“Great Expectations” (post 4) by Charles Dickens: Author Cancels Mistakes Re Convict and Estella, and Sneaks in Metaphor for Multiple Personality

Convict Mistake

The convict has repeatedly said he loves Pip and wants to enrich him, because Pip had been such a humanitarian in helping him to escape. But both of them must realize that Pip had helped the convict—who is eventually back in court and sentenced to death—only because Pip had been a frightened child.

Estella Mistake

Pip had been infatuated with Estella, because she had seemed to him to be uniquely pretty, and because he had been, in effect, hypnotically indoctrinated to love her (see post 3). But when they meet at the end, she acknowledges “I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me” (1. p. 483).

Metaphor for Multiple Personality

Joe and Biddy, now married, name their son “Pip” and hope “he might grow a little bit” (1, p. 481) like Pip. But since Pip had always wanted Estella, not Biddy, and had chosen to forsake his apprenticeship with Joe in favor of seeking “great expectations,” it is out-of-character for them to honestly want their son to take after Pip. But for some reason, which Dickens may or may not have understood, he has now chosen to have two characters named “Pip,” which sneaks in this metaphor for multiple personality, in addition to what I’ve cited in posts 1 and 2.

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

Added same day: The stories about the convict and Estella are often wrong-headed, because Dickens had chosen a mostly first-person perspective, so there is often no objective third-person perspective to observe that what the characters are saying or thinking is nonsense. 

For example, the very idea that any particular girl or woman is uniquely pretty is silly unless she is on a desert island. And if a character mistakenly thinks that someone is uniquely pretty, his psychology should be discussed by either other characters or a narrator.

If Dickens was not mistaken to do first-person, then, at least, he was lazy. You may disagree.