The new GCSE AQA English Literature syllabus is very exciting, yet challenging too. In a world dominated by smartphones, I wonder how many students will find the prospect of a five hundred page novel rather daunting?
However the novels do have the attractive distinction of being very suspenseful. And it seems a good idea to think about suspense and how it might be generated, so that students feel comfortable in analysing these narratives.
What is suspense? Well, in one word, suspense is UNCERTAINTY!
So let’s look at the ways in which Dickens generates suspense(uncertainty) in Great Expectations; specifically in Chapter 39, when the hero Pip, is revisited by an apparent stranger. In order to keep my analysis accessible, I’ll talk about each part of the extract separately:
Text.
I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my book at eleven o’clock. As I shut it, Saint Paul’s, and all the many church-clocks in the City – some leading, some accompanying, some following – struck that hour. The sound was curiously flawed by the wind; and I was listening, and thinking how the wind assailed and tore it, when I heard a footstep on the stair.
Analysis.
Here, the first person narrator Pip, is alone in his apartment on a windy night. He is vulnerable and reflective. His ‘innocence’ is about to be turned against him! The use of pathetic fallacy, ‘the wind assailed’ reinforces a sense of exposure and momentous occurence. something will assail Pip shortly. But what form will the uncertainty take? The ‘watch upon the table’ shows how Pip is trying to govern his time and is self consciously attempting to regulate his life. The chorus of clocks, ‘Saint Paul’s and all the may church clocks in the city’ , conspire to join in his attempt at government, ‘some leading, ..some following’, and this adds an irony to the scene and to Pip’s attempt to control his world.
When Pip adds the recognition, ‘flawed by the wind’ we know something life changing is about to take place. The assailing wind’s function, is not unlike Shakespeare’s use of dramatic irony in King Lear, where the fallen despot Lear is abandoned by his scheming daughters, on the stormy heath. Epiphany will surely follow?
And the the paragraph suspensefully ends with the Gothic device of the ‘footstep on the stair.’ Who is climbing the stair towards the lonely Pip? He doesn’t know and neither does the reader. The waiting fuels our uncertainty and we link all the pieces of this suspenseful moment together: the setting, the weather, the symbolic age of Pip(coming of age) and the Gothic device of the visitor, arriving to upset all that has gone before. Our equilibrium is about to be destabilised!
Text.
What nervous folly made me start, and awfully connect it with the footstep of my dead sister, matters not. It was past in a moment, and I listened again, and heard the footstep stumble in coming on. Remembering then, that the staircase-lights were blown out, I took up my reading-lamp and went out to the stair-head. Whoever was below had stopped on seeing my lamp, for all was quiet.
“There is some one down there, is there not?” I called out, looking down.
“Yes,” said a voice from the darkness beneath.
“What floor do you want?”
“The top. Mr. Pip.”
“That is my name. – There is nothing the matter?”
“Nothing the matter,” returned the voice. And the man came on.
Analysis.
The narrator is speaking in the past tense, so he knows who is on the stair. This is a reconstructed narrative, like Jane Eyre. Yet he is delivering his account of this event as if he has no knowledge of the outcome. The suspense is preserved becasue we suspect the revelation is truly shocking and unforeseen. Pip condemns his ‘nervous folly’ for connecting the footstep of the stranger, with the ‘footstep of my dead sister’ and we understand why he should feel so haunted. Pip’s sister, and indeed Magwitch, represent unfinished aspects of Pip’s past. Pip’s dismissal of his imagintive assumption,’ matters not’ is very much in keeping with Pip’s feeling of powerlessness in the narrative so far. He is acted upon , rather than an individual who initiates. His dismissal of his imagination reflects his lack of assurance and renders him vulnerable to psychological predators like Miss Havisham and Orlick.
This dialogue is very similar to the famous exchange between the protagonist and Signalman at the beginning of Dickens’ suspenseful ghost story, The Signalman. Both texts explore the significnace of the ‘sign’. Here, Pip attaempts a dialgue with the stranger below, in order to reassure himself. Pip seems brave and perhaps courageously determined to resolve unceratinty. It is hard to read this exchange and not feel it highly symbolic, if not mythic, in its effect and meaning. That which has been repressed, has now returned to the surface of Pip’s existence. The memories buried ‘below’ Pip’s consciousness, are now back to reclaim him again.
Think of Hamlet too. Magwitch appears like Hamlet’s father, come back to reclaim his son and to reorder hisworld and reality, subverting all the preconceptions about inheritance and the identity of his true benefactor.
The final admission ‘And the man came on’ is practically biblical in his intensity and relentless austerity. Pip cannot escape facing and naming the source of all his uncertainty; once and for all.
Maybe suspense can be preferable to ccertainty at times!
Text.
I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail, and he came slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to shine upon a book, and its circle of light was very contracted; so that he was in it for a mere instant, and then out of it. In the instant, I had seen a face that was strange to me, looking up with an incomprehensible air of being touched and pleased by the sight of me.
Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was substantially dressed, but roughly; like a voyager by sea. That he had long iron-grey hair. That his age was about sixty. That he was a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was browned and hardened by exposure to weather. As he ascended the last stair or two, and the light of my lamp included us both, I saw, with a stupid kind of amazement, that he was holding out both his hands to me.
“Pray what is your business?” I asked him.
“My business?” he repeated, pausing. “Ah! Yes. I will explain my business, by your leave.”
“Do you wish to come in?”
“Yes,” he replied; “I wish to come in, Master.”
Analysis.
The precariousness of the ‘lamp held out over the stair -rail’ reflects the intensity and uncertainty of the scene. ‘Light’ is not enlightenment at first. We are suspended in Pip’s gaze, failing to identify his night visitor. The suspense is perpetuated by the ‘contracted’ nature of the light and the admission that ‘a face that was strange to me’ looked ‘touched and pleased by the sight of me.’ This misrecognition reveals the competing truths of the narrative. Pip does not wish to recognise Magwitch. So he fails to reveal ‘him’ even to himself! Denial is tantalising uncertainty. Magwitch’s tenderness is still retrospectively alarming and even repulsive, because of the catastrophic consequences of the revelation.
As Pip maintains his gentlemanly questioning:’ Pray what is your business’ we suspect he is trying to ward off , the identity of the benefactor who will take away all Pip’s delusions about Estella and Miss Havisham. For once Magwitch is revealed, then all Pip’s language of love and desire, will seems misplaced, hollow and delusional. It is a dramatic irony that Pip speaks in the gentlemanly way that Magwitch’s money has allowed him to adopt.
I still find the apparent deference implied by the word, ‘Master’ loaded with irony and suspense. Magwitch believes he has ‘made’ a gentleman of Pip and such a belief conjures up Mary Shelley’s morally dubious Frankenstein, where the ‘monster’ is more a victim than monstruous creature. The visitor’s replies in this exchange above, maintain the uncertainty and suspense, mimicking in their control, the steady climbing of the stairs, towards the waiting figure of Pip!
Wonderfully unsettling!
