Montreal Dickens Fellowship Study Questions: “Great Expectations"
December 3, 2024
Chapter 23-36
- What do you think of Mr. Wemmick’s two personalities and lifestyles? How do they contribute to the general theme of secrets? At this time in his life Dickens had to keep a whole important side of his life secret. Compare and contrast these two different secret ways of life.
- Compare and contrast Wemmick’s love, care and respect for his “Aged Parent” and Pip’s treatment of Joe.
- What emotions does Dickens’s description of Mr. Jagger’s housekeeper evoke? Is she to be feared? Pitied?
- Comment on Joe’s visit to London. How does Dickens use this meeting to emphasize Joe’s goodness and Pip’s flaws?
- When Pip returns to see Miss Havisham, he meets two convicts and hears of Mr. Pumblechook’s boasts. He cannot escape his past. Comment.
- Comment on Pip’s description of his obsessive love for Estella in light of Dickens’s impossible and destructive love for Ellen Ternan.
- Miss Havisham is at the height of her destructive behaviour towards Pip in terms of Pip’s breaking his heart over Estella. Her behaviour is shameful. Pip’s behaviour towards Joe is shameful. Dickens’s way of narrating the story from a future perspective tells us about Pip’s regrets for his actions. Comment on this as a literary technique. Does it add to the novel?
- Compare and contrast Pip and Estella’s relationship with Herbert and Clara’s. In terms of class differences? In terms of happiness?
- Do Mr. Wopsle’s theatricals help to lighten this dark story?
- Pip feels stained by crime and guilt. Is he justified? He doesn't want this to “rub off” on Estella, yet there is something that keeps nagging at him. Comment on Dickens’s use of this to foreshadow darker things to come.