GREAT EXPECTATIONS Similarities and differences between Pip & Matilda

PHILLIP PIRRIP

Pip seeks a better life believes he is destined for more. Falls in love with Estella and wishes to be a gentleman for her sake so she will marry him. Feels isolated though he is constantly surrounded. Hides emotions and lingers no more than needed. Has trouble trusting, sticks to a need-to-know basis. See’s Miss Havisham more of his mother than his sister. Believes in himself, doesn’t change for someone else’s sake but his own. Believes himself as superior to others, his family & friends. Follows no ones orders but Estella’s. NOTES:

MATILDA PEANUT

NOTES: Matilda’s seeks a better life, and seeks to be reunited with her father. Strong relationship with Pip, they connect. Fascinated by a man who her own mother doesn’t like. Relies on people but attempts to be independent. Keeps track of time with a calendar and pencil, -something to keep her sane and hopeful. Independent from her mothers strong belief in God. Obsesses with Charles Dickens, over a writer who speaks of unusual and independent experiences.

PIP AND MATILDA Both Matilda and Pip lost their father’s at a similar age, and both are raised by staunch, strict, hard pressing women. In Matilda’s case it is her Mother who is submerged in her religious beliefs, which cause her outlook on the world to be an evil place. While Pip is raised by his sister who is cold hearted and selfish. Because of this similarity Matilda relates to Pip at an early stage and this provides a mean for her to fall in love with Great Expectations.

Matilda and Pip are both transformed by their emigration from their home surroundings. This is due to their saviours “Mr. Jaggers”, a lawyer in Pip’s case and a log in Matilda’s. Both are also transformed by their visits to London. This transformation leads them both to believe that they are a higher class than the ones they were raised with. This leads them to be sucked into the one thing they despised as youth, cold hearted and selfish. Though the world of Pip is alien to Matilda, it often feels more relevant to her than the traditions and beliefs which her devoutly Christian mother tries to instil in her. Complex family trees and abstract ideas about God and the devil hold little interest for Matilda. Instead, she feels kinship with Pip, this other child who doesn’t know his father and is struggling to find his place in the world.

Through Pip’s eventful experiences, Matilda gains new perspectives and frameworks with which to understand and evaluate the increasingly difficult circumstances of her own life. The power of Dickens’s story illuminates both the familiar and the changing aspects of Matilda’s life in a new way. The character of Miss Havisham offers her new insight into her mother’s feelings, the concept of a ‘gentleman’ informs the way she understands Mr Watts’s actions, and Pip’s behaviour challenges her notions of identity, loyalty and the person she wants to become.

MATILDA’S QUOTE: “As we progressed through the book something happened to me. At some point I felt myself enter the story. I hadn’t been assigned a part – nothing like that; I wasn’t identifiable on the page, but I was there. I was definitely there. I knew that orphaned white kid and that small, fragile place he squeezed into between his awful sister and lovable Joe Gargery because the same space came to exist between Mr Watts and my mum. And I knew I would have to choose between the two. “

DOLORES & HAVISHAM Both novels feature a mother figure who tries to use a 'daughter' to get revenge on a man. Miss Havisham due to her groom ditching her on the day of the wedding. And Dolores because the ‘white men’ took her husband. Both mother figures die by violence. Miss Havisham dies from the burns she suffered when her wedding dress caught fire while Matilda's mother is the cause of her village's destruction by fire.

In both cases, each women brings about tragedy through their own stubborn behavior. Matilda's mother and Miss Havisham share the same character. Both novels feature education throughout many chapters and in both education will alienate the protagonists from family members they love. Both feature protagonists who must conceal the identity of a strange man who wants to help them. Both feature an attempt to escape the authorities by boat in their closing chapters and both attempts end with the same result.

MATILDA’S OBSESSION Matilda strongly identifies with pip, both trapped under a mother like figure, both without a father. Their in their “own world” unable to escape with little knowledge of the ‘outside world’, looking for a way to escape. They both get along with people no on else is really that fond of –Miss Havisham, Mr Watts-.

MISTER PIP

GREAT EXPECTATIONS