Great Influences In Great Expectations By Charles Dickens

Great Influences The novel Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, is a story about a young boy, Pip, who is shown growing many ways throughout the novel. When the story first begins, Pip lives with his eldest sister (he is an orphan) and her husband, Joe. They are quite poor and live on the marshes. When he is asked to come play at the large house of Miss Havisham, he meets Estella, Miss Havisham’s haughty, beautiful, and cruel daughter, whom he falls in love with almost immediately, and who is the object of his infatuation throughout the novel. When writing a novel the author incorporates personal experiences and memories into their work. The most important influences for Charles Dickens were the feminine influences in his life. Lesser influences
include his childhood experiences and financial troubles. Charles Dickens’ financial troubles, the least influential in his works, are a theme woven throughout his stories.
In 1824, when he was a child, Charles’ father got into financial trouble and was sent to Marshalsea Prison due to his debt. The rest of young Dickens’ family went to prison with his father, but he was sent to work at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse (nzr.mvnu.edu). This is similar to when Pip is sent to Miss Havisham’s in the hope of being paid by her or receiving some sort of financial aid in the future. Charles’ experiences with poverty greatly scarred him. Similarly, many of his works involve young men who live in poverty and fantasize or even obsess over becoming wealthy. As a young boy working in a factory with extremely long hours and rough working conditions, it is highly likely that Charles would have had the same fantasies as some of his characters do. To young boys in extreme poverty or rough working conditions like Pip, David Copperfield, or even Charles Dickens himself, having a wealthy and mysterious benefactor come and rescue them from poverty would be a commonly occurring daydream. Despite his more humble beginnings and his family’s financial struggles, Charles Dickens moves on from working in the factory to being formally educated, though briefly, and after a series of jobs becomes a successful and well-off writer. In Great Expectations, Pip is adopted by a mysterious benefactor and becomes a wealthy young gentleman. Both Charles and Pip rise from poverty to become wealthier, though Charles rescued himself while Pip was financially
adopted. Charles Dickens’ financial troubles affected his childhood, but his surroundings and childhood experiences affected the settings of his books and his writing even more. Dickens was born in 1812, the time when England was becoming industrialized and going through many changes, but Great Expectations was set before England’s industrialization (www.victorianweb.org). Dickens set his novel in a time before the industrialization because he was comparing the growth and development of England to Pip’s development into a man. During a greater part of the novel Pip is naive and ignorant of the world, just as England is free of industrialization. He leaves England for Cairo towards the end of the novel and comes back a changed man with more understanding of the world and himself; when he comes back, England has been industrialized and has changed just as much as he has. Dickens lived part of his life growing up in Kent just as Pip does. In Mary Chatham, a place in Kent where Dickens lived at one time, there is a pub in the Thames that can be seen floating on the water when standing in the marshes from Gravesend. The pub’s name has been changed multiple times but resembles a ship and is believed to look similar to what he describes in Great Expectations (www.discovergravesham.co.uk). When living in Mary Chatham, Dickens would have seen this sight nearly every day, so when writing a novel involving a boy who lives in Kent near the marshes, just as he does, Dickens must have used some of the descriptions of the sites that he saw daily when describing different places in his novel. Dickens writes of Pip as growing up in Kent just as he does. Dickens also has Pip moving to London at around the same age that he himself moved there. Dickens strongest influence when writing his novels were the feminine influences in his life. His mother Elizabeth Dickens forced him to work in the leather-blackening factory when his father was sent to prison, and even tried to insist that he continue to work there after his father was released (nzr.mvnu.edu). Because of his horrible experiences while working at the factory, it is logical to assume that Mrs. Dickens trying to force him to work in the factory would poison his feelings for her. Mrs. Joe also forces Pip go play for Miss Havisham hoping that Miss Havisham will pay Pip. Pip tells the readers of her cruelty and injustice to him, which is similar the way that Charles describes his mother. As a young man, Dickens falls in love with a lady named Maria Beadnell. Oscar Wilde describes Dickens’ love for Maria as “wild, passionately, devotedly, and hopelessly”. Maria is said to be an attractive, ultra-feminine young lady, and was encouraged to see herself almost as a sexually attractive play-thing. However, after hearing about the romance between Maria and Charles he forbids the match, calling it socially compromising, and sends Maria away to finishing school in France. After her return to England, Maria found that her feelings for Dickens cooled and rejected him. This was devastating to Dickens. (nzr.mvnu.edu) The strong feelings, fascination, and attraction that Dickens felt for Maria is quite similar to the devoted love that Pip had for Estella. Both young ladies were ultra-feminine and beautiful, and were encouraged by their parents to manipulate men in one way or another. Both young men similarly have the same devoted, almost obsessed love for the woman that they loved. Both matches are not socially acceptable, and the young men are both rejected eventually. The romance between Charles Dickens and Maria Beadnell very closely resembles the romance between Pip and Estella. Though Maria greatly influenced Estella’s character, so did Dickens’ young mistress Ellen Ternan. Ellen was beautiful, young, clever, cruel, and sharp-tongued, just like Estella (nzr.mvnu.edu). Ellen was a very modern woman for her time because women were expected to act helpless and tenderhearted in order to catch a husband. Dickens was able to write of Estella’s cold heart so well because he himself experienced it in his romance with Ellen. Dickens had many experiences in his life that influenced what he wrote but the feminine influences that he had were by far the strongest. These are some examples of the ways that Dickens modeled his female characters after the ones in his life, but there are many more. Dickens feminine influences were by far the greatest because of how many characters in his books were modeled after the women that that had influenced him in his life. The amount of influences that Charles Dickens’ surroundings offered are numerous, but the most important by far were the feminine ones in his life. The women in his own life influenced him very much and often gave him great heartache. Most female characters in his novel are modeled after ones women that he encountered throughout his life. Charles Dickens’s childhood experiences and financial strife influenced the themes and settings in his novels, but no other influence was as strong as the feminine influences in his life.