term, the Jungian process of individuation and elements of Lacanian psychological
development. These elements will be illustrated by using characters within the novel.
Bildungsroman is, most generally, the story of a single individual's growth and development
within the context of a defined social order. The growth process, at its roots a quest story, can
be described as both an apprenticeship to life and a search for meaningful existence within
long, arduous, and gradual, consisting of repeated clashes between the protagonist's needs
the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is then
accommodated into society. The novel ends with an assessment by the protagonist of himself
and his new place in that society.
The individuation process means the realization and integration of all the immanent
possibilities of the individual. It seems to be opposed to any kind of conformity with the
collective, and it even demands the rejection of conventional attitudes with which most
people would like to live.Individuation offers the possibility that everyone can have his/hers own direction, hers/hisspecial purpose, and it can attach a sense of value to the lives of those who suffer from the
feeling that they are unable to measure up to collective norms and collective ideals. To those
who are not recognized by the collective, who are rejected and even despised, this process
offers the potentiality of restoring faith and dignity and assures them of their place in the
Jungian individuation and the Lacanian movement from imaginary to symbolic order could
be considered as a later form of the stages of the bildungsroman model. Thus clearly having a
link between origins, identity and the creation of the self.Great Expectations can be
considered to be a direct descendant of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, the prototypical
Bildungsroman. It is one of the dark novels of Dickens later period. It has a dreamlike quality
making it a fitting illustration of the Jungian individuation process which is usually clinically
analysed using the dreams and fantasies of a client. As with David Copperfield, the novel is
written in the first person, from the point of a young boy called Pip. He like David is an
orphan but he is raised by a harsh elder sister and her childlike husband Joe Gargery. Pip`s
youth is filled with severe challenges and terrors but the things that terrify him are not that
different from the ordeals of early adult hood. The oppressed and lonely child remains
oppressed and lonely even as an adult, and that he inflicts upon others the very wrongs he
suffers.
Pip`s origins cause him to see a solution through expectations that are materialistic and h3e
learns how to convert people into things and how to elevate things to the status of people.
Dickens identifies this with an imagery of darkness or with ominous situations in which
humans are repressed, rigidified or reduced to the mechanical. Van Ghent (1953 p 128-130)
clearly links the relationship here between personal and social guilt. And Lindsey (1960 p 60-
79) states “Behind all the hopes of rising in the world, Dickens insists, there lies a murder of
love, a degradation of human relationships”
As the novel opens Pip is seized by a convict in the graveyard where his parents are buried.
The seizure marks the end of childhood innocence; it coincides with his “first most vivid and
broad impression of the identity of things”( Dickens p 3) of his aloneness in the world and
converts it into latent self discovery. Magwitch his new “father figure “seems to rise again
from his father’s grave to confront his son. Ironically that Magwitch is the real father of
Estella whom Pip will later want to marry. His revulsion for Magwitch is always connected
with his obsessive desire for Estella and it seems relevant too, that Miss Havisham is both a
virginal foster mother for Estella and Pip, and that Pip and his “mother” are burned by the
same fire.
The opening scene and its future ironies contain the seed of later conflicts a young boy,
faced with another’s needs wants to avoid the stigma of irons and prison ships. At first his
better nature wins out since he signals to the convict that he has not betrayed him. However
he soon forgets his compassion and only a sense of guilt remains. He is troubled about
keeping a secret from Joe when his sister is beaten by the leg iron of the second convict. And
feels implicated in the attack. At the same time he wants Joe`s confidence at any cost: he is
ashamed now of his kindness to the convict and more than anything he wants a kiss from
Estella which is rewarded for his success at fighting Herbert. These subtle touches show the
origins at the beginning of Pips life forecast his later recognition of his unworthiness.
Pip`s year at Miss Havishams distorts his values and exalts his sense of personal worth. He
no longer feels content with his original home which now seems “common and coarse.”
(Dickens p 120) and his apprenticeship seems catastrophic as if a thick curtain had fallen on
his life shutting him out from Estella and from “anything save dull endurance anymore” (
Dickens p 121) Then Pip is told he is to receive assistance that will be removed from his
present sphere of life and from this place to be “brought up as a gentleman-in a word, as a
young fellow of great expectations” (Dickens p 138)
Pip has already been seized by Magwitch on the marsh: he has suffered punishment at the
hand of his unjust sister and has served as a plaything for Miss Havisham. Now he comes to
London at the heart of city life stands another ominous father figure the lawyer Mr
Jaggers.Though he has exchanged his poor clothes for an elaborate wardrobe and a new
social existence there is no real increase in his freedom.While at Miss Havisham`s Pip had
had an insight by “an alarming fancy that Estella and he might begin to decay”. (Dickens p
45)This is just as true in Jaggers world of London .Growth and the formation of an identity
could only begin when Pip has seen off the challenges of the parental figures dominating his
situation and future.
In Lacanian development psychology no individual can move from the imaginary order to
the symbolic order until they have a clear sense of self. At this point an individual sees
themselves as a social being in the true sense. Christopher Morris argues (p 21) that Pip`s
preoccupation with names, with allusions to legends literature (the Hamlet chapter) and with
the way people read literature all points to Pip`s lack of an autonomous self. In Jungian terms
it could be argued that he has not yet integrated his shadow and similarly has not developed
clear sense of self. This only comes after facing an ordeal.
The growth in Pip is accomplished gradually, in the form of an ordeal. He decides to hide
Magwitch from the legal authorities, until he can smuggle him out of the country. In this way
he is thrown into close contact with the man, first in his rooms then on the trip together down
the Thames, and finally during his last days in the prison. During the same period Pip is
almost murdered by the brutal Orlick, his hands are burned as he attempts to rescue Miss
Havisham, and his strength is consumed by a raging fever. This process of personality growth
is an atonement process, one which melts away both the repulsion within him and the rigid,
heavy bonds imposed by society, which weigh so heavily upon his “father”:
.”For now my repugnance to him had all melted away, and in the hunted, wounded, shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor......... (Dickens p 443)
Pip experiences insight into the formation of his own personality and experiences a new sense
of self:
“I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to Joe” (Dickens p 443)
With Magwitch`s vulnerability established, Pip is able to acknowledge his actual worth.
Abandoning his gentleman’s role, he stands beside him through the final ordeal. There is
even a scene in the court, when Magwitch is sentenced with other prisoners of a spiritual
redemption using a metaphor of light against darkness, which informs their whole
relationship
“ The sun was striking in at the great window of the court...and it made a broad shaft of light between the prisoners and the judge, linking both together....Rising for a moment, a distinct speck of face in this way of light.”...... ( Dickens p 457)
In the last hour of his life Magwitch gives Pip a blessing and thanks him for his belated faith.
Then as if to complete his atonement Pip develops a fever to seemingly assuage his guilt.
When he recovers he finds himself in the care of Joe Margery. He sees himself as a child
again. His Great expectations have dissolved “like...marsh mist before the sun”: (Dickens p
468) but he has made peace with his “father”, atoned for his errors, and arrived at real
humility. To Joe and his new wife Biddy he asks to be received like a forgiven child.
With his old friend Herbert who he fought and defeated and once considered impractical, he
enters into a business partnership and though he thinks at his friend’s loss of inaptitude he
now reflects “that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all but had been in me2.
This is a classic Jungian insight of seeing the problems of the self initially in others.
With Miss Havisham, the process of formation of the self works both ways. Before her death,
which precedes that of Magwitch Pip is able to show her that “in shutting out the light of
day...she has secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences, that her mind brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do...that reverse the appointed order of their Maker”.....(Dickens p 398)
Miss Havisham admits her mistreatment of herself Pip and others. She forgives Estella part of
whose “right nature” she also denied. For her heartless misconduct. A short time later, when
her clothes catch fire, Pip wraps the burning woman in the rotten cloth of the banquet table,
and is himself caught up in the fire as the sign of his complicity in her guilt and need for
purification. They are both tried by fire and Pip reaches a brief moment of grace when he
Each stage in Pips growth is dominated by parental figures who seem awesome or
foreboding; the brutish Magwitch, shivering on the marsh; the harsh elder sister dominating
the home, the grim spinster in her gloomy mansion, the ubiquitous lawyer, Jaggers, with his
hands plunged into the London crime scene, and then Magwitch again and the weird flight
down the Thames to prevent his capture. These parental figures are grotesque almost gothic
in effect and power that confront Pip like the dreams of the individuation process. Without
confronting or integrating them no sense of self becomes possible. These external scenes and
figures reflect some deeper psychological pattern.
This pattern is one of guilt, inadequacy and basic insecurity. With Magwitch Pip is the
excluded orphan whom his sister barely tolerates, with Miss Havisham he is the willing
vulnerable dupe of the heartless Estella, with a dehumanised Jaggers he is the social snob
who has lost his sense of humanity; and finally with the returned Magwitch he is the “guilty
son” who makes right his wrong doings through external ordeal. Thus at every stage,
exclusion, frustration, snobbery and expiation –his feelings are made real and concrete,
through macabre gothic scenes and images; like David Copperfield he seems to live his life in
Gothic dreams and images. “Without the of benefit Freud or Jung”, comments Dorothy Van
Ghent, “Dickens saw the human soul reduced literally to the images occupying its inner life”
(Van Ghent p 131)
It is only when Pip sees the reality of human limitations and understands the feelings that
they create that a clear sense of his self identity is seen. This happens between Pip and
Magwitch as the book ends and for Pip and Estella during the original closing lines. Here the
three characters develop a true understanding of the origins, identity and the formation of
their respective selves.
Biliography
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations Penguin classics London 1996
Dorothy van Ghent, `On Great Expectations` The English Novel Form and Function New
York Rinehart 1953
Carl Jung Man and His Symbols Random House Canada 1968
Jack Lindsay Charles Dickens; a biographical and Critical Study London Dackers 1950
Christopher Morris Lacanian Psychotherapy Inner city Books Oxford 1998
Roger D Sell, Great Expectations Contemporary Critical essays Macmillan London 1994
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