Shows how Dicken’s uses hand imagery to show the evolving relationship between Pip and Magwitch.
Authors and artists pay great attention to detail when describing hands because humans have learned to lie with their facial expressions, but hands are a window to the truth. In the novel Great Expectations, Dickens repeatedly uses imagery of hands to show connections between characters, mainly between Pip and Magwitch. Dickens repeatedly uses imagery of Magwitch holding or stretching out his hands to show his desire to connect with Pip, and imagery of Pip’s hands either pushing away or embracing Magwitch’s to illustrate their feelings about each other at different stages in their relationship. In the novel Great Expectations, Charles Dickens uses hand imagery to express the evolution of the relationship between the main character Pip and the convict Abel Magwitch; Pip fearing Magwitch evolves into Pip the gentleman being revolted by Magwitch, which finally evolves into Pip empathizing with Magwitch – who in the process shows only constant affection towards Pip.
In the first stage of Pip’s relationship with Magwitch, when Pip is seven years of age, Pip fears Magwitch greatly, and Magwitch sees Pip as nothing more than an opportunity.When the recently escaped Magwitch sees Pip, he sees a small child whom he could frighten into giving him food. Indeed, Pip explains that during his first encounter with Magwitch, “I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands” (5). Dickens uses Pip’s clinging hands to convey his reaction to Magwitch’s successful attempt to intimidate Pip by physically tilting him. Years after the convict is caught and sent away, Pip begins his education as a gentleman, causing the first change in the relationship between Pip and Abel Magwitch.
After sixteen years, when Pip, the gentleman, meets his benefactor for the first time, hand imagery shows that Pip is immediately repulsed by Magwitch, while Magwitch is affectionate and proud of Pip’s new status. After Pip first recognizes that his mysterious guest is the convict from his childhood, Pip tells the reader, “He came back to where I stood, and again held out both his hands. Not knowing what to do – for, in my astonishment I had lost my self-possession – I reluctantly gave him my hands. He grasped them heartily, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and still held them” (306). The reader is shown how Pip, purely out of confusion, lets Magwitch hold his hands and raise them to his lips, but then experiences great uneasiness at the thought of being touched by such a wrong-doing hand, which is not fit for his society. Pip writes, “At a change in his manner as if he were even going to embrace me, I laid a hand upon his breast and put him away. “Stay!” said I. “Keep off!” (306). Pip makes it very clear to Magwitch, using a universal hand gesture, that he does not return the convict’s affection. Indeed, with newly formed standards from the upper-class culture to which he has been introduced, Pip views convicts as low society, with an endless variety of horrific traits. While admiring Pip, the fruit of his labors, Magwitch exclaims, “‘Look’ee here!’ he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket, and turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from his touch as if he had been a snake, ‘a gold ‘un and a beauty: that’s a gentleman’s, I hope!’” (310). Thus Dickens is showing the reader that Pip feels the same repulsion towards being touched by Magwitch’s hand as he would towards the touch of a snake. Indeed, after hearing Magwitch’s hopes for the two of them to share good times, Pip describes, “Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while my blood ran cold within me” (310). When describing Magwitch Pip remembers, “He laid his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the thought that for anything I knew, his hand might be stained with blood” (311). Without any idea as to why Abel Magwitch had been convicted, Pip presumptuously begins to think the worst of him. At the end of Pip and Magwitch’s first meeting in chapter thirty-nine, Dickens’ hand imagery makes clear that Pip is still repulsed by Magwitch. Pip recalls, “I brought it [referring to the gentleman’s linen that Magwitch had requested] out, and laid it ready for him, and my blood again ran cold when he took me by both hands to give me good night. I got away from him, without knowing how I did it” (312). Pip is revolted by Magwitch down to his very core, because he was taught he should be – taught by the same society into which Magwitch had opened the door for him.
Over the next five days in Pip and Magwitch’s relationship, hand movements are used to express, quite well, Pip and Magwitch’s feelings towards each other. When Magwitch again takes Pip’s hands in his, Pip describes, “I released my hands as soon as I could, and found that I was beginning slowly to settle down to the contemplation of my condition” (319). The image of Pip being as quick as possible to remove his hands from Magwitch’s hold shows that he is still repulsed by him. Pip describes Magwitch as he smokes, “Once more, he took me by both hands and surveyed me with an air of admiring proprietorship: smoking with great complacency all the while” (321). Here, Magwitch’s affection for Pip is shown in the way he takes Pip’s hands in his. Later, when Pip is surveying Magwitch, Dickens’ allusion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is an efficient way to make the observation that – excluding the science fiction – Great Expectations has a plot similar to Frankenstein, only with the creature and the doctor switching roles. “The imaginary student pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired me and the fonder he was of me” (326). Pip, envisioning himself as a gentleman created by a horrendous creature, well summarizes the repugnance he feels towards Magwitch, and which the reader has been shown through hand imagery up until this point. Indeed, there are no changes in Pip’s attitude towards Magwitch after the five days they spend alone together.
Hand imagery depicts the start of the second change in the relationship between Pip and Magwitch, which occurs after Pip and Herbert hear Magwitch’s life story up until he met the young Pip in the marsh. Pip writes about Magwitch’s fit of fury when telling the story of his collaboration with Compeyson: “He had worked himself into a state of great excitement, but he checked it, took two or three short breaths, swallowed as often, and stretching out his hand towards me said, in a reassuring manner, ‘I ain’t a-going to be low, dear boy!’” (339). After becoming indignant in front of Pip, Magwitch realizes that the speech he used was for low-class society. Here, the reader can see that Magwitch is aware of Pip’s feelings towards him and, by stretching out his hand, shows that he is apologetic and wishes not to worsen them further. Pip, in turn, shows his first empathetic moment with Magwitch when he recalls, “He regarded me with a look of affection that made him almost abhorrent to me again, though I had felt great pity for him” (339). Indeed, Pip begins to have ambivalent feelings towards Magwitch after hearing how Magwitch was betrayed by Compeyson and suffered for it. Pip feels both pity for the unfortunate man before him, and abhorrence at the convict who loved Pip, and wanted his love returned. The progression of this change towards Magwitch, shown through Pip’s responses to Magwitch’s constantly held out hands, emerges close to the end of Magwitch’s life.
The drastic change in Pip’s responses towards Magwitch’s held out hands, which show his constant affection for Pip, is brought on by a change in Pip’s values at the final stage of Pip and Magwitch’s relationship. Pip remembers the events of Magwitch’s trial: “No objection was made to my getting close to the dock, on the outside of it, and holding the hand that he [Magwitch] stretched forth to me” (439). Pip is willing not only to hold Magwitch’s hand for support, but to do so in full view of the public. Indeed, Pip is willing to be seen consorting with and connected, through their joined hands, with a known felon. Seeing as Pip would not have been caught dead holding Magwitch’s hand – especially in public – just days ago, the reader can see that a sharp turnaround of Pip’s feelings has occurred. Pip further recalls how “Sometimes he [Magwitch] was almost, or quite, unable to speak; then, he would answer me with slight pressures on my hand, and I grew to understand his meaning very well” (441). For Magwitch to be able to communicate almost completely by simply applying pressure to Pip’s hand signifies that the emotional connection between them, which Magwitch had spent so long trying to establish, is finally strong enough to do so. This connection is seen again when Pip says, “He smiled, and I understood his touch to mean that he wished to lift my hand, and lay it upon his breast. I laid it there, and he smiled again, and put both his hands upon it” (442). This is the first time that Pip is the one to use his hands to express his affection for Magwitch. Pip recounts Magwitch’s last moments: “With a last faint effort, which would have been powerless but for my yielding to it and assisting it, he raised my hand to his lips. Then, he gently let it sink upon his breast again, with his own hands lying on it” (442). Here Dickens is showing, using again the imagery of Pip’s hands on Magwitch’s lips and breast, how instead of pushing Magwitch’s embrace away, Pip helps him to complete it. “‘I will never stir from your side,’ said I, ‘when I am suffered to be near you. Please God, I will be as true to you, as you have been to me!’ I felt his hand tremble as it held mine, and he turned his face away as he lay in the bottom of the boat, and I heard that old sound in his throat – softened now, like all the rest of him” (429). Pip now pledges loyalty to Magwitch, seeing how the convict has softened from the days when he had been called “the hardened one,” and Magwitch’s hands tremble when he hears that his devotion is returned. Pip finally understands that his own success is important to Magwitch because Magwitch wished to lead a different life, and was able to do so by living vicariously through Pip. Pip is empathetic to Magwitch’s emotions and begins to respond accordingly. Pip explains, “For now, my repugnance to him had all melted away, and in the hunted wounded shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately, gratefully, and generously, towards me with great constancy through a series of years. I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to Joe” (428-429). Pip allows Magwitch to hold his hand, and even holds Magwitch’s willingly, because in seeing Magwitch weak before him, Pip begins to see him as a good person. This suggests that Pip’s values have shifted from those instilled in him as a gentleman – education, fluid speech, money, power, and manners, which in fact were all met by the white-collar criminal Compeyson – to those which he has learned are truly important. Pip begins to respect loyalty, love, kindness, and generosity, all of which he now sees in Magwitch and Joe, and Pip realizes that he had not shown any of these traits towards Joe in the past. Pip is now unashamed to hold Magwitch’s hand because, in the end, Pip realizes that Magwitch was a man with good intentions, and great expectations for Pip.
When he is a child, Pip’s hands show his fear of the convict he runs into at his parents’ graves. When he is a gentleman, Pip’s hands clearly show that he is repulsed by the convict, who could potentially be a murderer. When Pip is an adult, imagery of his hands shows how he has a completely different set of values and now empathizes with Abel Magwitch – not the convict, but simply the man. Pip feared the large man he had met in his childhood, and believed his cannibalistic threats. When he becomes a gentleman, Pip views the convict as low society. In a way, it is ironic that Pip’s second stage of repulsion towards Magwitch is the end result of Magwitch’s expectations for Pip. When Pip begins to see Magwitch as simply a man, who has not only troubles but many positive traits, he becomes empathetic with him and begins to return the kindness he had been given. Most children would have been terrified of a convict, especially one trying to use fear as leverage. At the same time, most gentlemen of Dickens’ time would have been repulsed by convicts. However, it is a very exclusive group of people that can reflect upon their own lives and experiences in order to better understand and empathize with another’s, and based on that to evolve into looking past a stereotype which they had so strongly imposed upon a person. Hand imagery in Great Expectations shows how Pip begins in innocence, has his undeveloped character corrupted by the values and opinions of snobs in high society, and then returns to his blank-slate of a childhood self, and mentally evolves into a better adult.
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