Great Expectations, Part IV

One of the more interesting themes that has come up in reading Great Expectations is revenge. The way I’ve been reading this book, there are two big revenges: Havisham’s revenge and Magwitch’s “revenge.” One’s a very negative, very nasty revenge scheme and the other is a more positive revenge (if that’s possible).

Havisham’s revenge is directed at men. And she uses her creation Estella to make men fall in love then then break their hearts. It’s worked on Pip. But it has also destroyed Estella. Because of how Havisham reared her, Estella is incapable of love; she can only be cool, calculating, and callous. Because of Compeyson, Havisham has to take some form of revenge against everyone around her. She uses people without remorse and it’s had serious psychological repercussions on the people she has had access to since they were children–Estella and Pip.

And then there’s Magwitch’s revenge on society. He took Pip and has elevated him into a gentlemen, so that he can show the world that he isn’t a dangerous ne’er-do-well. It’s kind of a positive revenge–but again it uses a child who didn’t know they were going to be used.

So the message I see in all this is that adults corrupt children, adults don’t care about psychological damage (probably because there was no such concept in 1861). Children are pawns if you use them that way. This is, probably, a theme that Dickens uses in all his books from Oliver Twist to this one. This theme could be trite in another author’s hand, but what I like about Dickens is that he can make the children more than unaware, naive little wiafs. In Dickens, the kids are people, too, just smaller and less aware of the world. I think it would be hard to write something like this without turning it into a movie of the week thing.