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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Book 1, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Waxwork and Skeleton:
In Chapter 8, Dickens uses two similar and layered metaphors of death and entombment to stress the impact of Miss Havisham's ghastly appearance. Pip, on seeing her for the first time, says:
Once I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me.
The diction of this passage is unusually stilted for Dickens. By directly contrasting two uncanny experiences almost in the same breath, the author implies that Pip is having two almost simultaneous flashes of memory. These come together as his eyes try to interpret what is in front of them, as the scene is so bizarre.
Dickens indicates that Havisham is both waxwork and skeleton, at once alive and dead, through this use of language. He foreshadows the extraordinary story of her ill-fated wedding day and the living death she consigns herself to. It is not exactly a flattering description of a living person that Dickens gives the reader here: what Pip is seeing is a lonely old crone, but what he describes are the "ashes of a rich dress" hanging from the false flesh of a "ghastly waxwork."
Pip also says "once" twice, indicating through repetition that the experience before him exceeds both previous nasty occasions. Right from the beginning of their acquaintance, Havisham is associated with the language of burial alive—the "vault under the pavement"—and of living death, as her startling eyes "move and look" at Pip in an otherwise skeletal face.
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Book 1, Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Chains of Causation:
In Chapter 9 of Great Expectations, Pip returns to his modest home after leaving the magnificent Satis House. The narrator reflects on how the contrast between the two places changes the course of his life. Dickens uses a metaphor of chains illustrating predetermined fate to make the reader think about their own relationship to causation:
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
Pip's narrative voice changes to the imperative second person and directly addresses the reader, engaging them with the question. This rhetorical technique draws the reader directly into the story, as the narrator asks how they might respond to such an occurrence in their own lives. The "chains" of destiny metaphorically described here can be good (gold, flowers) or bad (iron, thorns), but Dickens implies everyone is "bound" by the effects of important choices.
This is an important moment in the novel for another reason. The effects of choices on characters in Dickens novels are not always predictable. Dickens's books are filled with dramatic coincidence and romance, results which come from chance encounters and circumstances that would have been impossible to predict. The narrator's didactic tone here urges the reader to make good choices where they can, as they can only see the "links" of the chain they have already made. Their agency is limited, but their choices are their own.
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Book 2, Chapter 27
Explanation and Analysis—The Spider:
Dickens introduces a direct metaphorical reference to arachnids when the "blotchy, sprawling, sulky" Bentley Drummle enters the story. The narrator, when describing how Drummle attacks problems in Chapter 27, makes the following quip:
The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to lying in wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe.
Drummle is aligned with spiders in Great Expectations, with Dickens even going so far as to have Jaggers and Pip himself refer to Drummle as "The Spider." He is plotting, vicious, idle, and the inheritor of gray wealth; a perfect recipe for a Dickens villain. Through this use of the "spider" metaphor, Dickens indicates that this character feels no pressure to act from society, insecurity, or a lack of funds. Like the others of his "tribe," the aristocracy, he has time to kill. When "the Spider" finishes work in London and leaves, Dickens builds on the arachnid metaphor by calling Drummle's ancestral home a spider's nest:
The Spider's time with Mr. Pocket was up for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. Pocket, he went home to the family hole.
The change in letters between "home" and "hole" here is a subtle but important piece of wordplay. The family "home," given Drummle's heirship to a baronetcy, is probably a splendid manor. However, the narrator implies Pip's distaste for Drummle with this swap. Whatever the house is actually like, if it's owned by spiders, it is metaphorically more a "hole" than a home. Although Drummle does marry Estella upon the designs of Miss Havisham, whose house is already filled with the book's other "blotchy spiders," like most Dickens villains he comes to an unhappy end.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—Estella Has No Heart:
After it becomes clear to even the most casual observer that Pip is completely infatuated with Estella Havisham, Dickens employs a simple but powerful metaphor to illustrate her literal inability to access her emotions, or "use" her heart properly. She has, she says to Pip in Chapter 29, "no heart":
“Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,” said Estella, “and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no— sympathy—sentiment—nonsense.”
Dickens deliberately confuses the line between Estella's physical body and her emotions. She says here that she has an organ that can "beat," allowing her body to survive. An object powers her body and she can be "stabbed or shot" in it, but it does not fulfill the heart's true function, which is apparently to contain "sympathy" and "sentiment." After this she assures a protesting Pip that she means this quite sincerely:
if we are to be thrown much together, you had better believe it at once. No! [...] I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing.
Estella thinks of a loving heart and of feelings as real, tangible objects. She has always been valued only for her ability to affect other people's emotions with her beauty and her pride. She cannot understand the ability to "bestow" tenderness, as it is not a "thing" she has ever had. Her heart is not a "heart" in the same way as Pip's open one is, or even Miss Havisham's broken one.
The metaphor of a body without a "heart"—which makes the reader understand just how hollow and surface-level Estella's personality has become—persists until the end of the novel. When she has suffered loss and heartache, she is able to understand what Pip's own loving heart "used to be," and to develop a heart of the only kind that matters in Great Expectations for herself.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 38
Explanation and Analysis—The Spider:
Dickens introduces a direct metaphorical reference to arachnids when the "blotchy, sprawling, sulky" Bentley Drummle enters the story. The narrator, when describing how Drummle attacks problems in Chapter 27, makes the following quip:
The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to lying in wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe.
Drummle is aligned with spiders in Great Expectations, with Dickens even going so far as to have Jaggers and Pip himself refer to Drummle as "The Spider." He is plotting, vicious, idle, and the inheritor of gray wealth; a perfect recipe for a Dickens villain. Through this use of the "spider" metaphor, Dickens indicates that this character feels no pressure to act from society, insecurity, or a lack of funds. Like the others of his "tribe," the aristocracy, he has time to kill. When "the Spider" finishes work in London and leaves, Dickens builds on the arachnid metaphor by calling Drummle's ancestral home a spider's nest:
The Spider's time with Mr. Pocket was up for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. Pocket, he went home to the family hole.
The change in letters between "home" and "hole" here is a subtle but important piece of wordplay. The family "home," given Drummle's heirship to a baronetcy, is probably a splendid manor. However, the narrator implies Pip's distaste for Drummle with this swap. Whatever the house is actually like, if it's owned by spiders, it is metaphorically more a "hole" than a home. Although Drummle does marry Estella upon the designs of Miss Havisham, whose house is already filled with the book's other "blotchy spiders," like most Dickens villains he comes to an unhappy end.
Related Themes:
