Setting

Setting

1. Setting

   • Weather
     • The weather usually represents the mood of the scene
       • Mist
         • "once more, the mists were rising as I walked away. If they disclosed to me, as I suspect they did, that I should never come back, and that Biddy was quite right, all I can say is—they were quite right, too" (35.61).
           • Contraversily the mist reveals a truth instead of making Pip's path difficult to see much like the darkness, this different association could be to further emphasize Pip's struggle to understand the truth in the novel
         • For Pip, the mists do not roll in, but rise instead to show him the world he is about to leave behind in all its raw clarity, becoming solid and emblematic in the village finger-post he touches. Dickens echoes the sudden realization on Pip's part of leaving his innocence and youth to go on to something “so unknown and great" with a very real, tactile encounter with the finger-post and, of course, the rising of the mists - pathetic fallacy
     • Dickens mentions “the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing," creating a chaotic image of nature. Dickens, in this passage, uses weather to reveal the mental and emotional state of the protagonist. The scene where Magwitch reveals himself to be Pip's benefactor begins with a description that foreshadows Pip's stormy and muddled emotional state: “It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets."

2. The Marshes - within the marshes there are a range of setting

   • Three Jolly Bargeman pub
   • Cementry
     • The negative connotations of this area allow us to sympahtesise with Pip
   • Satis House
     • Leads to Pip's ambition for wealth and higher class
       • Social position and class closely relates to where you live
   • The forge
     • This is Pip's home, where he is cared for
   • When discussing the marshland with Joe, Jaggers uses “solitary" and “lonely" several times. However, several images presented by Jaggers contradict the idea of the marshland's isolated existence.
     • "Most marshes is solitary," said Joe. [p. 58]
     • Jaggers's description of the “lonely church" seems to contradict the fact that it has many “graves round it" where the dead residents of the marshland forever accompany the little church.
     • Wearing a “broad-brimmed travelller's hat" Jaggers's presence conflicts with the idea of the marshland's solitary and “unfrequented" nature. His knowledge of the location of the church also conflicts with his tourist image.

3. London

   • We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty. (20.2)
     • And one of the first things he sees is the public yard where criminals are whipped, punished, or hanged for anyone to see. In fact, his first tour guide tells him to come back in a few days so that he can watch the execution of four men. Mr. Jaggers' office is right next to Newgate Prison, and Pip encounters a long line of criminals and their families waiting to speak to Mr. Jaggers.
   • A frowzy mourning of soot and smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard, and it had strewn ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance and humiliation as a mere dust-hole.
     • Mr. Wemmick assumes Pip's shock is happiness at finding an inn that resembles the country life (due to all of the grime), but in Pip's mind, the Blue Boar (his hometown inn) is like a palace by comparison.