Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Satis House
In Satis House, Dickens creates a magnificent Gothic setting
whose various elements symbolize Pip’s romantic perception of the
upper class and many other themes of the book. On her decaying body, Miss
Havisham’s wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and degeneration.
The wedding dress and the wedding feast symbolize Miss Havisham’s
past, and the stopped clocks throughout the house symbolize her
determined attempt to freeze time by refusing to change anything
from the way it was when she was jilted on her wedding day. The
brewery next to the house symbolizes the connection between commerce
and wealth: Miss Havisham’s fortune is not the product of an aristocratic
birth but of a recent success in industrial capitalism. Finally,
the crumbling, dilapidated stones of the house, as well as the darkness
and dust that pervade it, symbolize the general decadence of the
lives of its inhabitants and of the upper class as a whole.
The Mists on the Marshes
The setting almost always symbolizes a theme in Great
Expectations and always sets a tone that is perfectly matched
to the novel’s dramatic action. The misty marshes near Pip’s childhood
home in Kent, one of the most evocative of the book’s settings,
are used several times to symbolize danger and uncertainty. As a
child, Pip brings Magwitch a file and food in these mists; later,
he is kidnapped by Orlick and nearly murdered in them. Whenever
Pip goes into the mists, something dangerous is likely to happen.
Significantly, Pip must go through the mists when he travels to
London shortly after receiving his fortune, alerting the reader
that this apparently positive development in his life may have dangerous
consequences.
Bentley Drummle
Although he is a minor character in the novel, Bentley
Drummle provides an important contrast with Pip and represents the
arbitrary nature of class distinctions. In his mind, Pip has connected
the ideas of moral, social, and educational advancement so that
each depends on the others. The coarse and cruel Drummle, a member
of the upper class, provides Pip with proof that social advancement
has no inherent connection to intelligence or moral worth. Drummle
is a lout who has inherited immense wealth, while Pip’s friend and brother-in-law
Joe is a good man who works hard for the little he earns. Drummle’s
negative example helps Pip to see the inner worth of characters
such as Magwitch and Joe, and eventually to discard his immature
fantasies about wealth and class in favor of a new understanding
that is both more compassionate and more realistic.
