Avădănii Ana-Cătălina

Year 2, group 2

Feminism in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

“Great Expectations” was first published in 1861, and this is valuable information
because I can properly place it in time and attribute it features inspired by that period. In
order to find out more about a novel, it’s hidden meanings, you have to study the period
in which it was written and the social context as well, and this is what I am going to do in
the following pages. My focus will be upon the most striking feminine characters and the
way in which they were built. Throughout the essay I am going to make references to the
feminist movement, Elaine Showalter’s view on it and Shakespearian influences.

Pip’s sister is the first character that I stumble upon, not because she is a mind
blowing presence, but because she is the first feminine entity that we encounter in the
text, and because, based on her presence, we can find out more about what it meant to be
a woman in the second half of the 19th Century.

Dickens spices his novel a little bit by “forgetting” to attribute Mrs. Joe that
motherly love that she lacks so much. “Mrs. Joe Gargery (who does not even have the
benefit of an identity separate from that of her husband’s) is frequently referred to
negatively. Dickens writes that Mrs. Joe has brought Pip up “by hand” stressing not the
fact that she unselfishly raised her orphaned brother by dry nursing him. Dickens instead
uses the term as a pun to mean that she frequently beats Pip as a form of discipline”-
(Fisher J. pg 124)

In relation with Pip she is heartless because she considers that he is the reason
why her life is so miserable, and she raises him brutally without any type of affection.
Leaving all the heartless behavior aside, she is the prototypical Victorian woman. The
way in which her character was built, makes us aware of how a household woman looked
like in that period, more or less. Things should be different considering the fact that this
period that we are talking about, is marked by “the beginning” of women starting to fight
for their rights. The problem is that at that rank of the society this movement was scarcely
felt, and so Mrs. Joe Gargery continues to be just a housewife. She belonged to the
domestic sphere which meant that she had to provide a clean environment, food on the
table, and nothing else.

Another feminist problem stands in Mrs. Joe’s lack of identity. Just like her,
“Ophelia seems to be the ideal representation of Elizabethan daughterhood. In Hamlet,
women are reflected as the subordinate position in Elizabethan England where their lives
are strictly controlled by either their fathers or husbands. Their rights are legally,
socially and economically restricted” (Ekici pg. 5). This is the first approach to
femininity, one in which the woman does not properly exist, Mrs. Joe Gargery is not an
individual and she always depends on a man, to validate her existence. She doesn’t even
have her own name in the novel which links her entire existence on her husband’s.

I find Ms. Havisham’s character the most interesting one because of her hidden
features, her mysterious side and her background story. We are placed in the 19th
Century. This period of time was under a heavy Shakespearian influence, so there are
many references in the book as well. The symbol Ophelia starts to make its way into that
time’s society, until it becomes a very encountered interpretation on stage, but most
relevantly for our text, a type of insanity in the Victorian Asylums.

Elaine Showalter presents us with the information that: Diving into the 19th
Century, Shakespeare starts to inspire the Victorian asylums, which took Ophelia as an
example for teen girls’ breakdown, finding them very dangerous for their mental health.
“Insanity has long been romanticized in novels as something bordering on supernatural
and, in England's asylums, 'The Ophelia' became a common image for female inmates.
Inspired by the famous character from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the role of Ophelia was
that of a grieving mad-woman whose strange ramblings often bore wisdom and uncanny
insight into the play's events. 'The Ophelia' became a popular subject for painters in the
nineteenth century, and female inmates of English asylums were often made to mirror her
appearance; wearing white, keeping their hair unbound and unruly, and wearing wreaths
of flowers and branches on their heads (Showalter, The Female Malady, 92).”

So I couldn’t help myself with attributing this “disease” to Ms. Havisham, who is
in my opinion the replica of “The Ophelia”, a melancholic woman who decides to spend
the rest of her lifetime in misery, punishing herself for believing in love.

Just like Ophelia’s name, Ms. Havisham’s has stuck with our everyday culture,
and it refers to those types of people who isolate themselves from the rest of the world
and live imprisoned in the past.

“The novels of Dickens, following the misogynistic tradition of the eighteenth

century fiction contain several caricatures of ‘shrewish’ women.[…]Miss Havisham is
another stereotype. She is presented as having been jilted on her wedding day. In
reaction to her fate, she arrests her life at that moment , withering into a skeleton like
form with her wedding clothes still on her “corpse-like”, resembling “grave clothes” on
a “collapsed form”. The character seems to come from nightmare or the unconscious, as
a female figure of death, suggestive of her inner decay of the tomb/womb. De Beauvoir
observes how virginity becomes repugnant and disturbing to men when it is allied with
age rather than with youthful flesh, citing a coarse male joke that an unmarried woman
“must be full of cobweb’s inside”. Dickens’s macabre imagery irresistibly evokes a sense
of repugnance and horror for stale virginity as the decay and putrefaction of enclosure.
Miss Havisham is intent on revenging herself on all men, for which she is severely
punished” (Sengrupta J. pg 14)So, she deprived herself from the light and chose to
surround herself with darkness, not realizing that she would not be the only one to suffer
from her decisions, putting Estella through the same kind of treatment that she has given
her own, and raising her in such a way that the little girl found sentiments and love
forbidden. Feminism makes a step towards the way in which Ms. Havisham is presented
in the novel. Her image is disgraceful built in contrast with Estella’s, she is seen as a
presence “disturbing to men” and the author has no compassion towards her.

I truly believe that Dickens had a misogynistic side which was developed in this
novel, but it was not something done consciously . At that time feminism was not a
concept which you had to have in mind when writing a novel in order not to offend
women, and what Dickens is presenting through his style of writing and through the
characters is the real type of society in which people lived, and the real mentality which
peopled possessed.

Estella is the embodiment of “la femme fatale” throughout the novel, the women
that Pip cannot have but craves. “La femme
fatale (/ˌfæm fəˈtɑːl/ or /ˌfɛm fəˈtɑːl/; French: [fam fatal]) is a stock character of a
mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them
into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature
and art”. She is the body and flesh for Pip, she is something material which he cannot
have and this is why the desire is enhanced throughout the novel.”(Wikipedia)

This is another feminist problem: the idea that the woman is just a body and
nothing else, the novel having no focus on Estella’s brain and no focus on her heart. She,
as a character, is built in contrast with Biddy, a very humble, smart girl to whom Pip goes
whenever he has a question regarding education. This is at least to say weird, having in
mind the idea that Estella had access to higher education than that of Biddy’s and still
when he looks at her he sees nothing else but beauty. He feels inferior to Estella, of
course but not because of her intelligence but because of her body and social status.

“Pip’s obsession with Estella is somewhat confusing for today’s readers, since
this relationships clearly one-sided and against reason, against peace, against hope,
against happiness, against all discouragement that could be[…] Estella adopted by Miss
Havisham at an early age, has been moulded by the old woman into an instrument to
avenge her broken heart”( Martina Hrubes pg 4). Even though the two of them had the
same past, meaning that they were both orphans, we are dealing with 2 totally different
types of characters.
 Estella is Ms. Havisham’s repulsion towards men reflection, an untouchable
character, a little girl who was taught to have no feelings for anybody and who is there to
give birth and to develop Pip’s desire of becoming a gentleman.

“The fate of the “bad” women is quite different (and much more interesting) Mrs.
Joe, Miss Havisham and Estella do not fit in the Victorian standard of the good wife and
mother. Consequently, when these women step outside of what it is considered the norm,
and, especially if they become assertive in any way, they have to be punished-often
severely- in order to “save” or “correct them.” (Fisher J. pg. 124) So, what Dickens
does is that he is punishing different types of women which he considers “bad” in order
to establish some kind of balance in the novel. He is using the “Cinderella complex” in
order send in the back the aristocracy and to leave the focus on Pip, a simple peasant boy,
with great aspirations.

In conclusion, “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens has many feminist

problems, but these “wholes” towards women’s perception, were not considered
problems back then. In my opinion, this is what makes the novel even more interesting,
especially when you become aware of all of these different approaches to text.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 Ekici, Sara. Feminist Criticism: Female Characters in Shakespeare's Plays Othello and
Hamlet. Place of Publication Not Identified: Grin Verlag, 2013. Print.(pg. 5)
 Fisher, Jerilyn, and Ellen S. Silber. Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of
Gender. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003. N. pag. Print. (pg.124)
 Hrubes Martina. Great Expectations: The Strange Romance of Pip and Estella.(pg.4.)
 Sengupta, Jayita. Feminist Perspectives in the Novels of Toni Morrison, MicheÌ€ le
Roberts and Anita Desai. New Delhi: Atlantic India, 2006. Print.(pg 14)
 Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-
1980. London: Virago, 2009, 1987., n.d. Print.(pg. 92)
 Femme Fatale. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femme_fatale