Janelle Tan

2SD3

In the novel Great Expectations, Charles Dickens uses extensive amounts of symbolic and representative setting to convey themes pertinent to particular issues and characters. These settings are carefully ordered and placed for maximum effect. Most of these placements and orders are to show growth, maturation and a sense of journey. The use of setting presents the reader with a development of Pips expectations. Through this, we see the overarching theme of social aspiration and ambition. This is most salient in the repetition of Satis House throughout the novel. The initial time Pip encounters Satis House, his dissatisfaction with his own social place starts to bloom. Dickens deliberately presents Satis House as a place of dissatisfaction, particularly through the use of irony. Satis House, and Satis, comes from satisfied, and is representative of being enough and satisfaction. The symbolic meaning of its name, Enough House, and that whoever had this house, could want nothing more, is presented to contrast sharply against the dissatisfaction and hunger in the actual setting. Dickens deliberately uses this setting to represent Pips own growth through satisfaction. Because Pip first catches Estellas contempt for him here, the appearance of Satis House initially in Book One is taken to represent his increasing dissatisfaction with his surroundings, shown by the symbolic representation of Old Clem. Old Clem, which represents Pips life in the forge and his coarse ways, being sung in Satis House place both his surroundings in direct contrast. However, the subdued nature of their singing represents a disjuncture between his forge identity and his one at Satis House. When Satis House appears again in Book Two, his dissatisfaction is in regard to his inability to be with Estella. This is shown when he laments about the sense of distance and disparity that came upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her. The use of alliteration in distance and disparity shows his own sense of desperation, and further emphasizes the lament. The use of inaccessibility shows his own yearning that results in his dissatisfaction. However, Satis House in Book Three comes to represent growth, and Pips contentment with life and letting go of his old dreams. This is shown through the symbolic use of old ivy that had struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet mounds of ruin from Satis House of the past. Green also symbolizes growth, and newness. Therefore, Satis House comes to show his growth through satisfaction and dissatisfaction through Dickens deliberate placement of this setting. The careful placement and order of setting also represents the contrast between rural and urbane Pip. This is shown through Pips first arrival in London. The placement of the gritty setting after the peace and quiet of of the village and the marshes is meant to be jarring to the reader, and this use of contrast questions social and moral ambition represented by London. The use of natural imagery such as light mists that are personified to show their warmth and the solemnity of the parting, such as in the repetition of mists and solemnly rising. The quiet and solemn image of the mists is juxtaposed with the grittiness of urban London. The use of urban imagery such as great black dome, grim stone building, oppressed by hot exhausted air and dust and grits that lay thick. The colour

black and the hardness of stone all show the hardness and intensity of London, while the diction and near-synonyms of grit such as grim, grit, dust all show the grittiness and darkness that come with a supposed metropolis. The use of oppressed, and the personification of the air as exhausted, present an almost cynical air to London. This is jarring because it is directly contrasted with the natural imagery of the countryside placed prior, and serves to highlight the contrast between rural and urban setting, and foreshadows Pips growth in London. The careful placement of these settings for maximum impact on the reader provides the most shock and sense of displacement at the contrast, portraying efficiently the contrast between rural and urban Pip, signalling the new obstacles and challenges that Pip must navigate as part of his development. The careful placement of setting in Great Expectations also serves to present social injustice. This is especially apparent through the symbolic motif of the marshes and mud in various settings. Mud represents the downtrodden and oppressed in society symbolically. Magwitch is initially shown to be smothered in mud, presenting him as the first victim of societal injustice. Dickens use of setting becomes especially apparent when Magwitch escapes, because Pips description of the lake involves many objects sticking out of the mud, with the repetition of mud in some ballast-lighter lay low in the mud and all about us was stagnation and mud. The mud here symbolically represents the injustice Magwitch and many others have received, as they become the objects sticking out of the mud and slipping into the mud of social injustice and oppression. The particular placement of the mud here in its setting portrays the many injustices Magwitch has had been victim to prior to this moment, and the representation of the mud and the downtrodden in this manner serves as a sort of dramatic representation of all the oppressed as Magwitch and Pip try to escape such societal punishment inflicted by the law, another injustice. The mud here is almost personified, with all the objects slipping into and sticking out of it. Also representative of this is Jack, the male creature they meet at the public-house. This deliberate introduction of mud into the characters as part of the setting has a different effect Jack is slimy and smeary, and speaks in a slushy voice, as if much mud has washed into his throat. The symbolic representation of mud in his throat represents the action of feeding off the downtrodden and the oppressed which he does, by stealling the clothes of drowned men. This benefitting and leeching off the oppressed in society can be symbolically feeding off, and the clothes he wears gives him the impression of being slimy and smeary, likely with mud. This is Dickens careful way of using the symbol of mud as part of the setting to present social injustice and its victims, as well as its predators. Therefore, Dickens use of setting is deliberate here.