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Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

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Charles Dickens' use of humor, pathos, and satire in Great Expectations

Summary:

In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens employs humor, pathos, and satire to create a rich, multi-dimensional narrative. Humor is evident in the quirky characters and their interactions, while pathos is used to evoke empathy for Pip and other characters' struggles. Satire critiques social class and ambition, highlighting the absurdities and injustices of Victorian society.

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What are examples of satire in part 1 of Great Expectations?

In one respect, Great Expectations is a social satire that criticizes the social justice of the Victorian Age as well as the fawning admiration of the rising middle class for what he perceived as a frivolous aristocracy.

  • In Stage I, the pompous Uncle Pumblechook exemplifies the sycophantic gestures and actions of the merchant towards the upperclass as he affects a superior attitude toward Pip, always chastising him to be grateful "to them which brought [him] up by hand."
  • Then, when he and Mrs. Joe are told that Miss Havisham has asked for Pip to call at Satis House in order to play with her ward, the two act in a ridiculous manner.  Mrs. Joe scrubs Pip unmercifully, and while he stays with Uncle Pumblechook in town the night before his visit, Pumblechook quizzes Pip in number functions while he parsimoniously gives the boys some meager bread and butter to eat.
  • Later on, after Pip is visited by Mr. Jaggers and receives his great expectations, Pumblechook speaks respectfully to Pip, shaking his hand, and he wishes Pip, "the joy of money."
  • When Pip returns from his visit at Satis House, he fabricates a tale of the afternoon's events, describing the carriage in which Miss Havisham sat and waved little flags and then swords as they "hurrahed."  Nevertheless, his sister is impressed with his descriptions.

Two other different instances of satire, but they are again social criticism, that occur in Stage I:

  • Pip as an orphan is mistreated.  But, humorously, Dickens names the switch with which Mrs. Joe batters Pip "The Tickler."  Frequently, too, Mrs. Joe is said to have brought Pip up "by hand," a phrase on which Dickens lays a satirical double entendre.
  • Biddy, too, is exploited by her keeper; Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt runs a school, but it is the orphan child Biddy who teaches Pip his numbers and letters.  And, poor, exploited Biddy is also made to do many other chores.

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How does Dickens use humor and pathos in Great Expectations?

In his bildungsroman, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens employs humor and comic relief through the use of ridiculous and silly characters to whom he gives typically ridiculous names. And, he evokes pathos from characters who are the unfortunate victims of poverty and the social "prison" of English society.

HUMOR

  • The earliest example of such a character is the pompous Uncle Pumblechook, "the basest of swindlers," as Pip terms him. He is a sycophant, who fawns before rich people.  When Miss Havisham asks him to find a boy with whom Estella can play, he assumes an importance because he believes himself an emissary of hers.  While Pip is poor, Pumblechook berateS him; but once Pip has a benefactor, Pumblechook becomes fawning.
  • Another humorous character is Wemmick, whose "post office" mouth merely takes in information and emits it with no personal touch added.  However, after Pip goes to Wemmick's home, he finds that the little man has much personality and is attentive to his father, whom he fondly calls "Aged P."  With an odd house and landscape, Wemmick fires a canon each night for his deaf father to enjoy.  Certainly, the relaxation of spending an evening with Wemmick is comic relief for Pip.  In addition, Wemmick's quirky character comes out in the scene in which he visits the prisoners and talks to the plants as he makes his way to the cells in Newgate.

PATHOS

  • The character who arouses the emotion of the reader is Abel Magwitch.  While in the exposition he is "a fearful man in grey," who threatens Pip's life if he does not bring him "wittles," Magwitch displays human sympathy after he is captured, by asserting that he has stolen the food and file himself.  There is a poignant exchange of looks with Pip.  Even Joe sympathizes with the criminal, who apologizes for having eaten the pie:

"God knows you're welcome to it--so far s it was ever mine...We don't know what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow creature."

  • After Magwitch goes to New South Wales and amasses a fortune, he does not forget the simple kindness of Pip and Joe.  Having no other to love, he risks death by returning to London to meet the grown Pip and tell him that he has been his benefactor for years.  Pip's repulsion at the sight of the old convict is cruel to the pathetic victim of the restrictive society of London. But, as he relates his history, Pip's heart melts with compassion and he realizes that intrinsically Magwitch has never been a bad person; instead, he has been victimized by society, especially the upper class Compeyson who used him to steal from Miss Havisham.  Much pathos is aroused in Magwitch's story and his single desire to have Pip appreciate and love him.
  • In some ways, Miss Havisham is also a poignant character.  When she begs Estella to love her and Estella replies that she cannot because "You made me," the reader feels sympathy for the eccentric old woman who finally realizes her errors.  Especially emotive is the scene in which she asks Pip to write "I forgive you" for her cruelty to him.
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How does Dickens use satire to mock the funeral in Great Expectations?

In Chapter XXXV of Great Expectations, the passage about the funeral of Mrs. Joe is a parody the solemnity of funerals and those who organize them. For the funeral directors, Trabb & Co., are more concerned for the ostentation of the proceedings prior to the funeral and the pageantry of the funeral procession itself than they are for the grief of the family and the respect due them.

Much as he does in Oliver Twist when poor, little Oliver is successful in work for the undertaker because of his effective "expression of melancholy" as he is in the funeral processions, Dickens satirizes the foolish ostentation of Trabb & Co. who take control of Mrs. Joe's funeral proceedings. For, when Pip returns from London, he finds what he calls two "dismally absurd persons" standing at the front door as though guarding it. They each have a crutch wrapped in black--"as if that instrument could possibly communicate any comfort to anybody." And, yet, the children and women of the village seem to watch these two men in admiration. Then, when Pip approaches, one of these guards knocks at the door as though Pip is too overcome with grief to be able to do so himself. Then, when Pip enters the parlor, he sees Mr. Trabb seated there:

Mr. Trabb had taken unto himself the best table, and had got all the leaves up, and was holding a kind of black Bazaar, with the aid of a quantity of black pins. At the moment of my arrival, he had just finished putting somebody's hat into black long-clothes, like an African baby; so he held out his hand for mine.

Pip mistakenly shakes Trabb's hand when the undertaker merely wanted his hat. After handing this item over to receive its black ribbons, Pip notices Joe sitting uncomfortably in a small black cloak tied under his chin in a large bow. As the "chief mourner," Joe is positioned in the upper end of the room, apart from others. Of course, the "foolish imposter" Pumblechook has himself attired in a black cloak and copious ribbons of hatband as he alternates between stuffing himself with the foods laid out and "making obsequious movements" to attract Pip's attention. Pip glances around and also sees Mr. and Mrs. Hubble huddled in a corner.

With a signal from Trabb, Joe and all the others must rise and form a procession. Joe whispers to Pip that he would simply have carried Mrs. Joe's casket with a few neighbors, but Trabb would not permit this action, arguing that the neighbors would scorn such action and "would be of opinions as it were wanting in respect.” So, on Trabb's cue--"Pocket handkerchiefs out"--they file out of the house two by two, along with the six pallbearers, who seem buried themselves under a long black cover over the casket as they march blindly:

...the whole looked like a blind monster with twelve human legs, shuffling and blundering along under the guidance of two keepers—the postboy and his comrade.

As they proceed to town, boys of the village break in and out of crowd of onlookers, shouting "Here they are!" and the villagers do everything but cheer. Certainly, Mrs. Joe has never been such a celebrity in life.

Once the funeral is over and Trabb and his men are gone, having "crammed their mummery into bags," Pip remarks that the house seems wholesome again.

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Is there any satire in Great Expectations?

Indeed, there is much satire in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. The most prominent target of his derision is what he considered a frivolous aristocracy that was deluded in their importance and insensitivity to the other classes.  Two characters who exemplify the undeserved admiration given to the aristocracy are Uncle Pumblechook and Belinda Pocket, the wife of Matthew Pocket.

  • Uncle Pumblechook

Depicting the new merchant class that arose from the Industrial Revolution, Uncle Pumblechook is sycophantic toward the wealthy class. After Miss Havisham has asked the corn-chandler to find a boy to play with her adopted daughter Estella, Pumblchook assumes a false sense of his importance as he coaches Pip in his arithmetic and reproaches the boy after he is rejected at the gate of Satis House,

"Boy, let your behavior here be a credit unto them which brought you up by hand!"

But, because of his connection to Pip's having been invited to Satis House as a boy, after Pip comes into money and goes to London to be schooled and become a gentleman, Pumblechook falsely assumes the credit for Pip's social advancement. In Chapter XXVIII, when Pip leaves London to apologize to Joe for his affectations as a young gentleman and his embarrassment at Joe's behavior because he feared Herbert's impressions, he stops at the Boar's Nest where he reads a newspaper and learns of Pumblechook's pretentions of importance,

Our readers will learn...in reference to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young artificer in iron of this neighbourhood...that the youth's earliest patron, companion, and friend, was a highly-respected individual not entirely unconnected with the corn and seed trade.... It is not wholly irrespective of our personal feelings that we record HIM as the Mentor of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our town produced the founder of the latter's fortunes. 

  • Belinda Pocket

In Chapter XXIII, the ridiculous character of Matthew Pocket's wife is developed; heretofore described by Pip in one of the early chapters as "a toadie" who hypocritically flatters Miss Havisham in the hope of obtaining some of her fortune upon her death. In her own home, instead of attending to her children, Mrs. Pocket occupies herself with the consumption of a book "all about titles." With satiric humor, Dickens describes the fabricated nobility of Mrs. Pocket's father, who is "a quite accidental deceased knight,"

...his father would have been made a Baronet but for someone's determined opposition, the Sovereign's, the Prime Minister's, the Chancellor's...I forget whose, if I ever knew....I believe he had been knighted himself for storming the English grammar at the point of a pen in a desperate address...for the laying of a stone for some building or another.

As she reads, her children tumble about her, a baby nearly jokes on a nutcracker, and the servant must save them from death continually. Yet, Mrs. Pocket never puts down the book; instead, she scolds the servant Jane for intervening. When a neighbor contacts her about a servant's mistreatment of another child, she is angered at the neighbor's interference and remarks to her husband, "Am I grandpapa's granddaughter to be nothing in the house?"

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Is there any satire in Great Expectations?

Satire is politically motivated fun-poking.  Dickens enjoyed making fun of things he saw wrong with society, and some of his favorite targets were the class system and the legal system.  He has fun with both of them in Great Expectations.

Class is a constant issue in the book.  Pip is a lowly blacksmith’s nephew who is magically raised above his means due to a secret benefactor.  When the gentleman phase does not go so well for Pip, we are not surprised.  Dickens is sending a clear message.  Being a gentleman is not about money or class.  It is about being a good person.

“Biddy,” said I, after binding her to secrecy, “I want to be a gentleman.

“Oh, I wouldn't, if I was you!” she returned. “I don't think it would answer.” (ch 17)

Pip wants to be a gentleman so he can marry Estella, but for him being a gentleman seems to be running up debts with no idea how to pay them, lounging around clubs with boarish friends, and turning his back on his family. 

We later learn that Magwitch felt wronged when he was thrown under the bus at his trial.  Compeyson looked and acted the part of the gentleman.  He spoke sweetly and politely.  He seemed to be one of them.  Magwitch, on the other hand, was poor and coarse.  He chose to elevate Pip because he wanted to prove that anyone could be made into a gentleman.

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