41 cream, she is also part of his dream, his illusion that she intends him to marry Estella. The next dream in this novel has to do with this illusion as well, it occurs once again towards the end of the chapter and the end of the instalment and it sets the tone in which the reader ends this part of Pip's expectations, when they really begin to bloom. He has had his fortune announced to him and prepares to go to London to enter upon a new life there. He wants to rise in the world and to climb socially. His childhood full of hostility and guilt is now over, he wants to leave the nightmarish atmosphere behind him without realizing that he will only enter into the daydream, the wishful thinking of the convict Magwitch. The last night he spends in his childhood home is described at the end of Chapter 19 "All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong places instead of to Londcr and having in the traces, now dogs, now cats, now pigs, now me. - never horses. Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were singing. Then, I got up and partly dressed, and sat at the window to take a last look out, in taking it fell asleep." This dream is not only put towards the end of the chapter but also owards the end of "...THE FIRST STAGE OF PIP'S EXPECTATIONS." Once more it has the function of giving the reader a glimpse of Pip's inner life, the state of mind he is in at that moment and once again a point of reflection for the reader. In the dreams Pip is shown with the weaknesses and shortcomings an immature human being can have. This dream also gives insight into the character Pip develops into in the second stage of his expectations. Pip turns into a nasty little snob who feels way above the people he used to be familiar with, Joe, his poor sister and Biddy who has taken up her place in the household. Pip plans to go to London in order to become a man of the world. It is natural that he should be full of dreams then, both at night and in the daytime. But in the daytime he refuses Joe's company when Joe offers to walk him to the coach in the morning, he wishes to walk away all alone, and at night he is therefore visited by his guilty conscience and knows very well that his attitude is slightly ridiculous. Once more it is a visual dream - contrary to a few examples where only

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The Dutch Dickensian | 1985 | | pagina 43