Treading Water In Great Expect essays

Treading Water In Great Expect essays Ones desire to control another is often a desperate attempt to control ones own life. One who feels helpless, uses her power to shape and dictate another, seemingly unimportant life. However, to go through life confident, only to discover that ones life is being dictated by another is both depressing and empowering. In Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, the female characters of Miss Havisham, Estella and Biddy, display enormous power over the male characters and through the development of these characters the reader sees a clear picture as to why this occurs. Pain, caused by social injustice and heartbreak motivates change and show clear-cut divisions of the society at the time. Also, the reader sees that although power and wealth can buy many things, the capacity to love and forgive is much more beneficial. The influence of Miss Havisham, Estella and Biddy on the tragic hero, Pip, is both admirable and hurtful. Dickens shows that although one may struggle to maintain power and aut hority over others, this leads one to a life of great unhappiness and a failure to possess the position in society one desires. Miss Havishams influence and hurtful actions prove to pay a vital role in the development of young Pip. Her obsession with her failed marriage and her intense hatred towards men, show the reader how bitterness and isolation from society plaque the mind. Despite these bad qualities, critic Julian Maynaham has described Miss Havisham as a false fairy-godmother, as she shows great power over Pip and teaches him many life lessons. In raising Estella, she manufactures the young temptress to break Pips heart. A.L. French agrees in saying that Miss Havisham trains Estella to hurt men as men had hurt her and trains Pip to be to Estella as she was to Compeyson (51). Her desire to control the life of another is motivated by the fact that she feels that she had no control of her own. In stopping th...