GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Similarities and differences between

Pip & Matilda

PHILLIP PIRRIP

Pip seeks a better life believes he is destined for

more. Falls in love with Estella and wishes to be a

gentleman for her sake so she will marry him. Feels

isolated though he is constantly surrounded. Hides

emotions and lingers no more than needed. Has

trouble trusting, sticks to a need-to-know basis.

See’s Miss Havisham more of his mother than his

sister. Believes in himself, doesn’t change for

someone else’s sake but his own. Believes himself

as superior to others, his family & friends. Follows

no ones orders but Estella’s.

NOTES:

MATILDA PEANUT

NOTES:

Matilda’s seeks a better life, and seeks to be reunited

with her father. Strong relationship with Pip, they

connect. Fascinated by a man who her own mother

doesn’t like. Relies on people but attempts to be

independent. Keeps track of time with a calendar and

pencil, -something to keep her sane and hopeful.

Independent from her mothers strong belief in God.

Obsesses with Charles Dickens, over a writer who

speaks of unusual and independent experiences.

PIP AND MATILDA

Both Matilda and Pip lost their father’s at a similar

age, and both are raised by staunch, strict, hard

pressing women. In Matilda’s case it is her Mother

who is submerged in her religious beliefs, which

cause her outlook on the world to be an evil place.

While Pip is raised by his sister who is cold hearted

and selfish. Because of this similarity Matilda relates

to Pip at an early stage and this provides a mean for

her to fall in love with Great Expectations.

Matilda and Pip are both transformed by their emigration from their

home surroundings. This is due to their saviours “Mr. Jaggers”, a

lawyer in Pip’s case and a log in Matilda’s. Both are also

transformed by their visits to London. This transformation leads

them both to believe that they are a higher class than the ones they

were raised with. This leads them to be sucked into the one thing

they despised as youth, cold hearted and selfish. Though the world

of Pip is alien to Matilda, it often feels more relevant to her than the

traditions and beliefs which her devoutly Christian mother tries to

instil in her. Complex family trees and abstract ideas about God and

the devil hold little interest for Matilda. Instead, she feels kinship

with Pip, this other child who doesn’t know his father and is

struggling to find his place in the world.

Through Pip’s eventful experiences, Matilda gains

new perspectives and frameworks with which to

understand and evaluate the increasingly difficult

circumstances of her own life. The power of

Dickens’s story illuminates both the familiar and the

changing aspects of Matilda’s life in a new way. The

character of Miss Havisham offers her new insight

into her mother’s feelings, the concept of a

‘gentleman’ informs the way she understands Mr

Watts’s actions, and Pip’s behaviour challenges her

notions of identity, loyalty and the person she wants

to become.

MATILDA’S QUOTE:

“As we progressed through the book something happened to

me. At some point I felt myself enter the story. I hadn’t been

assigned a part – nothing like that; I wasn’t identifiable on the

page, but I was there. I was definitely there. I knew that

orphaned white kid and that small, fragile place he squeezed

into between his awful sister and lovable Joe Gargery because

the same space came to exist between Mr Watts and my mum.

And I knew I would have to choose between the two. “

DOLORES & HAVISHAM

Both novels feature a mother figure who tries to use a

'daughter' to get revenge on a man. Miss Havisham due to

her groom ditching her on the day of the wedding. And

Dolores because the ‘white men’ took her husband.  Both

mother figures die by violence.  Miss Havisham dies from

the burns she suffered when her wedding dress caught fire

while Matilda's mother is the cause of her village's

destruction by fire.

In both cases, each women brings about tragedy

through their own stubborn behavior.  Matilda's mother

and Miss Havisham share the same character. Both

novels feature education throughout many chapters

and in both education will alienate the protagonists

from family members they love.  Both feature

protagonists who must conceal the identity of a strange

man who wants to help them.  Both feature an attempt

to escape the authorities by boat in their closing

chapters and both attempts end with the same result. 

MATILDA’S OBSESSION

Matilda strongly identifies with pip, both trapped

under a mother like figure, both without a father.

Their in their “own world” unable to escape with

little knowledge of the ‘outside world’, looking for a

way to escape. They both get along with people no

on else is really that fond of –Miss Havisham, Mr

Watts-.

MISTER PIP

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

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