Great Gatsby Unjust Analysis
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
both deal with social class and the presence of suffocating social norms. The themes
of these two novels are embodied in their women. The female characters in both
Jude the Obscure and Great Expectations can be divided into two categories: the
elevated woman and the grounded woman. How these characters operate within the
confines of the novel, however, are reversed. In Jude, Arabella is the grounded
woman, who ultimately leads to Jude s ruin, and Sue is the elevated woman, a
woman of reason and education and the woman he loves. Meanwhile, in Great
Expectations, Estella is the elevated woman, despite her low birth; she is a carefully
cultivated seductress with whom... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...
The main character, Pip, raised an orphan and destined for blue collar work,
becomes determined to rise after meeting and becoming enamored with a beautiful
girl named Estella. He immediately begins to think of himself as beneath her. She
seemed much older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and self possessed;
and she was as scornful of me as if she had been one and twenty, and a queen
(Dickens 62). Even after Estella treats Pip thoroughly harshly and makes him feel
ashamed of who he is, he is charmed by her. He later learns that the reason she is so
harsh is because she was taken in by Miss Havisham and trained to feel no
compassion, remorse, or any sentiment at all; when Pip and Estella are grown and
walking in Miss Havisham s gardens, Estella remarks to Pip, Oh! I have a heart to
be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, said Estella, and of course, if it ceased to
beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no
sympathy sentiment nonsense (Dickens 263). As the perfectly beautiful, perfectly
high class woman, Estella shirks anything that could truly fulfill her. She is not
interested in marrying for love, or friendship, or family; Estella is concerned with
money and class, first and foremost. Miss Havisham pleads for Pip to love her; she
says, I developed her