she
loses control over specific body parts when her neck grows to an absurd length. These constant fluctuations
represent the way a child may feel as her body grows and changes during puberty.
Life as a Meaningless Puzzle
In Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Alice encounters a series of puzzles that seem to have no clear
solutions, which imitates the ways that life frustrates expectations. Alice expects that the situations she
encounters will make a certain kind of sense, but they repeatedly frustrate her ability to figure out
Wonderland. Alice tries to understand the Caucus race, solve the Mad Hatters riddle, and understand the
Queens ridiculous croquet game, but to no avail. In every instance, the riddles and challenges presented to
Alice have no purpose or answer. Even though Lewis Carroll was a logician, in Alices Adventures in
Wonderland he makes a farce out of jokes, riddles, and games of logic. Alice learns that she cannot expect to
find logic or meaning in the situations that she encounters, even when they appear to be problems, riddles, or
games that would normally have solutions that Alice would be able to figure out. Carroll makes a broader
point about the ways that life frustrates expectations and resists interpretation, even when problems seem
familiar or solvable.
Death as a Constant and Underlying Menace
Alice continually finds herself in situations in which she risks death, and while these threats never
materialize, they suggest that death lurks just behind the ridiculous events of Alices Adventures in
Wonderland as a present and possible outcome. Death appears in Chapter 1, when the narrator mentions that
Alice would say nothing of falling off of her own house, since it would likely kill her. Alice takes risks that
could possibly kill her, but she never considers death as a possible outcome. Over time, she starts to realize
that her experiences in Wonderland are far more threatening than they appear to be. As the Queen screams
Off with its head! she understands that Wonderland may not merely be a ridiculous realm where
expectations are repeatedly frustrated. Death may be a real threat, and Alice starts to understand that the
risks she faces may not be ridiculous and absurd after all.
MOTIFS
Dream
Alices Adventures in Wonderland takes place in Alices dream, so that the characters and phenomena of the
real world mix with elements of Alices unconscious state. The dream motif explains the abundance of
nonsensical and disparate events in the story. As in a dream, the narrative follows the dreamer as she
encounters various episodes in which she attempts to interpret her experiences in relationship to herself and
her world. Though Alices experiences lend themselves to meaningful observations, they resist a singular
and coherent interpretation.
Subversion
Alice quickly discovers during her travels that the only reliable aspect of Wonderland that she can count on
is that it will frustrate her expectations and challenge her understanding of the natural order of the world. In
Wonderland, Alice finds that her lessons no longer mean what she thought, as she botches her multiplication
tables and incorrectly recites poems she had memorized while in Wonderland. Even Alices physical
dimensions become warped as she grows and shrinks erratically throughout the story. Wonderland frustrates
Alices desires to fit her experiences in a logical framework where she can make sense of the relationship
between cause and effect.
Language
Carroll plays with linguistic conventions in Alices Adventures in Wonderland, making use of puns and
playing on multiple meanings of words throughout the text. Carroll invents words and expressions and
develops new meanings for words. Alices exclamation Curious and curiouser! suggests that both her
surroundings and the language she uses to describe them expand beyond expectation and convention.
Anything is possible in Wonderland, and Carrolls manipulation of language reflects this sense of unlimited
possibility.
Curious, Nonsense, and Confusing
Alice uses these words throughout her journey to describe phenomena she has trouble explaining. Though
the words are generally interchangeable, she usually assigns curious and confusing to experiences or
encounters that she tolerates. She endures is the experiences that are curious or confusing, hoping to gain a
clearer picture of how that individual or experience functions in the world. When Alice declares something
to be nonsense, as she does with the trial in Chapter 12, she rejects or criticizes the experience or encounter.
SYMBOLS
The Garden
Nearly every object in Alices Adventures in Wonderland functions as a symbol, but nothing clearly
represents one particular thing. The symbolic resonances of Wonderland objects are generally contained to
the individual episode in which they appear. Often the symbols work together to convey a particular
meaning. The garden may symbolize the Garden of Eden, an idyllic space of beauty and innocence that
Alice is not permitted to access. On a more abstract level, the garden may simply represent the experience of
desire, in that Alice focuses her energy and emotion on trying to attain it. The two symbolic meanings work
together to underscore Alices desire to hold onto her feelings of childlike innocence that she must
relinquish as she matures.
The Caterpillars Mushroom
Like the garden, the Caterpillars mushroom also has multiple symbolic meanings. Some readers and critics
view the Caterpillar as a sexual threat, its phallic shape a symbol of sexual virility. The Caterpillars
mushroom connects to this symbolic meaning. Alice must master the properties of the mushroom to gain
control over her fluctuating size, which represents the bodily frustrations that accompany puberty. Others
view the mushroom as a psychedelic hallucinogen that compounds Alices surreal and distorted perception
of Wonderland.
Chapter 1: Down the Rabbit Hole
Chapter 2: The Pool of Tears
Chapter 3: A Caucus Race and a Long Tale
Chapter 4: The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill
Chapter 5: Advice from a Caterpillar
Chapter 6: Pig and Pepper
Chapter 7: A Mad Tea Party
Chapter 8: The Queens Croquet Ground
Chapter 9: The Mock Turtles Story
Chapter 10: The Lobster Quadrille
Chapter 11: Who Stole the Tarts?
Chapter 12: Alices Evidence

THOMAS HARDY
(1840-1928)
 But Hardy cannot solely be labeled a Victorian novelist. Nor can he be categorized simply as a
Modernist, in the tradition of writers like Virginia Woolf or D. H. Lawrence, who were determined to
explode the conventions of nineteenth-century literature and build a new kind of novel in its place. In many
respects, Hardy was trapped in the middle ground between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, between
Victorian sensibilities and more modern ones, and between tradition and innovation.
Soon after Tess of the dUrbervilles (1891) was published, its sales assured Hardys financial future.
But the novel also aroused a substantial amount of controversy. In Tess of the dUrbervilles and other
novels, Hardy demonstrates his deep sense of moral sympathy for Englands lower classes, particularly for
rural women. He became famous for his compassionate, often controversial portrayal of young women
victimized by the self-righteous rigidity of English social morality. Perhaps his most famous depiction of
such a young woman is in Tess of the dUrbervilles. This novel and the one that followed it, Jude the
Obscure (1895), engendered widespread public scandal with their comparatively frank look at the sexual
hypocrisy of English society.
Hardy lived and wrote in a time of difficult social change, when England was making its slow and
painful transition from an old-fashioned, agricultural nation to a modern, industrial one. Businessmen and
entrepreneurs, or new money, joined the ranks of the social elite, as some families of the ancient
aristocracy, or old money, faded into obscurity. Tesss family in Tess of the dUrbervilles illustrates this
change, as Tesss parents, the Durbeyfields, lose themselves in the fantasy of belonging to an ancient and
aristocratic family, the dUrbervilles. Hardys novel strongly suggests that such a family history is not only
meaningless but also utterly undesirable. Hardys views on the subject were appalling to conservative and
status-conscious British readers, and Tess of the dUrbervilles was met in England with widespread
controversy.
TYPE OF WORK Novel
GENRE Victorian, tragic
POINT OF VIEW The narrator speaks in the third person, and looks deep into the characters
minds. The narrator is objective but has an omniscient understanding of future implications of characters
actions as they happen.
TONE Realistic, pessimistic
SETTING (TIME) The 1880s and 1890s
SETTING (PLACE) Wessex, the southwest of England
PLOT
The poor peddler John Durbeyfield is stunned to learn that he is the descendent of an ancient noble
family, the dUrbervilles. Meanwhile, Tess, his eldest daughter, joins the other village girls in the May Day
dance, where Tess briefly exchanges glances with a young man. Mr. Durbeyfield and his wife decide to send
Tess to the dUrberville mansion, where they hope Mrs. dUrberville will make Tesss fortune. In reality,
Mrs. dUrberville is no relation to Tess at all: her husband, the merchant Simon Stokes, simply changed his
name to dUrberville after he retired. But Tess does not know this fact, and when the lascivious Alec
dUrberville, Mrs. dUrbervilles son, procures Tess a job tending fowls on the dUrberville estate, Tess has
no choice but to accept, since she blames herself for an accident involving the familys horse, its only means
of income.
Tess spends several months at this job, resisting Alecs attempts to seduce her. Finally, Alec takes advantage
of her in the woods one night after a fair. Tess knows she does not love Alec. She returns home to her family
to give birth to Alecs child, whom she christens Sorrow. Sorrow dies soon after he is born, and Tess spends
a miserable year at home before deciding to seek work elsewhere. She finally accepts a job as a milkmaid at
the Talbothays Dairy.
At Talbothays, Tess enjoys a period of contentment and happiness. She befriends three of her fellow
milkmaidsIzz, Retty, and Marianand meets a man named Angel Clare, who turns out to be the man
from the May Day dance at the beginning of the novel. Tess and Angel slowly fall in love. They grow closer
throughout Tesss time at Talbothays, and she eventually accepts his proposal of marriage. Still, she is
troubled by pangs of conscience and feels she should tell Angel about her past. She writes him a
confessional note and slips it under his door, but it slides under the carpet and Angel never sees it.
After their wedding, Angel and Tess both confess indiscretions: Angel tells Tess about an affair he had with
an older woman in London, and Tess tells Angel about her history with Alec. Tess forgives Angel, but
Angel cannot forgive Tess. He gives her some money and boards a ship bound for Brazil, where he thinks he
might establish a farm. He tells Tess he will try to accept her past but warns her not to try to join him until
he comes for her.
Tess struggles. She has a difficult time finding work and is forced to take a job at an unpleasant and
unprosperous farm. She tries to visit Angels family but overhears his brothers discussing Angels poor
marriage, so she leaves. She hears a wandering preacher speak and is stunned to discover that he is Alec
dUrberville, who has been converted to Christianity by Angels father, the Reverend Clare. Alec and Tess
are each shaken by their encounter, and Alec appallingly begs Tess never to tempt him again. Soon after,
however, he again begs Tess to marry him, having turned his back on his -religious ways.
Tess learns from her sister Liza-Lu that her mother is near death, and Tess is forced to return home to take
care of her. Her mother recovers, but her father unexpectedly dies soon after. When the family is evicted
from their home, Alec offers help. But Tess refuses to accept, knowing he only wants to obligate her to him
again.
At last, Angel decides to forgive his wife. He leaves Brazil, desperate to find her. Instead, he finds her
mother, who tells him Tess has gone to a village called Sandbourne. There, he finds Tess in an expensive
boardinghouse called The Herons, where he tells her he has forgiven her and begs her to take him back. Tess
tells him he has come too late. She was unable to resist and went back to Alec dUrberville. Angel leaves in
a daze, and, heartbroken to the point of madness, Tess goes upstairs and stabs her lover to death. When the
landlady finds Alecs body, she raises an alarm, but Tess has already fled to find Angel.
Angel agrees to help Tess, though he cannot quite believe that she has actually murdered Alec. They hide
out in an empty mansion for a few days, then travel farther. When they come to Stonehenge, Tess goes to
sleep, but when morning breaks shortly thereafter, a search party discovers them. Tess is arrested and sent to
jail. Angel and Liza-Lu watch as a black flag is raised over the prison, signaling Tesss execution.
CHARACTER LIST
-Tess Durbeyfield - The novels protagonist. Tess is a beautiful, loyal young woman living with her
impoverished family in the village of Marlott. Tess has a keen sense of responsibility and is committed to
doing the best she can for her family, although her inexperience and lack of wise parenting leave her
extremely vulnerable. Her life is complicated when her father discovers a link to the noble line of the
dUrbervilles, and, as a result, Tess is sent to work at the dUrberville mansion. Unfortunately, her ideals
cannot prevent her from sliding further and further into misfortune after she becomes pregnant by Alec
dUrberville. The terrible irony is that Tess and her family are not really related to this branch of the
dUrbervilles at all: Alecs father, a merchant named Simon Stokes, simply assumed the name after he
retired.
-Angel Clare - An intelligent young man who has decided to become a farmer to preserve his intellectual
freedom from the pressures of city life. Angels father and his two brothers are respected clergymen, but
Angels religious doubts have kept him from joining the ministry. He meets Tess when she is a milkmaid at
the Talbothays Dairy and quickly falls in love with her.
-Alec dUrberville - The handsome, amoral son of a wealthy merchant named Simon Stokes. Alec is not
really a dUrbervillehis father simply took on the name of the ancient noble family after he built his
mansion and retired. Alec is a manipulative, sinister young man who does everything he can to seduce the
inexperienced Tess when she comes to work for his family. When he finally has his way with her, out in the
woods, he subsequently tries to help her but is unable to make her love him.
-Mr. John Durbeyfield - Tesss father, a lazy peddler in Marlott. John is naturally quick, but he hates work.
When he learns that he descends from the noble line of the dUrbervilles, he is quick to make an attempt to
profit from the connection.
-Mrs. Joan Durbeyfield - Tesss mother. Joan has a strong sense of propriety and very particular hopes for
Tesss life. She is continually disappointed and hurt by the way in which her daughters life actually
proceeds. But she is also somewhat simpleminded and naturally forgiving, and she is unable to remain angry
with Tessparticularly once Tess becomes her primary means of support.
-Mrs. dUrberville - Alecs mother, and the widow of Simon Stokes. Mrs. dUrberville is blind and often ill.
She cares deeply for her animals, but not for her maid Elizabeth, her son Alec, nor Tess when she comes to
work for her. In fact, she never sees Tess as anything more than an impoverished girl.
-Marian, Izz Huett, and Retty Priddle - Milkmaids whom Tess befriends at the Talbothays Dairy. Marian,
Izz, and Retty remain close to Tess throughout the rest of her life. They are all in love with Angel and are
devastated when he chooses Tess over them: Marian turns to drink, Retty attempts suicide, and Izz nearly
runs off to Brazil with Angel when he leaves Tess. Nevertheless, they remain helpful to Tess. Marian helps
her find a job at a farm called Flintcomb-Ash, and Marian and Izz write Angel a plaintive letter encouraging
him to give Tess another chance.
-Reverend Clare - Angels father, a somewhat intractable but principled clergyman in the town of
Emminster. Mr. Clare considers it his duty to convert the populace. One of his most difficult cases proves to
be none other than Alec dUrberville.
-Mrs. Clare - Angels mother, a loving but snobbish woman who places great stock in social class. Mrs.
Clare wants Angel to marry a suitable woman, meaning a woman with the proper social, financial, and
religious background. Mrs. Clare initially looks down on Tess as a simple and impoverished girl, but later
grows to appreciate her.
-Reverend Felix Clare - Angels brother, a village curate.
-Reverend Cuthbert - Clare Angels brother, a classical scholar and dean at Cambridge. Cuthbert, who can
concentrate only on university matters, marries Mercy Chant.
Eliza Louisa Durbeyfield - Tesss younger sister. Tess believes Liza-Lu has all of Tesss own good qualities
and none of her bad ones, and she encourages Angel to look after and even marry Liza-Lu after Tess dies.
-Sorrow - Tesss son with Alec dUrberville. Sorrow dies in his early infancy, after Tess christens him
herself. She later buries him herself as well, and decorates his grave.
-Mercy Chant - The daughter of a friend of the Reverend Clare. Mr. Clare hopes Angel will marry Mercy,
but after Angel marries Tess, Mercy becomes engaged to his brother Cuthbert instead.
ANALYSIS OF MAJOR CHARACTERS
Tess Durbeyfield
Intelligent, strikingly attractive, and distinguished by her deep moral sensitivity and passionate intensity,
Tess is indisputably the central character of the novel that bears her name. But she is also more than a
distinctive individual: Hardy makes her into somewhat of a mythic heroine. Her name, formally Theresa,
recalls St. Teresa of Avila, another martyr whose vision of a higher reality cost her her life. Other characters
often refer to Tess in mythical terms, as when Angel calls her a Daughter of Nature in Chapter XVIII, or
refers to her by the Greek mythological names Artemis and Demeter in Chapter XX. The narrator
himself sometimes describes Tess as more than an individual woman, but as something closer to a mythical
incarnation of womanhood. In Chapter XIV, he says that her eyes are neither black nor blue nor grey nor
violet; rather all these shades together, like an almost standard woman. Tesss story may thus be a
standard story, representing a deeper and larger experience than that of a single individual.
In part, Tess represents the changing role of the agricultural workers in England in the late nineteenth
century. Possessing an education that her unschooled parents lack, since she has passed the Sixth Standard
of the National Schools, Tess does not quite fit into the folk culture of her predecessors, but financial
constraints keep her from rising to a higher station in life. She belongs in that higher world, however, as we
discover on the first page of the novel with the news that the Durbeyfields are the surviving members of the
noble and ancient family of the dUrbervilles. There is aristocracy in Tesss blood, visible in her graceful
beautyyet she is forced to work as a farmhand and milkmaid. When she tries to express her joy by singing
lower-class folk ballads at the beginning of the third part of the novel, they do not satisfy hershe seems
not quite comfortable with those popular songs. But, on the other hand, her diction, while more polished
than her mothers, is not quite up to the level of Alecs or Angels. She is in between, both socially and
culturally. Thus, Tess is a symbol of unclear and unstable notions of class in nineteenth-century Britain,
where old family lines retained their earlier glamour, but where cold economic realities made sheer wealth
more important than inner nobility.
Beyond her social symbolism, Tess represents fallen humanity in a religious sense, as the frequent biblical
allusions in the novel remind us. Just as Tesss clan was once glorious and powerful but is now sadly
diminished, so too did the early glory of the first humans, Adam and Eve, fade with their expulsion from
Eden, making humans sad shadows of what they once were. Tess thus represents what is known in Christian
theology as original sin, the degraded state in which all humans live, even whenlike Tess herself after
killing Prince or succumbing to Alecthey are not wholly or directly responsible for the sins for which they
are punished. This torment represents the most universal side of Tess: she is the myth of the human who
suffers for crimes that are not her own and lives a life more degraded than she deserves.
Alec dUrberville
An insouciant twenty-four-year-old man, heir to a fortune, and bearer of a name that his father purchased,
Alec is the nemesis and downfall of Tesss life. His first name, Alexander, suggests the conqueroras in
Alexander the Greatwho seizes what he wants regardless of moral propriety. Yet he is more slippery than
a grand conqueror. His full last name, Stoke-dUrberville, symbolizes the split character of his family,
whose origins are simpler than their pretensions to grandeur. After all, Stokes is a blunt and inelegant name.
Indeed, the divided and duplicitous character of Alec is evident to the very end of the novel, when he
quickly abandons his newfound Christian faith upon remeeting Tess. It is hard to believe Alec holds his
religion, or anything else, sincerely. His supposed conversion may only be a new role he is playing.
This duplicity of character is so intense in Alec, and its consequences for Tess so severe, that he becomes
diabolical. The first part of his surname conjures associations with fiery energies, as in the stoking of a
furnace or the flames of hell. His devilish associations are evident when he wields a pitchfork while
addressing Tess early in the novel, and when he seduces her as the serpent in Genesis seduced Eve.
Additionally, like the famous depiction of Satan in Miltons Paradise Lost, Alec does not try to hide his bad
qualities. In fact, like Satan, he revels in them. In Chapter XII, he bluntly tells Tess, I suppose I am a bad
fellowa damn bad fellow. I was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad, in all probability.
There is frank acceptance in this admission and no shame. Some readers feel Alec is too wicked to be
believable, but, like Tess herself, he represents a larger moral principle rather than a real individual man.
Like Satan, Alec symbolizes the base forces of life that drive a person away from moral perfection and
greatness.
Angel Clare
A freethinking son born into the family of a provincial parson and determined to set himself up as a farmer
instead of going to Cambridge like his conformist brothers, Angel represents a rebellious striving toward a
personal vision of goodness. He is a secularist who yearns to work for the honor and glory of man, as he
tells his father in Chapter XVIII, rather than for the honor and glory of God in a more distant world. A
typical young nineteenth-century progressive, Angel sees human society as a thing to be remolded and
improved, and he fervently believes in the nobility of man. He rejects the values handed to him, and sets off
in search of his own. His love for Tess, a mere milkmaid and his social inferior, is one expression of his
disdain for tradition. This independent spirit contributes to his aura of charisma and general attractiveness
that makes him the love object of all the milkmaids with whom he works at Talbothays.
As his namein French, close to Bright Angelsuggests, Angel is not quite of this world, but floats
above it in a transcendent sphere of his own. The narrator says that Angel shines rather than burns and that
he is closer to the intellectually aloof poet Shelley than to the fleshly and passionate poet Byron. His love for
Tess may be abstract, as we guess when he calls her Daughter of Nature or Demeter. Tess may be more
an archetype or ideal to him than a flesh and blood woman with a complicated life. Angels ideals of human
purity are too elevated to be applied to actual people: Mrs. Durbeyfields easygoing moral beliefs are much
more easily accommodated to real lives such as Tesss. Angel awakens to the actual complexities of real-
world morality after his failure in Brazil, and only then he realizes he has been unfair to Tess. His moral
system is readjusted as he is brought down to Earth. Ironically, it is not the angel who guides the human in
this novel, but the human who instructs the angel, although at the cost of her own life.
Themes
The Injustice of Existence
Unfairness dominates the lives of Tess and her family to such an extent that it begins to seem like a general
aspect of human existence in Tess of the dUrbervilles. Tess does not mean to kill Prince, but she is
punished anyway, just as she is unfairly punished for her own rape by Alec. Nor is there justice waiting in
heaven. Christianity teaches that there is compensation in the afterlife for unhappiness suffered in this life,
but the only devout Christian encountered in the novel may be the reverend, Mr. Clare, who seems more or
less content in his life anyway. For others in their misery, Christianity offers little solace of heavenly justice.
Mrs. Durbeyfield never mentions otherworldly rewards. The converted Alec preaches heavenly justice for
earthly sinners, but his faith seems shallow and insincere. Generally, the moral atmosphere of the novel is
not Christian justice at all, but pagan injustice. The forces that rule human life are absolutely unpredictable
and not necessarily well-disposed to us. The pre-Christian rituals practiced by the farm workers at the
opening of the novel, and Tesss final rest at Stonehenge at the end, remind us of a world where the gods are
not just and fair, but whimsical and uncaring. When the narrator concludes the novel with the statement that
Justice was done, and the President of the Immortals (in the Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with
Tess, we are reminded that justice must be put in ironic quotation marks, since it is not really just at all.
What passes for Justice is in fact one of the pagan gods enjoying a bit of sport, or a frivolous game.
Changing Ideas of Social Class in Victorian England
Tess of the dUrbervilles presents complex pictures of both the importance of social class in nineteenth-
century England and the difficulty of defining class in any simple way. Certainly the Durbeyfields are a
powerful emblem of the way in which class is no longer evaluated in Victorian times as it would have been
in the Middle Agesthat is, by blood alone, with no attention paid to fortune or worldly success.
Indubitably the Durbeyfields have purity of blood, yet for the parson and nearly everyone else in the novel,
this fact amounts to nothing more than a piece of genealogical trivia. In the Victorian context, cash matters
more than lineage, which explains how Simon Stokes, Alecs father, was smoothly able to use his large
fortune to purchase a lustrous family name and transform his clan into the Stoke-dUrbervilles. The
dUrbervilles pass for what the Durbeyfields truly areauthentic nobilitysimply because definitions of
class have changed. The issue of class confusion even affects the Clare clan, whose most promising son,
Angel, is intent on becoming a farmer and marrying a milkmaid, thus bypassing the traditional privileges of
a Cambridge education and a parsonage. His willingness to work side by side with the farm laborers helps
endear him to Tess, and their acquaintance would not have been possible if he were a more traditional and
elitist aristocrat. Thus, the three main characters in the Angel-Tess-Alec triangle are all strongly marked by
confusion regarding their respective social classes, an issue that is one of the main concerns of the novel.
Men Dominating Women
One of the recurrent themes of the novel is the way in which men can dominate women, exerting a power
over them linked primarily to their maleness. Sometimes this command is purposeful, in the mans full
knowledge of his exploitation, as when Alec acknowledges how bad he is for seducing Tess for his own
momentary pleasure. Alecs act of abuse, the most life-altering event that Tess experiences in the novel, is
clearly the most serious instance of male domination over a female. But there are other, less blatant
examples of womens passivity toward dominant men. When, after Angel reveals that he prefers Tess,
Tesss friend Retty attempts suicide and her friend Marian becomes an alcoholic, which makes their earlier
schoolgirl-type crushes on Angel seem disturbing. This devotion is not merely fanciful love, but unhealthy
obsession. These girls appear utterly dominated by a desire for a man who, we are told explicitly, does not
even realize that they are interested in him. This sort of unconscious male domination of women is perhaps
even more unsettling than Alecs outward and self-conscious cruelty.
Even Angels love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it seems, dominates her in an unhealthy way. Angel
substitutes an idealized picture of Tesss country purity for the real-life woman that he continually refuses to
get to know. When Angel calls Tess names like Daughter of Nature and Artemis, we feel that he may be
denying her true self in favor of a mental image that he prefers. Thus, her identity and experiences are
suppressed, albeit unknowingly. This pattern of male domination is finally reversed with Tesss murder of
Alec, in which, for the first time in the novel, a woman takes active steps against a man. Of course, this act
only leads to even greater suppression of a woman by men, when the crowd of male police officers arrest
Tess at Stonehenge. Nevertheless, for just a moment, the accepted pattern of submissive women bowing to
dominant men is interrupted, and Tesss act seems heroic.
Motifs
Birds
Images of birds recur throughout the novel, evoking or contradicting their traditional spiritual association
with a higher realm of transcendence. Both the Christian dove of peace and the Romantic songbirds of Keats
and Shelley, which symbolize sublime heights, lead us to expect that birds will have positive meaning in this
novel. Tess occasionally hears birdcalls on her frequent hikes across the countryside; their free
expressiveness stands in stark contrast to Tesss silent and constrained existence as a wronged and disgraced
girl. When Tess goes to work for Mrs. dUrberville, she is surprised to find that the old womans pet finches
are frequently released to fly free throughout the room. These birds offer images of hope and liberation. Yet
there is irony attached to birds as well, making us doubt whether these images of hope and freedom are
illusory. Mrs. dUrbervilles birds leave little white spots on the upholstery, which presumably some
servantperhaps Tess herselfwill have to clean. It may be that freedom for one creature entails hardship
for another, just as Alecs free enjoyment of Tesss body leads her to a lifetime of suffering. In the end,
when Tess encounters the pheasants maimed by hunters and lying in agony, birds no longer seem free, but
rather oppressed and submissive. These pheasants are no Romantic songbirds hovering far above the
Earththey are victims of earthly violence, condemned to suffer down below and never fly again.
The Book of Genesis
The Genesis story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is evoked repeatedly throughout Tess of the
dUrbervilles, giving the novel a broader metaphysical and philosophical dimension. The roles of Eve and
the serpent in paradise are clearly delineated: Angel is the noble Adam newly born, while Tess is the
indecisive and troubled Eve. When Tess gazes upon Angel in Chapter XXVII, she regarded him as Eve at
her second waking might have regarded Adam. Alec, with his open avowal that he is bad to the bone, is the
conniving Satan. He seduces Tess under a tree, giving her sexual knowledge in return for her lost innocence.
The very name of the forest where this seduction occurs, the Chase, suggests how Eve will be chased from
Eden for her sins. This guilt, which will never be erased, is known in Christian theology as the original sin
that all humans have inherited. Just as John Durbeyfield is told in Chapter I that you dont live anywhere,
and his family is evicted after his death at the end of the novel, their homelessness evokes the human exile
from Eden. Original sin suggests that humans have fallen from their once great status to a lower station in
life, just as the dUrbervilles have devolved into the modern Durbeyfields. This Story of the Fallor of the
Pure Drop, to recall the name of a pub in Tesss home villageis much more than a social fall. It is an
explanation of how all of us humansnot only Tessnever quite seem to live up to our expectations, and
are never able to inhabit the places of grandeur we feel we deserve.
Variant Names
The transformation of the dUrbervilles into the Durbeyfields is one example of the common phenomenon
of renaming, or variant naming, in the novel. Names matter in this novel. Tess knows and accepts that she is
a lowly Durbeyfield, but part of her still believes, as her parents also believe, that her aristocratic original
name should be restored. John Durbeyfield goes a step further than Tess, and actually renames himself Sir
John, as his tombstone epitaph shows. Another character who renames himself is Simon Stokes, Alecs
father, who purchased a family tree and made himself Simon Stoke-dUrberville. The question raised by all
these cases of name changing, whether successful or merely imagined, is the extent to which an altered
name brings with it an altered identity. Alec acts notoriously ungentlemanly throughout the novel, but by the
end, when he appears at the dUrberville family vault, his lordly and commanding bearing make him seem
almost deserving of the name his father has bought, like a spoiled medieval nobleman. Hardys interest in
name changes makes reality itself seem changeable according to whims of human perspective. The village
of Blakemore, as we are reminded twice in Chapters I and II, is also known as Blackmoor, and indeed Hardy
famously renames the southern English countryside as Wessex. He imposes a fictional map on a real
place, with names altered correspondingly. Reality may not be as solid as the names people confer upon it.
Symbols
Prince
When Tess dozes off in the wagon and loses control, the resulting death of the Durbeyfield horse, Prince,
spurs Tess to seek aid from the dUrbervilles, setting the events of the novel in motion. The horses demise
is thus a powerful plot motivator, and its name a potent symbol of Tesss own claims to aristocracy. Like the
horse, Tess herself bears a high-class name, but is doomed to a lowly life of physical labor. Interestingly,
Princes death occurs right after Tess dreams of ancient knights, having just heard the news that her family
is aristocratic. Moreover, the horse is pierced by the forward-jutting piece of metal on a mail coach, which is
reminiscent of a wound one might receive in a medieval joust. In an odd way, Tesss dream of medieval
glory comes true, and her horse dies a heroic death. Yet her dream of meeting a prince while she kills her
own Prince, and with him her familys only means of financial sustenance, is a tragic foreshadowing of her
own story. The death of the horse symbolizes the sacrifice of real-world goods, such as a useful animal or
even her own honor, through excessive fantasizing about a better world.
The dUrberville Family Vault
A double-edged symbol of both the majestic grandeur and the lifeless hollowness of the aristocratic family
name that the Durbeyfields learn they possess, the dUrberville family vault represents both the glory of life
and the end of life. Since Tess herself moves from passivity to active murder by the end of the novel,
attaining a kind of personal grandeur even as she brings death to others and to herself, the double symbolism
of the vault makes it a powerful site for the culminating meeting between Alec and Tess. Alec brings Tess
both his lofty name and, indirectly, her own death later; it is natural that he meets her in the vault in
dUrberville Aisle, where she reads her own name inscribed in stone and feels the presence of death. Yet the
vault that sounds so glamorous when rhapsodized over by John Durbeyfield in Chapter I seems, by the end,
strangely hollow and meaningless. When Alec stomps on the floor of the vault, it produces only a hollow
echo, as if its basic emptiness is a complement to its visual grandeur. When Tess is executed, her ancestors
are said to snooze on in their crypts, as if uncaring even about the fate of a member of their own majestic
family. Perhaps the secret of the family crypt is that its grandiosity is ultimately meaningless.
Brazil
Rather surprising for a novel that seems set so solidly in rural England, the narration shifts very briefly to
Brazil when Angel takes leave of Tess and heads off to establish a career in farming. Even more exotic for a
Victorian English reader than America or Australia, Brazil is the country in which Robinson Crusoe made
his fortune and it seems to promise a better life far from the humdrum familiar world. Brazil is thus more
than a geographical entity on the map in this novel: it symbolizes a fantasyland, a place where dreams come
true. As Angels name suggests, he is a lofty visionary who lacks some experience with the real world,
despite all his mechanical know-how in farm management. He may be able to milk cows, but he does not yet
know how to tell the difference between an exotic dream and an everyday reality, so inevitably his
experience in the imagined dream world of Brazil is a disaster that he barely survives. His fiasco teaches
him that ideals do not exist in life, and this lesson helps him reevaluate his disappointment with Tesss
imperfections, her failure to incarnate the ideal he expected her to be. For Angel, Brazil symbolizes the
impossibility of ideals, but also forgiveness and acceptance of life in spite of those disappointed ideals.