Stereotypes In Charles Dickens 'Great Expectations'

During life in the 19th century, Victorian society widely accepted the standards of femininity, masculinity, and motherhood. However, the novel Great Expectations incorporates contradictions within these social norms with female characters who dishonor the principles and male characters who replace the role of the failed women. Author Charles Dickens subverts popular Victorian ideals and stereotypes in Great Expectations through the characters Mrs. Joe, Miss Havisham, and Joe Gargery. Mrs. Joe, Pip’s overbearing and tyrannical sister, contrasts with typical female standards in the late 1800s, as she has household authority but does not act as a good mother figure to Pip. He describes Mrs. Joe as a woman who “almost always wore a coarse apron,
In contrast, the “impregnable” bib reveals how Mrs. Joe is impervious and rebels against these standards - she breaks through misogyny and stereotypes with her “pins and needles”. Additionally, throughout the entire novel, Dickens only refers Mrs. Joe to as “Mrs. Joe”, completely disregarding her maiden name. Whereas a woman commonly gives up her surname to show she is “owned” by her husband, Mrs. Joe does not conform to this traditional standpoint on marriage. Instead, she uses Joe’s first name, taking his identity rather than being a possession of Joe’s. This displays how she has authority over Joe, reversing the typical gender roles placed on society. Besides having power, Mrs. Joe further steps outside the expectations of a woman through her treatments towards Pip. After beating Pip, Mrs. Joe confesses, “I must truly say that I’ve never had this apron of mine off, since born you were. It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife (and him a Gargery), without being your mother” (Dickens 14). Mrs.
When Pip first met Miss Havisham, Pip “saw that everything within [his] view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. [He] saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes” (Dickens 54). Pip describes Miss Havisham’s appearance as unwomanly and unpleasing. Although a bridal dress is supposed to be a representative of femininity, motherhood, and purity, the yellowing of it symbolizes her true nature and character. Based on her social background, Miss Havisham had the potential of being a model Victorian woman and living a happy, wealthy life, but her tragic past with a man has distorted this reality from her. Using her experiences to seek vengeance, Miss Havisham now cannot live the typical life that women have and she, similarly to Mrs. Joe, decides to take out this anger on her child and is controlling. According to Victorian expectations “it was seen as both natural and inevitable that for a woman falling genuinely in love... would happily surrender her person and possessions to her lover” (Rowbotham 43). Miss Havisham, on the other hand, teaches Estella to be heartless and cruel, viewing her daughter as a tool with the sole purpose of inflicting pain on men; she wants