Popa Bianca-Elena

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2 Year, Series 1, Group 1

Fairytale patterns in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

In this essay, I will talk about fairytale patterns in Great Expectations by Charles
Dickens, as announced in the title, and I would like to discuss how this novel resembles a
fairytale firstly from the point of view of structure and then focusing on that from the point of
view of how some of the characters are built.

To begin with, I will start talking about the structure of fairytales in comparison to Great
Expectations, having as reference Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. As Propp
asserts fairytales are all the same because of the sequence of functions which is always identical
(Propp, 22). He identified 31 functions among which the most known of them could be seen in
Dickens’s novel as well. I will take them one by one and explain them with reference to Great
Expectations. The first one mentioned by Propp is the “absentation” which in the novel
represents the moment when Pip leaves the forge and goes to London to become a gentleman.
Then an “interdiction” is addressed to the hero, when Mr. Jaggers tells Pip that he is not allowed
to inquire anything about his benefactor (“It is not the least to the purpose what the reasons of
this prohibition are. That is not for you to inquire into” – Dickens, 136) and he is supposed to
meet his benefactor’s expectations. This interdiction is violated (“the violation”) when Pip
begins to be in debt and asks Mr. Jaggers questions about his benefactor in chapter 17. Then,
there is the villain that in the novel is represented by Orlick. He seems not to like Pip from the
very beginning before fearing that he might be replaced (“When I became Joe’s ’prentice, Orlick
was perhaps confirmed in some suspicion that I should displace him; howbeit, he liked me still
less” – Dickens, 110) and whenever they meet he behaves in a distant rudely manner, even in a
dangerous one as he does later in the novel. Another function discussed by Propp is the
“reconnaissance” whose aim is to find out information about the victim. In Great Expectations
we have an instance of an “inverted form of reconnaissance” because, as Orlick already knows
that Pip works with Joe at the forge and that he leaves for London to become a gentleman, it is
Pip who asks Orlick questions when unexpectedly sees him working at Satis House (“How did
you come here?/ Are you here for good?/ Then you have left the forge?” – Dickens, 230). Propp
talks also about the donor or the tester which helps the hero and in the novel the donor is
Magwitch, as he is his benefactor too. The last encounter of Pip with Orlick leads to another
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2 Year, Series 1, Group 1

function which Propp called it the “struggle” and it is when Orlick captures Pip and wants to kill
him, but he is saved at the last minute. Then there is “the punishment of the villain” when Orlick
is put into prison for his wickedness. And of course the last one is the “victory” and even if the
novel does not end with Pip marrying Estella, he still “finishes up a moderately well-paid,
middle-aged business-man” (Butts, 44).

Secondly, starting from what the critic Dennis Butt said which is that “Dickens's novels
often have a fairy-tale structure, and this is particularly obvious in Great Expectations with its
use of such motifs as the honest apprentice, the ugly monster, the beautiful princess and the fairy
godmother” (49), I will talk about how the characters from the novel resemble fairytale ones.
Pip, the honest apprentice and also the hero, longs for changing his current state after falling in
love with Estella, the beautiful and rich girl, who embodies a princess through her exquisite
appearance and her wealth. Pip fancies that they will get married and is more enforced in
thinking this after his state changes and by the encouragements of Miss Havisham to love the
girl. Estella warns him that she has an ice heart, but he cannot help falling in love with her from
the first time they see each other. According to Butts, Miss Havisham is the fairy godmother, but
I think that it is better to say that she is a “dissembler (a witch disguised as a fairy godmother)”
(Stone, 91). I fully agree with what Harry Stone said because even her appearance makes her
look like a witch: her yellow wedding dress, her wedding cake full of spider webs, her house
seeming like a prison with no sunlight allowed in it for years and above all her obsession of
setting Estella to “wreak her revenge on men” (Dickens, 258). Moreover, even Pip describes her
as “witch-like” (258) and her repeated words to “Lover her! Love her” sound to him like a curse
(204). “Magwitch is a disguised tester and benefactor” (Stone, 91). His first meeting with Pip is
in the graveyard “when outlawed Magwitch emerges from the graves and turns Pip's dawning
consciousness topsy-turvy, the act epitomizes the inverted fairy tale that Dickens is about to tell”
(Stone, 299). Even though he scares him and this episode haunts him like a ghost, Pip discovers
that Magwitch is in essence a good man and the man who wishes him to become a gentleman,
the man who is his benefactor. Pip feels guilty that he has risked his life coming to him and
wants to help Magwitch get out of London, but they are caught and Magwitch sentenced and he
eventually dies. The relation between them is more than what it appears to be for Stone shows
that Pip is an autobiographical parallel to Dickens: “Pip's self-deluding desire to run from
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2 Year, Series 1, Group 1

Magwitch (…) is similar to Dickens' own attempts to run from his past. Pip's salvation through
Magwitch then becomes Dickens' mature recognition” (300).

In conclusion, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens can be interpreted as a fairytale

not only because of its structure which follows the functions developed by Vladimir Propp as
being identical in all fairytales, but also because the characters of the novel embody different
kinds of fairytale ones and give the story an unreal and enchanting touch.

Bibliography:

 Butts, Dennis. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The Macmillan Press Ltd.
1985
 Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Wordsworth Classics. 1992
 Jordan, John O. The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. Cambridge
University Press. 2006
 Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. University of Texas Press. 1968.
pp. 22-63
 Stone, Harry. Dickens and the Invisible World: Fairy-Tales, Fantasy, and Novel
Making. The Macmillan Press Ltd. 1979