Charles Dickens and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) are both known to be amongst the most prominent and eloquent writers of the nineteenth century. Their works have showcased the beauty of everyday life, the importance of families and the need for the right love in one’s life.
In "Great Expectations," Charles Dickens demonstrates a profound understanding of character development, wherein certain individuals are imbued with depth to underscore their prominence within the narrative. One such character deserving meticulous analysis is Miss Havisham. Dickens portrays Miss Havisham as an aristocratic lady whose substantial influence significantly shapes the trajectory of the main protagonist, Pip. This formal examination seeks to delve into the multifaceted dimensions of Miss Havisham's character and her pivotal role in the unfolding events of the narrative. When Pip is first introduced to Miss Havisham and her manor house called Satis, which is described to be a huge place with dim lights and dark corridors with unattended gardens; Pip, along with the readers is left with a depressing feeling towards the house. It is only later that one gets to know that the reason for this state of disrepair of the house is that the house itself is a symbol of Ms Havisham and her frustrated expectations.
All throughout the novel, Miss Havisham is described to be a wealthy and an eccentric woman who has certain fixation regarding her belongings. Victorian societies used to thrive on this marked emphasis on social status and material wealth and like everyone else in the story, Miss Havisham is also a product of her times. She is consumed with her desire to preserve her material possessions in the form of her house and her personal belongings.
This obsession is portrayed in the form of her wedding dress which she has worn since the day of her wedding, which never actually took place, as she was left standing on the altar. Thus, the wedding dress symbolises a sense of commodification of love, marriage and her life revolving around the remnants of the past. When Pip first enters her house, he notices that all the clocks have been stopped to a particular time, 8:40 a.m. The stopped clocks symbolise her inability to move on from the past and the betrayal she faced on that day by her fiancé, imprisoning herself in the lust for revenge.
Miss Havisham adopted Estella as a tool to seek revenge on men at large by making her a heartbreaker. She takes delight in this act of Estella, commodifying her pursuit of personal vendettas. Miss Havisham has also kept a number of jewels and jewellery with the intentions of giving them to Estella one day to enhance her beauty; again, preserving her material possessions.
Similarly, in her classic novel, “The Mill on the Floss”, George Eliot has portrayed the symbolism of material wealth and its obsession in her characters. There are a number of characters who have shown their fixation towards their possessions. The titular mill is the most prominent material wealth which is mentioned. The entire fiasco of winning the lawsuit which will preserve Tullivers’ mill is a way of showcasing the importance of money in the form of property. The mill is not just a form of livelihood but also a symbol of social status and economic stability for the Tullivers.
The Dodson sisters are the most significant characters who openly show their love and obsession with their money and wealth. Mrs. Tulliver is the one who is most fixated on her belongings in the Tulliver family. She is the one who is always thinking about the belongings she brought along with her when she got married to Mr. Tulliver.
When Mr. Tulliver lost the lawsuit along with the mill, he lost his senses on his way back from the court because of the fall from his horse. Due to this his daughter, Maggie, was forced to reach out to her brother, Tom in Mr. Stelling’s residence and bring him back home. Everyone in the Tulliver house was in a state of distress. But the reason for Mrs. Tulliver’s distress was not just Mr. Tulliver, or the loss of the mill but her fear of losing the things which she brought from her maiden house, “her laid- up treasures”, things she made on her own, which were her own.
This being Mrs. Tulliver’s most dreaded situation than anything else is a showcase of her love for material things than physical beings. “And the pattern as I chose myself, and bleached so beautiful, and I marked ’em so as nobody ever saw such marking, —they must cut the cloth to get it out, for it’s a particular stitch. And they’re all to be sold, and go into strange people’s houses, and perhaps be cut with the knives, and wore out before I’m dead. You’ll never have one of ’em, my boy.”
For both Miss Havisham and Mrs. Tulliver, the commodities and belongings they possess serve as extensions of their personal selves, constituting essential components of their identity. Within the thematic framework of their respective narratives, the loss of these material possessions exceeds mere economic implications, manifesting as a deep loss of identity. Within the complex narratives of Dickens' "Great Expectations" and Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss,"
Miss Havisham and Mrs. Tulliver, exhibit a symbiotic relationship with their belongings, thereby elevating them beyond mere material significance to embody the essence of their individuality.
In conclusion, both Miss Havisham and Mrs. Tulliver exemplify the Victorian obsession with commodities in different ways. While Miss Havisham fixates on her past, Mrs. Tulliver’s concerns revolve around the economic stability of her family and the loss of her belongings. Even though these women belong to different classes and different status (Miss Havisham being an aristocrat and Mrs. Tulliver being married in a working-class family), the one thing in common between them is the obsession with their material wealth and commodities.
Interesting analysis!
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