NAME………….

MARYAM RIZWAN
CLASS……BS ENGLISH 7TH SEMESTER
ROLL NO……….17561502-016
SUBMITTED TO ……………….SIR FARHAN
SUBJECT ………………VICTORIAN NOVEL
TOPIC:
1-IMPRISONMENT AS A METAPHOR IN GREAT
EXPECTATION
2 -DOUBLE ENDDING IN GREAT EXPECTATIONS
GOVT POSTGRADUATE COLLEGE JHELUM
UNIVERSITY OF GUJRAT
IMPRISONMENT AS A METAPHOR IN GREAT
EXPECTATION
Introduction.
The aspect of real life prison is explored in Great Expectations. Imprisonment used
as a metaphorical in Great Expectation. Throughout the Novel Pip ‘repeatedly shows his long
subjection to real and metaphorical prisons’ suggesting that many aspects within the novel are
metaphorically trapping

Throughout the novel Pip is trapped within the means of his own great expectations, a prisoner
of his own hopes and ambitions, always wanting to improve on what he already has.

Imprisonment in Great Expectations

A great number of people are imprisoned mentally and emotionally. Charles
Dickens expresses this message in his eminent novel, Great Expectations. This book is about a
simple laboring boy who grew into a gentleman, and slowly realized that no matter what happened
in his life it couldn't change who he was on the inside. Dickens delivers the message that people
can be imprisoned mentally and emotionally, and only through love are they liberated.

Pip constantly puts himself under pressure as he is always concerned of other people’s judgments
of his behavior. Whenever anyone thinks wrong of him, he becomes ridden with guilt. For
example, when Magwitch is captured by the police, Pip is desperate for him to know that he is
not responsible for tipping off the police as he tells us ‘I had been waiting for him to see me,
that I might try to assure him of my innocence’ . The constant concern of others impressions is
an entrapment in itself as it implies that Pip is behaving in a way that he hopes people will
approve of and not making decisions based upon himself. He is imprisoned within his own need
for approval.

Another aspect of metaphorical imprisonment is when Pip moves to London to educate himself
as a gentleman. It becomes clear that he is trapped between the social classes of his past and
present life. It is evident that there is a clear contrast between his new gentlemanly friends in
London such as Herbet Pocket and his friends that he left behind such as Joe and Biddy. This is
shown through Pips qualms abouts Joe visit to London, anxious that Joe might disapprove of this
new life he had attained or whether his new grand life would disapprove of Joe.

Despite his advances into the upper class as a gentleman it is evident that he still has no luck
with love. It seems that Pip is forever trapped within the cycle of pining for Estella, whom shows
no signs of reciprocating his feelings. Estella has been raised to be cold and toy with boys
emotions. Miss Havisham uses Estella as a way of compensating for her own pain as a part of
her revenge of being left at the altar by Compeyson. This indicates that Pip has no hope with
ever conquering love with Estella showing that he is almost metaphorically imprisoned within a
never ending cycle of yearning for his love.
Chains, files and prisons
Chains and the idea of imprisonment appear in the novel in both a literal and a
metaphorical sense and affect even those characters who are not actually criminals.
chains and files in the literal sense occur at some crucial points in the plot.

• in the opening scenes Pip steals a file for Magwitch's leg-iron;

• the stranger who brings Pip two pound notes stirs his drink with a file
• Mrs. Joe is attacked with a leg-iron which has been filed off some time before
• these three incidents are linked together in Pip's mind and he sees them as part
of a chain of events for which he is responsible and for which he feels a sense of guilt.
• later in the novel, when Pip travels from London to his home town, there are two
convicts on the same coach, who are handcuffed together and wear leg-irons, one of
whom is the man who brought Pip the two pound notes

Imprisonment in the real sense is evident in the frequent references to Newgate, but other
characters are locked into a kind of psychological imprisonment:

• Miss Havisham is an obvious example: she has voluntarily locked herself into a world
of obsession and perpetual resentment
• Pip is bound an apprentice but also feels frustratingly trapped in the limited life of
his village
• Mrs. Matthew Pocket is trapped in her fantasies of social aspiration:
• Herbert's fiancée, Clara, is trapped by her father, who exercises a tyrannical control
over her, from which she is freed only when he dies.
• Pip also uses the image of the chain to describe the progress of his own life. At the end
of Ch. 9; Vol. 1, Ch. 9), in which Pip makes his first visit to Satis House, Pip reflects:
• ‘That was a memorable day for me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same
with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course
would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of
iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation
of the first link on one memorable day.'

When Magwitch reappears, Pip perceives him as a burden and reflects:

‘What I was chained to, and how heavily, became intelligible to me, as I heard his coarse voice,
and sat looking up at his furrowed bald head with its iron grey hair at the sides' (Ch. 40; Vol. 3,
Ch. 1):

• Pip feels that he and Magwitch are shackled together, like the convicts he sees on the
coach
• But by the end of the novel he is glad to accept their inevitable connection, signified now
by the joining of hands rather than by the chain linking them together.

Conclusion:
 All of these factors show how Pip’s desire to continually better himself and please others
is ultimately his own metaphorical entrapment. These aspect of real life prison is
explored in Great Expectations. Imprisonment used as a metaphorical in Great
Expectation.

Two Endings in “Great Expectations”

THE TWO ENDINGS

Wilkie Collins, a close friend and author of The Woman in White, objected to the not-happy
ending Dickens first wrote for Great Expectations; Estella has remarried and Pip remains single.
Dickens then wrote a more conventional ending, which suggests that Pip and Estella will marry.
Writing to friends about the revised ending, Dickens seems positive: "I have put in as pretty a
little piece of writing as I could, and I have no doubt the story will be more acceptable through
the alteration" and "Upon the whole I think it is for the better."

The second ending has generally been published from Dickens's time to our own, so that it is the
one which most readers know. Critics have been arguing the merits of both endings since the
novel's publication. Dickens's friend and biographer, John Forster, felt the original ending was
"more consistent with the draft, as well as the natural working out of the tale." The writers
George Gissing, George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, William Dean Howells, Edmund Wilson
and Angus Wilson agreed with Forster's preference. In modern criticism, the stronger arguments
tend to support the second ending.

This is a question which you may decide for yourself, since the text we read in this class includes
both endings. I will list some of the arguments on both sides, without comment, for your
consideration.

Arguments Favoring the Original Ending

• George Bernard Shaw: The novel "is too serious a book to be a trivially happy one. Its
beginning is unhappy; its middle is unhappy; and the conventional happy ending is an
outrage on it."
• The second ending is an artistically indefensible and morally cheap about-face; its
purpose is to please a popular audience which expects a conventional happy ending (i.e.,
marriage).
• In the second ending, Pip gets more than he deserves. As a result, Dickens confuses the
social and moral meanings of the novel.
• Estella's conversion in the second ending is not only unconvincing but contradicts the
logic of the narrative and excuses the way Miss Havisham raised her. Miss Havisham
 does not need to be forgiven or redeemed, since neither Pip nor Estella was really
damaged.
• In the original ending, though Estelle is softened by her suffering, she remains the lady,
with the same characteristic superiority, who is perhaps slightly condescending to Pip.

Arguments Favoring the Second Ending

• The second ending continues the imagery of the garden and the mist and is better
written.
• The second ending continues the patterns of union and separation and reconciliation,
the connection of the past and the present, and Pip and Estella's meetings at Satis
House.
• The lovers deserve to be happy because they have suffered deeply; their suffering has
changed them so much that they are no longer the same people.
• It is appropriate that Magwitch's daughter finds happiness with Pip.
• Martin Price argues that the mature Pip, with the saving humor of self-acceptance,
finally sees Estella as what she is; therefore, it seems appropriate she can return to
him. "Each is a fantasist who has grown into maturity; each is a fantasist that has
dwindled into humanity."
• There are a few critics who have taken a third position; the novel should stop before
Estella's final appearance. They note that Dickens, in his working notes on the novel,
follows Pip's later career but does not refer to Estella. Miss Havisham referred to
Estella's marriage many chapters earlier, so that there is no need to bring her up
again; her fate is known.