Corruption As Depicted In Charles Dickens Great Expectations

In Charles Dickens’s celebrated novel, Great Expectations, we are presented with a unique protagonist in Phillip “Pip” Pirrip, who, born an orphan, lives with his unkind sister, whom he address as Mrs. Joe, and her virtuous and amiable husband, Joe. During his formidable years, he is often forced to spend time at the estate of an old and very affluent lady named Ms. Havisham where he meets her daughter, Estella, with whom he almost instantly falls in love but seemingly does not reciprocate his feeling and rather acts cruel towards him. One day, he unexpectedly inherits a large sum of money from an anonymous donor and is taught to be a gentleman, realizing his aspirations. Having read Fifth Business in my English class recently, what I first
noticed about Pip were the major character traits that he shared with some of the main characters of the Robertson Davies novel. To elaborate, Pip is taught to feel guilty about his very existence growing up, as is Paul Dempster in Fifth Business, attempts and fails to distance himself from his past, as does Dunstan, and his love for Estella is toxic, as is Leola’s for Boy. To begin with, during the early part of the plot, I discovered that Pip shares Paul Dempster’s most prominent characteristic, guilt, and acquires it in a nearly identical way as Paul.
More specifically, in Great Expectations, his sister and others deeply instill in him that he is a burden who causes his sister to suffer. Moreover, his sister shames him for things that are inherent to adolescence such as “the acts of sleeplessness I had committed and all the high places I had tumbled from, and all the high places I had tumbled from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I had done myself” (). Similarly, in Fifth Business, Paul is told about his mother, during his childhood, that his birth “robbed her of her sanity” and, consequently, “had to carry the weight of my mother’s madness as something that was my own doing” (). I thought that Pip and Paul both bear the guilt of simply existing because they are unjustly held responsible for the sufferings of their respective female guardians, Mrs. Joe and Mary Dempster. Later in the book, I found that one of the most significant parts of Pip’s development in Great Expectations is his attempt and ultimate failure to separate himself from his past and that such is a commonality he shares with Dunny, the protagonist of Fifth
Business. When illusioned by his newly acquired “ill-regulated aspirations,” he begins to distance himself from his home and visiting increasingly less and when he does, he treats Joe and Biddy poorly. However, when his sister passes away and attends the funeral, he is unexpectedly struck with intense sadness, which shows that his emotional connection to his past persists, especially when he states that “whatever my fortunes might have been, I could scarcely have recalled my sister with much tenderness” (). Similarly, after moving away from Deptford, his place of guilt, Dunny “tried to get Deptford out of my head” because he “wanted a new life,” but after his relation with Mary Dempster is reestablished, he soon realizes that “any new life must include Deptford” and that “there was to be no release by muffling up the past” (). Pip and Dunny move away from home in search of a better life but are drawn back by Mrs.
Joe and Mary respectively. Such shows that however they try to distance themselves from their past for their new lives, they are eternally and unavoidably connected to it by the people that they love. Finally, Pip is similar to Leola in that the impact of love on both of them is toxic. In Great Expectations, Pip is in love with Estella, the daughter of an affluent woman and an incomprehensibly cruel girl who does not reciprocate his feelings. As his love for Estella grows, her higher social class and constant disparagement make him “feel ashamed of home,” which he describes to be “a most miserable thing” (). She renders things that he previously loved, such as his home, no more than a reminder of his inferiority. Similarly, Leola is degraded by her husband, Boy Staunton, and forced and manipulated to become “the perfect wife for a rising young entrepreneur in sugar” (). Consequently, “as Boy grew in importance and his remarkable abilities became increasingly manifest, she faded” until she goes into depression and even becomes suicidal. Both Pip and Leola make the unavoidable blunder of falling in love with a callous individual, their relations with whom prove to be
pernicious. As a result, they are forced to go through a detrimental change.