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Great Expectations The fairy tale

 

            In Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, the main character is Philip Pirrip (Pip). Pip is an orphan, living in his sister's house along with her husband Joe Gargery, the Blacksmith. He lives a poor life but he is happy. Pip starts living a life that very much resembles a fairy tale. Through out the course of the novel, Pip meets characters who appear to be from a fantasy. He meets a reclusive fairy godmother, an ogre-like convict, and a beautiful princess. Upon meeting these characters, he puts himself in the role of the frog that becomes a prince, but towards the end of the novel, he realizes that they are the opposite of what he thought they were.
             Pip thinks that Miss Havisham is the fairy godmother and his benefactor but by the end of the novel he realizes that she is the evil ogre. According to Pip Miss Havisham is an immensely rich and grim lady who is living in a large house and led a lie of seclusion. She looks like a lady form another world. "In an arm chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see-1. Miss Havisham had paid Pip a premium of twenty-five guineas for going there. "The boy has been a good boy here, and that is this reward.""2 She looks like a fairy godmother to him since then. "She is making her crutch stick play round me, as if she, the fairy godmother who had changed me, were bestowing the finishing gift.""3 Miss Havisham brought up Estella to take revenge on all the males. "The girl's hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak vengeance on all the male sex.""4 She is cold and cruel. "I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.""5 Miss Havisham realizes that she has hurt Pip by using Estella to take revenge. "Until you spoke to her the other day and until I saw in you a looking glass that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not know what I have done.


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