La Famille dans "Les Grandes Espérance" de Dickens

Vivian Fosseprez

Great Expectations Essay - 1srt Draft

        Dickens’ novels often share complex themes from the author’s own experience, such as the role of a family. During his life in the southern coasts of England, he experienced a troubled childhood, marked by his father’s imprisonment, his job in a shoe polish factory and his time living alone. It is hence no surprise to encounter the theme of defective families in his most iconic work, Great Expectations. His main character Pip is in a constant search for a stable family, as reflected in his very first words as the narrator of this story: “My father’s family name”. Indeed, the defective family is a central theme in the novel, and we will see that Dickens portrays it with three distinct examples. He first depicts Pip’s own tyrannical family, then writes about Miss Havisham’s failure in life, and finally portrays the Pocket’s way of living.

        The Gargery family is characterized by violence and fear, making it Dickens’ novel’s first defective family. Indeed, it is led by the tyrannical Mrs. Joe, a stern and overbearing figure to both Pip and Joe, who uses violence to rule over her household: “she pounced on Joe and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind him.” (p.13) Such brutality is rarely seen in any harmonious family. Pip describes his sister’s methods as of “the strictest kind”; his youth is scarred by her ways of teaching. Moreover, the only “fellow-sufferer” in the house, Joe, is incapable of bringing Pip any safety for he is perceived as “a larger species of a child.” (p.10) He is incapable of ascertaining his role as an adult man in the house and shows submissiveness instead. Therefore, the Gargery family is marked by an unbalanced power which led to the suffering of both the husband and the child.

        Another example of a failed family is that of Miss Havisham’s. In raising her adopted daughter Estella she tried to create a monster to break any man’s heart, as it is shown when she yells at Pip: “If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!” (p.276) Her own mental sanity is questionable, given that ever since her husband abandoned her minutes before their wedding, she has not left her dress, nor remarried. Her desire for revenge is hence transmitted into Estella, whose childhood was ruined by this woman’s madness; "I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing." Her absence of emotions translates the horrible education she received from Miss Havisham. Thus, this pair of hurt women constitutes a dramatic family where love is not a comfort but a weapon.

One last defective family would the the Pocket’s family, where disorder reigns and authority lacks. Pip offers a pejorative view on this family, perticularely regarding Mrs. Pocket when she defends he drunk cook who had “said that she felt I was born to be a Duchess.” (p.218) The mother’s obsession over her ancestry makes her a superficial and transparent figure in the family. Moreover, authority is applied by the servants rather than the parents, as Pip observes it: “I found this unknown power to the be the servants.” They exert their rules and are seldom put in their place by the parents, leading to sometimes violent or irresponsible acts. This climate of anarchy seems to mostly impact on the powerless father, who is in no position to establish order in his family. Therefore, this family is depicted as peculiar and unstable by the narrator.

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