Satis House Dickens

This sample essay on Satis House Dickens provides important aspects of the issue and arguments for and against as well as the needed facts. Read on this essay’s introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

Dickens uses repetition often so it makes the readers think there is a sense of danger and threat. It also causes a bit of humour because the convict keeps saying he will rip out Pip’s “heart and liver”. In the churchyard Pip meets a man called Magwitch who is a convict and Pip knows he is a convict and the readers also do because Dickens says “A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg.

A man with no hat and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied around his head. A man who ha been ‘soaked’ in water, and ‘smothered’ in mud, and ‘lamed’ by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled: and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin”.

In Dickens day if you didn’t wear a hat you were considered not to be a gentlemen and were worthless so this make Pip sense threat. Dickens uses verbs such as ‘soaked’, ‘smothered’, ‘lamed’ and ‘stung’. This is to keep the readers visualising what the convict has been through to escape. This also ties in with earlier when the convict says “I wish I was a frog or a eel!” Magwitch says this because he is soaking wet and muddy he has escaped from prison and he wishes he were an eel because he’s on the marshes and being an eel would suit him and the environment.

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 In chapter eight Dickens writes about Miss Havisham’s house in a dark and creepy manor and this sets the atmosphere for her house.

The Satis House

“It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice. And all was empty and disused. The cold wind seemed to blow colder than outside the gate; and it made a shrill noise in howling in and out at the open sides of the brewery, like the noise of the wind in the rigging of a ship at sea”. The world “shrill noise” gives the readers a unpleasant imagination of what kind of dark noise it. This makes the house sound supernatural and like it is in a world of its own. The house makes Pip feel insecure and it makes him feel like he doesn’t know himself. Also the words “ship at sea” implies that Pip is on a new voyage because he is meeting different people and going on new journeys.

In chapter eight Dickens portrays Satis house and explains how the entrance has got two chains across it, which acts as a prison. This shows that Miss Havisham has become a prisoner and has imprisoned herself in her own house. ” The great front entrance had two chains across it outside- and the first thing I noticed was that the passages were all dark”. This also ties in with chapter one because Miss Havisham has imprisoned herself and Magwitch has escaped from prison. The word ‘dark’ reveals that Miss Havisham lives in complete darkness because she has imprisoned herself from light because she has closed all the shutters and windows so the light doesn’t peer through.

Dickens later on writes bout Miss Havisham’s brewery yard in a very negative way and he implies death is all around and this ties in with chapter one and this is why the brewery yard is deserted. ” To be sure it was a deserted place”. Also the word ‘no’ is repeated often because this reveals that everything in the brewery yard is dead including animal and this is why it’s deserted. Later in Great Expectations Dickens writes about how the beer in the empty caskets had turned ‘sour’ which is a metaphor and this implies with Miss Havisham because she has also turned sour. He also writes about the garden, which he describes as a ‘rank garden’ and he also writes about how the house is “overgrown with tangled weeds”. This ties in with chapter one when Pip goes to the churchyard to his parent’s grave to visualise them and his brothers the grave stones are overgrown with tangled weeds.

“Which had a certain sour remembrance of better days lingering about them;” “Behind the farthest end of the brewery was a rank garden”. When Pip first enters Miss Havisham’s house he walks into a dark room which waiting for him is Miss Havisham. When he walks in he sees a lady’s a dressing table” and back in Dickens days if you had dressing table you were considered to be rich. “And that I made out at first to be a fine lady’s dressing table”. When Pip goes into Satis house and meets Miss Havisham he realises that she has a lady’s dressing table and that Miss Havisham herself was wearing rich materials like satin, lace and silks. The word ‘white’ is repeated a varied of times and this makes it incongruous. He also notices that she is not wearing her watch and neither her train and she only has one shoe on this gives the reader the impression Miss Havisham is half arranged.

“She was dressed in rich materials- satins and lace, and silks- all of white. For she had but one shoe on- the other had was on the table near her hand- her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on”. Dickens uses imagery of death and decay by describing Miss Havisham dress as ‘faded’ and ‘yellow’. This implies that she has also faded and lost her essence and immortality. She has also withered, and has ‘sunken eyes’ this implies she has lost the passion from her eyes and now her eyes seem to reveal a dark past. She also looked liked a ‘ghastly waxwork’, which tells us she seems alive but she is no longer living inside. Furthermore Dickens writes about how Miss Havisham is half dressed and still trapped in the past with all of her bad memories she can’t escape. Miss Havisham is stuck in a time where she doesn’t wasn’t to forget that she was gilted. Miss Havisham has stopped all the clocks because she doesn’t want to forget.

” Watch had stopped a twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine”. Miss Havisham has stopped all the clocks because she doesn’t want to forget that awful day. She wants people to know that she was gilted and its like she wants to drag everyone down with her so they can also feel her pain and misery. Miss Havisham because of this sort of inhales all of her pain and misery and thrives off it to sort of survive. ” She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasises, and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it”.

Dickens creates death imagery again by creating Miss Havisham as a dead corpse and describes everything as ‘decayed’ and which have no expression to them anymore. A shroud covers a dead body so this ties in with the death imagery. Dickens writes about how Miss Havisham looks like she is wearing ” grave-clothes or the long veil so like a shroud. So she sat, corpse-like”. Dickens writes about Miss Havisham in a very low and intimidating way. He writes about now the emotional blow from when she was gilted is like physical violence because of he appearance.

” Her chest had drooped, so that she stooped; and her voice had dropped, so that she spoke low, and with a dead lull upon her; altogether she had the appearance of having drooped, body and soul, within and without, under the weight of a crushing blow. The first time Pip meets Estelle he gets very intimidated by her and she is very sarcastic towards Pip and this makes Pip feel small. She always calls Pip ‘boy’ and this intimidates him even more even though they’re about the same age. ” But don’t loiter boy. She seemed much older than I, of course being a girl and beautiful and self-possessed; and she was a scornful of me as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a queen.

Later on again Estelle makes Pip feel really small and she intimidates him so much about his hands. This makes Pip feel insecure about his body and also this hurts him inside because he doesn’t know who he is anymore. ” I had never though of being ashamed of my own hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it”. The same as Estelle keeps on making Pip feel insecure and makes hi not sure of who he really is. Estelle treats Pip like dog and this is very humiliating for Pip. ” As if I was a dog in disgrace. I was humiliated, hurt spurned, offended, angry and sorry”. After Estelle had intimidated Pip about his hands she humiliates Pip about his background and about how he plays cards and what he calls them. He’s always been like a friend to Joe but because now Pip has been taught wrong what the cards are called he feels ashamed and embarrassed and blames Joe for it.

” They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me now, as vulgar appendages. I determined to ask Joe why he had never taught me to call those picture- cards, Jacks, which ought to be called Knaves. After this Pip is feeling even smaller and very scared. He is scared of Estelle because of the way he was brought up by his sister in a very strict and punishable way. This has made Pip feel sensitive and very vulnerable when around Estelle. ”

My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence, whoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. In a great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and sensitive. Dickens creates imaginative and passionate images of people and places by the novel being serialised. Dickens teases us by not telling us more of the story and leaving it exciting and imaginative moments. The favourite image in my mind Dickens has created for me when Pip was stood outside Satis house and entrance and it had chains across it which made it look like a prison you were trapped in. It creates and very strong and dark image in my mind and it was like I was there visualising the entrance of Satis house