Pips Shadow Parents in Charles Dickens Great Expectations Essay

Pip's Shadow Parents in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations Both Miss Havisham and Magwitch are powerful influences on Pip's life, in a psychological, and to some extent physical, manner. In this essay, I hope to explore these influences, and investigate what affects they have on Pip's development. Naturally, the fact that Pip is an orphan, and never knew his parents, means there is space for characters to come in and exact a definite, parental control. The novel echoes many of Dickens's own life experiences- he had a strained relationship with his parents when they were condemned to imprisonment for debt difficulties. The sense of abandonment and sudden awareness of the fragility of class distinctions he experienced during this time was to haunt him for the rest of his life, and this is mirrored by the great contrast in, "shadow parents." On the one hand we have the wealthy Miss Havisham, inhabiting a decaying yet grand mansion, and on the other we have a hardened criminal emerging from the gloomy marshes. The opening chapter gives the reader a powerful idea of how Pip is suffering from having no identity, as Pip seeks to find his role in an inhospitable world. The windswept, barren place of mud, mist and water provides the perfect setting for a frantic convict to emerge. In his search for his origins, Pip seems to have created "a second father" in Magwitch, who turns him upside down metaphorically as well as literally, and places him on his parents' tombstone. In the short term, the introduction of Magwitch gives Pip a sudden responsibility, which makes him confront the violent methods of discipline employed by Mrs Joe as h... ... criminal, violent attributes, and return to menace Pip, and Miss Havisham to be his saviour and helper in his quest to become a gentleman. In a journal format, Dickens needed to employ many plot twists, as Magwitch turns out to be the mysterious benefactor, and Miss Havisham the manipulative monster who psychologically hurts and confuses Pip in so many ways. It is difficult to say who is the "best" shadow parent, because although Magwitch supplies the money which sees Pip through becoming a gentleman, in his own mind Pip is motivated by Miss Havisham and has visions of achieving great wealth and wedding Estella. If we look at the novel in hindsight, we can conclude that Magwitch is the superior "shadow parent" as he is clearly dedicated to helping Pip, where as Miss Havisham does nothing but psychologically twist him.