Great Expectations and the Enigma of Authorship.
‘And yet the ways we miss our lives are life’ (Randall Jarrell)
‘What is it that can tell me who I am?’ (King Lear)
‘Pause you who read this…’ (Great Expectations, Chapter 9)
1) Great Expectations is narrated by at least two versions of ‘Pip’. This makes the whole business of the narrative immensely interesting with regard to ‘who’ is actually talking and delivering the story.
ii) Furthermore it does create a very pronounced tension in the story between the actual situation of the narrator and the material that is being described ; almost as if it were unfolding under the eyes of the reader. This raises interesting questions about the reliability of the narrator and also the problematic processes of remembrance.
iii) For any act of remembrance involves some type of reanimation of the past and this must affect how anyone’s sense of identity is made/constructed.And when the past is reanimated deos this render it safe, as it is distanced, or is its original disturbance still present?
2) Great Expectations begins in a graveyard, a landscape of death. Yet this marks Pip’s first awareness of self. ‘My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening.’ Pip’s sense of identity is thus formed in a place of grief and lack, a place bounded quite literally by what can be seen on the horizon both above and below the ground.This becoems a metaphor for the life of Pip and the way his novel ‘excavates’ memory. Yet initially, Pip believes he can name himself and believes he has control.
iii) And then into this place of tentative humanity and fragile control comes Magwitch the convict. He demands Pip’s name and immediately begins the chain of events that will reveal Magwitch the unseen and undesired ‘father’ of all Pip’s hopes and aspirations. He literally turns Pip’s life upside down and Pip lose all sense of the ‘reality’ of things.
iv) Pip’s ‘growth’ in the novel is thus tampered with from the beginning. And as I have said this is not really the beginning as the Pip telling us the story KNOWS the reality behind the delusions and mistakes on which the novel rests. Hardly surprising that the tone is melancholic despite the brilliant episodes of humour. How happy is the ‘happy’ ending I wonder? And can anyone be happy with Estella?!!!
3) Pip is brought up ‘by hand’ by Mrs Joe, a figure of fear and violent quasi-parenting for her younger brother. Dickens brilliantly highlights the corruption of Pip’s childhood through this ironic ruination of the register of tenderness. Joe is kind but weak and fails to protect Pip and also finds it difficult to prepare Pip for life’s complexities being a child himself.
v) Hardly surprising then, that someone brought up in such an abusive and grotesque environment should so wrongly interpret the intentions of Miss Havisham, who is read as his fairy god-mother -something that we might find bizarre. She is certainly a ‘fallen’ figure. She wilfully colludes with Pip’s mistaken hopes and thus like Magwitch ‘writes’ Pip’s future story unbeknown to him. As I have said, this shows how ironic the situation of the first person narrator is when he comes to tell us his story. He is not really in possession of his story at all and the older Pip who is now narrating the novel knows this too well.
4) Finally just few words about Miss Havisham’s room, which must be one of the most peculiar and psychologically dramatic episodes in English literature. (Possibly comparable to the Heath in King Lear for its exploration of madness and obsession.) Once again, like the opening, Dickens uses literal ‘space’ in his novel to suggest some physical disorder or preoccupation. Chapter 8 like chapter 1 links ‘Pip ‘to the possibility of growth. It begins with Mr Pumblechook’s corn shop and covers Pip in seeds! These are shown as the novel progresses to be literal and metaphorical.
5) How ironic then is this ‘growth’ when the deathly stasis of Miss Havisham’s life is considered. Her deathly presence is incomprehensible to young Pip and this is reflected in the repletion of the verb ‘saw’.
i) I also wonder why there is no reference to smell in this episode? She must have stunk! What does this show about the traumatic affect Miss Havisham has on Pip? Is her ‘smell’ too dangerously pervasive to acknowledge even through the ‘safe’ vista of retrospect ?
vi) However, Miss Havisham is also too known to the older Pip who is actually telling us the story and this is reflected in the bizarre sighting of Miss Havisham’s hanging at the end of the chapter. (If we wish to seek some explanation for this unexplained sight) both his first sighting of Miss Havisham and that final lingering description of her hanging remain hypnotically suspended over the story and Pip’s life. As he says ‘Imagine one selected day struck out of it (life) and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.’He sees Miss Havisham hanging by the neck as it is either a presentiment of her wilful cruelty to him, or it is restrospectively ‘seen’ by Pip in the light of Miss Havisham’s role as nemesis.