Charles Dickens' Great Expectations

People treasure their houses and most often houses become homes filled with

love. This makes it very difficult to leave their houses in which they have lived all their life. This happens to the elderly a lot when they can no longer take care of themselves and are forced to leave their homes and move to a nursing home. Houses can represent the family who lives in the house. If the house is poorly taken care of then the people poorly take care of themselves. If the house is beautiful with lovely blossoming gardens then they are compassionate loving people. Unless of course they hire someone to take care of the garden. Then they just appear to be loving, compassionate people. Really they are paying someone else to do the hard work to make the family seem loving on the outside but nobody will ever really know how those kind of people are on their dark mysterious inside spirit. Dickens also supported the belief that houses represent people. In Great Expectations, Dickens used the houses of the characters to represent the state of the characters spiritually, physically, and emotionally.

Mrs. Havisham has been frozen in time just like her house has been frozen in time for the past twenty years. "Mrs. Havisham’s house of darkness, decay, and frozen time …. is a symbol of the spiritual condition of Mrs. Havisham. "(Miller 192) Dickens has been known for using houses as symbols of the characters that lives in the house. "Satis house is an elaborate example of a figurative technique constantly employed by Dickens: the use of houses to symbolize the state of the soul. "(Miller 191) Mrs. Havisham’s house is called the "Satis House". It could also be called the Satisfied house.

Mrs. Havisham is satisfied with everything she has and everything she doesn’t have. Estella knew what she was talking about when she told Pip "It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house ,could want nothing else. " (Stange 186) She is happy being the victim of the cold-hearted, back-stabbing Compeyson. Her morbid revenge is to freeze time so that she is the innocent victim for the rest of her life because this allows her to be guilt free about creating Estella’s heart of ice towards all mankind. "Mrs. Havisham has two motives for her attempt to freeze time. She wants to make certain that her betrayal will be the whole meaning of her ...

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...ure and lustrous gardens, which he tends to. Him living with aging and taking care of him is such a sharp contrast to the people he throws out of Mr. Jagger’s office. At the office Wemmick would never help his friends. "To Wemmick , serving a friend is a waste "portable property", one might as well pitch his money into the Thames." (Hornback 226) At his castle though, Wemmick wants to help Pip with Herbert. Wemmick’s castle being secluded in the forest away from society, represents how Wemmick separates his business life from public life.

Many houses represent the family that lives in the house. In Dicken’s case he took it one step further. Not only does the house represent the physical and emotional state of the character but also the state of their soul. Mrs. Havisham and her Satis house are both decaying and rotting away with time while Wemmick and his Castle represent his separation of business life from private life. People’s houses now have a deeper role than just becoming houses of love filled with children. They also have a greater meaning. Someone’s house can even tell their state of soul. When looking at houses now people can also look at their souls.