{"id":956,"date":"2022-10-28T02:11:28","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T02:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/?p=956"},"modified":"2022-10-28T02:11:28","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T02:11:28","slug":"it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night-haunting-in-great-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2022\/10\/28\/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night-haunting-in-great-expectations\/","title":{"rendered":"It was a dark and stormy night…Haunting in Great Expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Dickens\u2019 Great Expectations<\/em> is a melting pot of many themes and types of plots. Class structures and social status are continually in question throughout the novel, most obviously during Pip\u2019s rise to gentle-manhood. He becomes comfortable in his higher station, indulging in privileges reserved for higher society but punished in the lower classes, notably his reckless spending and lack of money sense. Pip benefits due to social stratification in London at the time, and those such privileges afforded to the rich. However, his comfort in this structure is shaken when he learns the source of his wealth: an ex-con, appearing like a ghost from Pip\u2019s childhood. During Magwitch\u2019s revelation scene, Dickens represents him in a haunting manner to emphasize the base fear Pip feels during his process of recognition and understanding; he realizes his expectations no longer coincide with those acceptable in society (and never did).<\/p>\n

Dickens structures Pip\u2019s discovery like a typical haunting scene. Pip is describing the awful wind, rain, and darkness striking his home, when suddenly, \u201cI heard a footstep on the stair\u201d (Dickens 334). The \u201csudden\u201d nature of the initial realization that he is not alone is comparable to a jump scare towards Pip. Pip\u2019s comprehension of the situation dawns on him slowly, first recognizing Magwitch as the convict from his past, then understanding the true nature of his circumstances. Dickens describes his bodily reactions to this new reality as comparable to the fear of being haunted, \u201cI could not have spoken one word\u2026I seemed to be suffocating\u2026I shuddered\u2026he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while my blood ran cold within me\u201d (Dickens 339-341). These somatic symptoms point to the reality that Pip is experiencing terror in this scene, despite nothing truly frightening occurring. Avery Gordon, author of Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination<\/em>, offers an explanation for this phenomenon, \u201c\u2026haunting is a very particular way of knowing what has happened or is happening. Being haunted draws us affectively\u2026into the structure of feeling of a reality we come to experience, not as cold knowledge, but as a transformative recognition.\u201d (Gordon 8). Thus, Dickens represents Pip\u2019s recognition of his reality as a physical experience. He is confronted with information which prompts him to reframe his entire mindset towards his identity\u2013past, present, and future. Rather than explicitly stating that his current life is essentially over, Dickens creates a haunting scene to demonstrate the transformation Pip undergoes once realizing he no longer has (and never should have had) a place in society. The over gloomy weather and Magwitch\u2019s sudden apparition allow for a covert undercurrent of social status and class structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Dickens\u2019 Great Expectations is a melting pot of many themes and types of plots. Class structures and social status are continually in question throughout the novel, most obviously during Pip\u2019s rise to gentle-manhood. He becomes comfortable in his higher station, indulging in privileges reserved for higher society but punished in the lower classes, notably … Continue reading It was a dark and stormy night…Haunting in Great Expectations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956","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\/4979"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}