It is interesting to read Great Expectations and realize that the story is not being told in “real time” but rather that Pip is retrospectively narrating experiences from his life. That begs the question: just how reliable of a narrator is Pip? The stories that he tells are incredibly detailed, and almost seem tangible. How many of these details is Pip essentially “making up”? It seems unlikely that an adult would so clearly recall events from his childhood in the way that Pip does. Perhaps he is cushioning these memories with fabrication because he cannot remember, or maybe he truly believes that what he is saying is real. Regardless, it would seem reasonable to assume that the tales that our protagonist is telling are not 100% accurate.

Of course, we have been faced with the “unreliable narrator” issue before, in Wuthering Heights. While there are several different narrators, all of whom could be unreliable in their own right, Nelly is the one that sticks out. Questioning how it’s possible she knows certain things, if she’s altering the truth to make herself seem a bit better, or other reasons, Nelly is often considered to not be the most trustworthy. In both her and Pip’s cases, the unreliability does not necessarily come from a deliberate attempt at concealing truth, but simply from poor memory, or remembering things “differently.” But it still serves to consider their narration with a critical eye.

The first thing I noticed about Great Expectations was how Dickens portrays the social structure and romance of the victorian era. I saw a lot of parallels to characters from Wuthering Heights with the characters from Great Expectations. In Wuthering Heights you have the contrast between the Earnshaw and the Linton family, and in Great expectations you have the contrast between Pip and Estella. In each comparison, their lives are contingent upon one another, indicative of the romance aspect. Yet, both sets of characters romance and love is influenced by the social status they hold. At first it was Catherine finding a power and social status struggle between marrying the love of her life, Heathcliff, and marrying someone of higher class, Edgar. Now, in Great Expectations, it is Pip and Estellas relationship, how Estella is so critical of Pip. Estella is more critical of Pip in a verbal way, whereas Catherine was not as critical of Heathcliff, at least to his face. I mean, Estella quite literally compares Pip to a dog in her interaction with him. I am curious to see the development of these characters in the next reading. Additionally, social structure is seen through Pip and his interactions with other people in the novel, as he is ashamed of anything that reminds him of his low status. I am interested to see these relationships develop in Great Expectations and further see how much more we can parallel with the novel Wuthering Heights. The last connection I will make is how climbing the social status or striving to is evident in both novels, in Wuthering Heights it is Heathcliff marrying Isabella in order to acquire higher status and priveldge, also land. In Great Expectations we see, two characters (Pips older sister and Pumblechook) thinking their interactions with Miss Havisham will further their status.

In the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, the main character Pip often focuses on his negative qualities and shortcomings more than his positive attributes and actions. This can be shown when he steals food for a suffering man and later reflects on the situation with guilt and unrest instead of realizing that he helped someone. He seems to have a strong moral compass that influences him to self-assess and will hopefully trigger an arc of self-realization and development throughout the novel. This can be contrasted by Heathcliff and compared to Hareton in Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is a character who cannot come to terms with his problematic tendencies and doesn’t come to terms with his emotions and moral compass. For example, he perpetuates the violence and neglect he experiences as a child instead of realizing that his resentment for Isabella and Hareton stems from the trauma he endured. Despite Heathcliff’s inability to look inward in the way that Pip begins to demonstrate in the first characters of Great Expectations, Hareton shows similar qualities of self-awareness. “His honest, warm, and intelligent nature shook off rapidly the clouds of ignorance and degradation in which it had been bred,” Bronte writes. Despite his upbringing, Hareton is able to reflect on it enough to not perpetuate it in the way that Heathcliff did.

Pip is raised by his sister, who seems to be the dominant force in the household. This is humorously mentioned, whom Pip says that his sister perhaps married Joe “by hand”. I find it interesting that in the early chapters, Mrs. Joe Gargery seems to be the strongest character in Pips domestic life, rather than Joe. This contrasts greatly with Wuthering Heights, where the gender roles of the characters often times put the father figure as the stronger power. Pip seems to fear his sister, and even believes that Joe fears her too.

I wonder whether this is a quirk of Pip’s perceptions of his surrounding world, or a general result of having a narrative delivered from the first person of a younger character. Similar things can be seen with his interactions with the “young man”, who in the first two chapters Pip believes is a genuine force that could harm him if he does not follow the orders to retrieve the file. Even the early parts of Wuthering Heights where the characters are much younger are filtered to us from a separate adults perspective, where Great Expectations seems to be a more candid view of the character’s perspective.

It’s extremely hard not to see such a direct connection between Chapter 8 of Great Expectations and Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship at one point in Wuthering Heights. 

“I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.” Pip’s inner dialogue here compares and contrasts to much of Heathcliff’s attitude throughout Wuthering Heights. Although we never got Heathcliff’s point of view, the way we get Pip’s, there is still apparent connections in their reactions. For example. when Catherine came back to Thrushcross Grange, she also had the same snobby demeanor that Estella has here. Likewise, when Catherine confronts Heathcliff, he remains dirty and uncaring. Pip states that he just feels rather indifferent, yet lets Estella’s energy feed him. Whenever Catherine gave Heathcliff any sort of attention, he also had this infectious reaction. Later on in the passage, Pip describes how Estella makes him feel hurt, angry, offended, sorry, and humiliated. On the same note, Heathcliff experienced all the same emotions in relation to Catherine. This hierarchy of the woman in the story having this sense of emotional control over the men they come in contact with seems to translate across both novels here.

While reading the beginning of Great Expectations I couldn’t help but see the similarities between main character Pip and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Both men were orphaned at a young age and due to this, grew up in less than perfect households. For Pip, he lives with his sister Mrs. Joe and her husband Joe Gargery. Although it isn’t the worst place to grow up his sister is often very tough on him and likes to keep a strict house. We see in Wuthering Heights that Heathcliff was also an orphan boy who found a home with and was adopted by Mr. Earnshaw who always treated him like his own son. Heathcliff’s living situation can’t be considered perfect either as he was often tormented and pushed around by his ‘brother,’ Hindley, who never considered Heathcliff his brother. Like Heathcliff, we see Pip being treated poorly in the first few chapters by the convict who grabs him and pushes him around demanding Pip to return the next day with food and a file so he can cut himself out of his chains. It seems that both Pip and Heathcliff are two men who suffered a lot of hardships while growing up. Not only did they not have parents but they were pushed around by the people they were surrounded by growing up. I think it’s interesting to see how similar these characters are in their early stages of childhood and I wonder what sort of character Pip will become as the story progresses. Will he stay a shy and fearful boy unable to communicate with others or will he become a confident man who stands up for himself?

One part of Great Expectations that I found interesting was Pip and his family’s experience with the convicts, and specifically, Pip feeding the convict. Of course, Pip feeding the convict was done out of fear, but when the convict is being led off and admits he stole the food, Pip’s father sympathetically notes that Pip does the right thing in feeding him. To me, this denotes a communal safety net in the less fortunate, a mutual network of sustenance that has to be maintained, no matter who desires it, because the government, or any other larger social entity, is not doing it for them. Herein comes England in 1819, and specifically, the lines “Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay/ Religion Christless, Godless– a book seal’d/A senate– Time’s worst statute unrepeal’d.” This seems the most apt analysis of England during the Victorian period, for it portrays England as a place that is left without a protector, and moreover, the poor are left without a protector. Because of this then, and since larger social entities have abdicated their responsibility to protect the marginalized or simply chosen not to, the lower classes (Pip and his family) have had to create a social network between other lower class families to create a support system. Interestingly, this social network is not limited, and spans to the class of felons. This is important for two reasons. First, it demonstrates that the social welfare network was not limited, and attempted not to marginalize itself (obviously, this is not true in whole), and second, it demonstrates a certain lack of faith in the legal system. Already, Shelley has underlined the fact that laws are for the most part classed against the poor and this distrust carries on in Pip and his family. As such, the connection here formed is that of the social network Pip and his family symbolize, while also receiving context of why this had to happen from London in 1819.

“Proud, pretty, and insulting,” these are the traits that Pip assigns to his tormentor, Estella. Upon this first interaction, Pip is astutely aware of her condescension and describes feeling: “humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry,—I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart—God knows what its name was,—that tears started to my eyes” (Chapter VIII), simply because she has pointed out the coarse texture of his hands and the thickness of his boots. Estella’s acknowledgment of the traits that make him “common” and beneath the rank of herself and Miss Havisham aloud makes Pip suddenly regards these qualities as “vulgar appendages.” As a result, he hosts a rage of animosity on this part, and cries himself into a fit of self-pity. This sudden awareness of class hierarchies and high brow mannerisms reminds me of William Blakes’s poem, “London,” particularly the lines: “Marks of weakness, marks of woe. /In every cry of every Man/The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.” Blakes’ observations seems a fitting description for Pips despair after being degraded by Estella. Like the men Blake observe, Pip is bound by the mind-forg’d manacles that distinguish him as a “commoner” and is ashamed of the coarse texture of his hands and thickness of his boots because it insinuates he does not indeed, spend his time playing cards by the fire but rather, engages in manual labour that makes him “ignorant and backward.” 

Interestingly enough, Pip’s  reaction to Estella’s remark by wishing to return home in an attempt to escape from her mean criticisms resembles Heathcliff’s reaction to Catherine when she returns to Wuthering Heights after her confinement in the Grange and proceeds to laugh at him about his appearance: “What are you sulky for?  It was only that you looked odd. If you wash your face and brush your hair, it will be all right: but you are so dirty!” (Chapter VII). Unlike Pip, who remains calm until out of sight of his bully, Heathcliff declares to Catherine: “‘You needn’t have touched me! I shall be as dirty as I please: and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty” and then rudely dashes out of the room to nurse his wounds. What I find interesting about Pip and Heathcliff’s shared circumstance is the methods in which Blakes’ “mind-forg’d manacles” begin to represent the shame both Pip and Heathcliff feel after being criticised by young girls of the upper class and the ways in which the shame that restricts them to the lower class guides their desire for self-improvement.