Abstract
Our main argument for examining romantic relationships in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations rests on the fact that although thematically it can be said that the novel focuses on class structure, the thrust of the plot centres on a number of relationships. The Victorian era was an age of change. With the expansion of the empire and the progress brought about by the industrial revolution, new ways of thinking started to influence the society and its culture. This included ideals on relationships and marriages. To establish our problem statement, we refer to the work Romance’s Rival: Familiar Marriage in Victorian Fiction by Talia Schaffer. According to Schaffer, a Victorian woman may marry for romance or she may marry for practical reasons. Based on long-established Victorian norms, we hypothesise that romantic marriages will result in unmet expectations. To support this hypothesis we adapted Vannier and O’Sullivan’s investment model framework to analyse the relationships in Great Expectations. We also widened the scope to include analysis of male characters involved in the relationships. As there was no clear pattern with regards to romantic relationships, we posit that even in the Victorian age, relationship expectations, ideals and success are determined by individual personalities and perceptions and not by social norms or expectations. Keywords: Dickens’ Great Expectations; investment model framework; relationships; social class; Victorian age
Highlights
"Have a heart that never hardens and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts." Charles Dickens Hard Times
Our main argument for examining romantic relationships in Great Expectations rests on the fact that thematically it can be said that the novel focuses on class structure, the thrust of the plot centres on a number of relationships that include Pip and Estella, Miss Havisham and Compeyson, Herbert and Clara as well as Joe and Biddy the primary one being that of Pip and Estella
The characters that pursued romantic ideals had different outcomes from each other – Pip ended up heartbroken unlike Herbert though both had opted for romantic relationships as opposed to familiar marriages
Summary
The Victorians, he said, “were good at finding almost anywhere in time or space those tense areas that rang bells for themselves, echoing their concerns in excitement or in warning”. By combining literary analysis of two Victorian novels, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, with Victorian medical and scientific texts including articles such as “Dangerous to Themselves and Others: The Victorian Debate over the Prevention of Wrongful Confinement”, “Pedigrees of Madness: The Study of Heredity in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Psychiatry” and “‘Prisoners of Their Own Feebleness’: Women, Nerves, and Western Medicine—A Historical Overview” Laird examined how the literary texts projected the confusion of the time about the origins of mental illness and its treatment. Milano concluded that effects of surgery on patients were based on their own perception of their condition, how they interpret the information given by the surgeon and their own coping strategies
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