{"id":948,"date":"2022-10-27T03:12:29","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T03:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/?p=948"},"modified":"2022-10-27T03:12:29","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T03:12:29","slug":"what-do-you-do-when-petrarchs-ghost-is-haunting-your-gothic-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2022\/10\/27\/what-do-you-do-when-petrarchs-ghost-is-haunting-your-gothic-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do You Do When Petrarch’s Ghost is Haunting Your Gothic Novel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Avery Gordon\u2019s article titled, \u201cGhostly Metters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination\u201d they\u00a0argue, \u201cIn haunting, organized forces and systematic structures that appear removed from us make their impact felt in everyday life.\u201d Though there are literal ghosts in <\/span>Great Expectations<\/span><\/i>, there are also remnants of English poetics\u00a0that haunt Dickens\u2019 novel.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The relationship between Pip and Estella very closely resembles\u00a0the Petrarchan casting of Phillip Sidney\u2019s characters in his sonnet sequence, <\/span>Astrophil and Stella,<\/span><\/i>\u201cstar-lover\u201d and \u201cstar.\u201d<\/span> Sidney\u2019s male narrator is infatuated with the lady beloved, praising her graces, and fixating particularly on her\u00a0heart and eyes. Unfortunately, the beloved is cold, distant and unattainable. This same relationship exists between Pip and Estella, influenced by\u00a0Miss Havisham. By her insistence, Pip focuses entirely on Estella, praising her beauty\u00a0aloud to a completely unreceptive audience. Contemplating in silence, he is often completely convinced that they are destined. In his\u00a0obsessive thoughts, Pip too is a Petrarchan solitary wanderer, \u201cOf all [his] thoughts hath neither stop nor start \/ But only [Es]Stella\u2019s eyes and [Es]Stella\u2019s heart\u201d (Sidney 350).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>Great Expectations<\/span><\/i>, there are many examples of Pip\u2019s growing infatuation, but what is most interesting is that Estella herself informs Pip of her heart\u2019s condition. She says, \u201c\u2018You must know\u2019…condescending to me as a brilliant and beautiful woman might, \u2018that I have no heart \u2013 if that has anything to do with memory…I have no softness there” (Dickens 237). While Estella tries to inform Pip that her heart is unavailable, Pip is once again distracted by her beauty. His interjection, \u201cbrilliant and beautiful,\u201d once again recalls the same praise present in Sidney\u2019s lovers: Estella\u2019s beauty shines brilliantly star-like at the center of his attention. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The mention of memory and the heart is also interesting. Petrarch, who is the model for Sidney\u2019s sonnets, is particularly concerned with the heart because during his age, scientific literature\u00a0conflated the heart with the brain\u2019s functions. If Estella is convinced that her heart holds no capacity for softness and memory, then she casts herself as the distant beloved. Pip, on the other hand, as the lover, does remember and remains obsessively warm towards her. In another of Sidney\u2019s sonnets, his speaker ponders, \u201cBut she, most fair, most cold, made him therein take his flight \/ To my close heart, where while come firebrands he did lay, \/ He burnt unawares his wings, and cannot fly away\u201d (Sidney 350). Despite the beloved\u2019s rejection of love, he\u00a0flies to the lover\u2019s heart and memory to be kept safe. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, in love\u2019s flight to the heart, he burns his wings on the lover\u2019s infatuation with the beloved and is imprisoned. The same is true for Pip: his obsession with Estella despite her repeated rejections is dangerous to him emotionally\u00a0but only makes his love stronger. Because injured love cannot leave Pip\u2019s heart, he too, is untraditionally haunted. Dickens\u2019 novel is concerned with types of literacy, so it is only appropriate that his Gothic fiction should be haunted by his literary predecessor\u2019s legacy.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Avery Gordon\u2019s article titled, \u201cGhostly Metters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination\u201d they\u00a0argue, \u201cIn haunting, organized forces and systematic structures that appear removed from us make their impact felt in everyday life.\u201d Though there are literal ghosts in Great Expectations, there are also remnants of English poetics\u00a0that haunt Dickens\u2019 novel.\u00a0 The relationship between Pip and … Continue reading What Do You Do When Petrarch’s Ghost is Haunting Your Gothic Novel?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}