Great Expectations Appearance vs. Reality in Great

Great Expectations

Appearance vs. Reality in Great Expectations

In Great Expectations Pip is frequently affected, effected and influenced by appearances. The very nature of his life is dictated by his view of the appearance of others and his own self and outward appearances. The work itself demonstrates a major theme associated with not judging by appearance as it simultaneously demonstrates how much those very appearances actually mean to the individual characters and society in general. The tenor of the story is based around the concept of appearance making or breaking an individual while juxtaposing the dark concept of hidden faults and weaknesses that exploit all the characters, regardless of appearance. The juxtaposition of the appearance and power of wealth with the ideation that it represents all that is good and poor as all that is bad, specifically speaking of people and their appeared circumstances is a construct of social criticism on the part of Dickens that attempts to address the idea that appearances are deceptive and that all who hold the appearance of wealth and power are not as they seem. The result of this juxtaposition is the attempt to show Pip through experience that making decisions based on appearances is faulty and that he needs to tread lightly on this construct and rely on the "evidence" of good or evil in an individual.

To demonstrate this thesis one needs only look at the development of Pip's character through his actions and relationships. For the purpose of this very brief work focusing on Pip's actions when he discovers that his benefactor is Magwitch is sufficient. Despite the warnings of Jaggers that Pip should not assume that his benefactor is Miss Havisham Pip nonetheless, given the history of her seeking him out to "play" with Estella and paying for his apprenticeship to Joe, the blacksmith and his brother in-law, Pip assumes Miss Havisham is his patron. The conversation when he discovers that his benefactor is actually Magwitch, the frightening criminal who Pip saves with food and tools in the first chapter of the book when Pip is a boy is enlightening. Jaggers deplores Pip for assuming that Miss Havisham is his benefactor with, "Not a particle of evidence, Pip,' said Mr. Jaggers, shaking his head and gathering up his skirts. 'Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.'" (Dickins 332) Pip is so shocked that he does not know what to do, as by all appearances Magwitch was not only not a suitable benefactor but Pip, assumed that the money he received from him must have been ill begotten and would haunt him eternally. Speaking of Magwitch's appearance Pip concludes; "By-and-by, his door opened and he came out. I could not bring myself to bear the sight of him, and I thought he had a worse look by daylight." (325-326)

The source of Magwitch's wealth is never fully revealed and even though he is fully aware that he can never become a gentleman the kindness that Pip gave him when he was a starving escaped convict does not escape him and he spends his life as a criminal outcast in Australia as "a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, and other trades besides." (312) His success is the source of his wealth and according to Magwitch his impetus was to make a better life for Pip, because he could not make a better life for his wife or daughter, whom he believes is dead but has really been adopted by Miss Havisham and is Pip's love interest Estella. Pip is transformed through his relationship with this man, whose appearance he cannot stand. The transformation is total, beginning with the superficial, in the form of sponsorship of his life in London but more deeply in response to his developed understanding of the unfortunate and unfair nature of Magwitch's history as a very wronged man in an unfair world and Magwitch's example showing him how he has so wronged Joe, "I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have gone back to Biddy now, for any consideration; simply, I suppose, because my sense of my own worthless conduct to them was greater than every consideration. No wisdom on earth could have given I would not have gone back to Joe now me the comfort that I should have derived from their simplicity and fidelity; but I could never, never, never, undo what I had done." (318-319)