Student Essay:
Families and Fates

Children are frequently described through their resemblance to family, usually the parents. This can be excruciating for the child! Still, the likenesses are undeniable; everyone has been shaped by their parents or guardians. Naturally, each parent-child relationship is unique. Some cultivate positive bonds and strive to emulate their parents; others recoil from them, and attempt to rewrite their future.

In Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, positive parental influences are noticeably absent. The orphaned Pip is raised by his mercurial sister. Estella is adopted by the haughty Miss Havisham. Perhaps the only mutually beneficial parental relationship portrayed is between Wemmick and his father, the Aged (and even this relationship has an inversion of the normal dynamic: instead of the Aged caring for Wemmick, Wemmick cares for his elderly father). Instead of healthy relationships, Dickens depicts dysfunctional ones.

Some people maintain that parental relationships do not seriously affect their child’s future. To support this, they may provide examples such as acquaintances estranged from their families. However, this conclusion does not necessarily follow the premise. The examples they cite may appear unaffected, but merely be concealing difficulties. It is possible that they are unaffected, but such cases are so rare that they may be considered an anomaly. In Great Expectations, the lack of strong parental relationships shapes the behavior of their respective charges in three ways: Mr. and Mrs. Joe’s behavior towards Pip affects his emotional maturity; the values that Miss Havisham exemplifies affect Estella’s mental development; and the way the guardians in the story act towards others affects the children’s social interactions.

Firstly, let us consider Mrs. Joe’s behavior towards Pip. After Pip’s mother and father die while he is an infant, he lives in an unconventional household. Mrs. Joe, as Pip calls his sister, is determined to bring him up “by hand”. Bringing Pip up “by hand” involves constant lectures on what a burden he is, and harsh corporal punishment whenever he errs. In the novel she says, “It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s wife (and him a Gargery) without being your mother.” Although Joe is kind, he refuses to help his wife correct her behavior. Instead, he allows her to do as she wishes, fleeing to his shop when her fury is aroused. However, even his escapes cannot always save him from his wife. As Pip informs the reader, “knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I suppose that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.” Joe is merely a companion to Pip rather than a role model, and never provides him with a moral compass. This allows Mrs. Joe to harangue Pip without remonstrance from her husband. Her opinion shapes Pip’s self-image, causing him to doubt the validity of his emotions and feel superfluous guilt for his actions. As Pip becomes acquainted with Miss Havisham and Estella, who constantly mock his plebeian mannerisms, he begins to believe that the only way he can become acceptable is to rise in status and wealth: “I admire her dreadfully and I want to be a gentleman on her account.” However, Pip does not only want to please the Havishams. He also wants to prove Mrs. Joe wrong; Pip needs to assure himself that all the denigrating comments she made about his uselessness were false. Pip’s low self-esteem makes him crave acceptance and love from Estella, Miss Havisham’s haughty protegée, even though she emotionally abuses him. “‘He calls the knaves Jacks, this boy!’ said Estella with disdain … ‘and what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!’” Pip’s self-image affects every decision he makes, and he continually second-guesses all his choices. Mrs. Joe’s constant condemnation and critique creates a toxic circle of doubt and regret that snares Pip for life.