In conclusion, the nature of the novel demands at least a quick comparison
with David Copperfield. Apart from the obvious improvement in characterization
and structure, the difference in tone, there is in Great Expectations a curious
split between narrator and creator that is absent in David Copperfield. In the
earlier novel we feel that David and Dickens are one in looking back nostalgically
at the more innocent part of their lives, and their attitude towards the mother-
sister-lover configuration is tinged with that same kind of fond nostalgia.
The two Claras, Mrs. Micawber, Miss Trotwood, Dora and Agnes had all loved
and protected David as far as they were capable of doing so. In Great
Expectationshowever, Mrs. Joe, Miss Havisham and Estella are the disturbing
influences in Pip's life. It is they who made him ambitious and unhappy, who
provoked his sense of guilt, have broken his personality. And although we are
meant to believe that the humbled Pip has generously forgiven his female
tormentors, his creator punishes them most sadistically: Mrs. Joe is paralysed
by being beaten vigorously with a convict's leg-iron, Miss Havisham is burnt
to death and Estella is beaten and broken by her cruel husband. Yet it is
surely a token of our almost complete identification with Pip the narrator,
that on closing the book, we wholeheartedly agree with Angus Wilson in
calling it 'one of Dickens's warmest novels because of the compassion
extended by the author to almost all his characters'.
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