“Great Expectations” (post 2) by Charles Dickens: Pip’s mind is “scattered”

“And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I complicated its confusion fifty thousand-fold, by having states and seasons when I was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better than Estella…Scattered wits take a long time picking up; and often, before I had got them well together, they would be dispersed in all directions by one stray thought, that perhaps Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune…” (1, pp. 132-133).

Comment: The first time I noted Dickens’s use of “scattered” was when he used it for the mind of John Jasper in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), as a way to foreshadow the later discovery that Jasper had multiple personality.

I suspect that Dickens experienced his own mind as variably “scattered,” as probably do most novelists, for whom a benign form of multiple personality is an asset.

Search “Dickens” in this blog for further discussion.

1. Charles Dickens. Great Expectations [1860-61]. London, Penguin Books, 1996.