Mrs Joe, Miss Havisham and Molly have gender in common but not class or ethnic origin. Molly, on the other hand, is not wholly English and was a vagrant in her youth. Virginia B. Morris in Double Jeopardy: Women who Kill in Victorian Fiction, argues that Dickens 'avoids antagonising an audience that was not yet used to the possibility that a normal English-woman's passions --intense love or hate--could drive her to act violently' p.
Morris notes that Dickens' 'murdering women are She was also 'a tramp' p. Victorian society perceived criminal women as essentially different in nature from 'normal' women. Even Mary Carpenter, a comparatively liberal prison commentator, said in , that 'convict women Both Molly and Nancy Oliver Twist , a prostitute, would have been viewed in this way. In contrast, Dickens' Use this link to get back to this page. Sex, violence and class in Great Expectations: Lucy Meredith shows how Dickens alarmed and excited his middle-class readers by revealing the shocking underside of their comfortable lives.
Jaggers accentuates the boys' relative weakness. However, the demonstration does not only reveal Molly's power; it also reveals her lack thereof. She begs to be released but Mr. Despite her physical power, Molly occupies a position of great weakness. She is completely at the mercy of her master; as a servant and a woman she cannot refuse him. However, the revelation that she may have committed murder suggests that she was not always so submissive.
By demonstrating his dominance over this 'wild beast', Mr. Jaggers asserts his own strength. Molly's pleas for Mr. Jaggers to release her are similar to the little girl's pleas for Anodos to stop touching her ball in Phantastes:. I put out both my hands and laid hold of it.
It began to sound as before. The sound rapidly increased, till it grew a low tempest of harmony, and the globe trembled, and quivered, and throbbed between my hands. I had not the heart to pull it away from the maiden, though I held it in spite of her attempts to take it from me; yes, I shame to say, in spite of her prayers, and, at last, her tears. The music went on growing in, intensity and complication of tones, and the globe vibrated and heaved; till at last it burst in our hands, and a black vapour broke upwards from out of it; then turned, as if blown sideways, and enveloped the maiden, hiding even the shadow in its blackness.
What function s do these scenes serve? Is the fact that the maiden is a young girl whereas Molly is a middle aged woman significant? Pip tries to question Wopsle calmly, but inside he is terrified, realizing that Compeyson must be shadowing him. Pip rushes home to tell Herbert and Wemmick. Jaggers invites Pip to dinner, where he gives the young man a note from Miss Havisham. Walking home with Wemmick after the dinner, Pip questions his friend about Molly, and he learns that she was accused of killing a woman over her common-law husband and of murdering her little daughter to hurt him.
Pip feels certain that Estella is that lost daughter. Pip visits Miss Havisham, who feels unbearably guilty for having caused Estella to break his heart. He acts kindly toward her, then goes for a walk in the garden. There, he has a morbid fantasy that Miss Havisham is dead. He looks up at her window just in time to see her bend over the fire and go up in a column of flame. Rushing in to save her, Pip sweeps the ancient wedding feast from her table and smothers the flames with the tablecloth.
Miss Havisham lives, but she becomes an invalid, a shadow of her former self. Pip stays with her after the doctors have departed; early the next morning, he leaves her in the care of her servants and returns to London.
Pip himself was badly burned trying to save Miss Havisham, and while Herbert changes his bandages, they agree that they have both grown fonder of Magwitch.
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