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The folk psychology concept (Bruner) would, in our case, amount to normalizing
the behavior of the grotesque characters in terms of the Victorian middle class morality.
1
This work was supported by CNCSISUEFISCSU, project number PNII IDEI 1223/2008.
Partial Answers 9/2: 347361 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press
Pip does not reveal his sisters first name. She is always addressed as
Mrs. Joe Gargery or Mrs. Joe, her Christian name is annulled as is her
femininity by the image of the pins and needles thrust in her impregnable bib. Her imperviously aggressive attitude to her brother and to her
husband, the latter physically strong yet apparently weak in character,
seems to be associated with her psychotic belief that she is actually the
victim of both, which is emblematized by her compulsive display of her
coarse apron. Whenever she becomes enraged for being opposed by either Joe or Pip (the reasons for her furies are usually unpredictable), she
turns on her allegedly aggressors and viciously attacks them while using,
in her furious torrents of words, the apron and the duster, the symbolical
objects of a housewife, as weapons of enslaved womanhood.
Pip does not seem to have the ability to understand his sisters frustrations, such as having married beneath her (her predicament had made
this her only marriage option), and having to do the housework herself,
without the help of a servant. He does not in fact understand any of the
women he observes (Miss Havisham, Estella, Molly, Biddy); he tends to
perceive them as mysterious creatures and to misinterpret their desires,
misfortunes, or griefs. Dickenss own filial and marital problems may
have underwritten Pips failure in understanding the women in his life
(Barzilai 93; Phyllis 481521).
Though Dickens held progressive views on better pay for womens
work, on their access to education, and on marriage and divorce settlements, his attitude to a womans place was conservative: she should
leave the public sphere to men and be content with remaining in the private sphere; she should be the image of home, peace and happiness (Oliver Twist 29), a Home Goddess (Our Mutual Friend 2). Mrs. Gargery
may be a good housewife but not the angel of the house: she is dictatorial, abusive, and constantly complaining, and she crosses the line
between the private and the public when she proposes to take control of
Pips new opportunities in life. She craves to be the center of attention. If
by creating the character of Stephen Blackpools drunken wife in Hard
Times Dickens aimed to draw attention to the difficulties in obtaining
legal separation from ones wife, his portrayal of Mrs. Joe Gargery, six
years later, may have been an indirect comment on the spreading feminist views. Mrs. Joes truculence may be a satire on the call on women
to oppose the patriarchal power of men in the house and to struggle for
more rights. The result of the inversion of roles in Mrs. Joes house is
an unnaturally aggressive milieu of the protagonists early childhood.
Nineteenth-century readers were likely to see Mrs. Gargery as a comic
character, incarnating what was seen at the time, from the male perspective, as inappropriate domestic power struggle.
Frances Power Cobbe, a feminist activist in the 1850s and 1860s,
made public various cases of womens aggressive resistance (nagging,
acts of disobedience, etc.), even on trivial matters, to the purse-or-stick
power wielded by men, masters of the house, claiming that the relationship between husband and wife was in many cases comparable to the
one between master and slave (Jackson 9). In the Gargery household the
vectors of control are reversed: Mrs. Joe manages her husbands earnings
and makes plenty use of Tickler, yet she refers to herself as a slave
with the apron never off (Dickens 1985: 51).
The famous dinner scene, during which Pip is trying hard to hide his
share of bread, which he intends to give to the convict, starts with the
description of Mrs. Joes ritualistic cutting of the bread: she jammed the
loaf hard and fast against her bib where it sometimes got a pin into it,
and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our mouths (42).
The pins and needles of Mrs. Joes bib are not only symbols of her female
status but also symbolic weapons. Later that night, displeased with Joe
for a trifle, she takes him by the whiskers, and knock[s] his head for a
little while against the wall behind him (43). Her aggressiveness is answered with utter meekness by Joe, who looks at her in a helpless way;
then [takes] a helpless bite, and look[s] at [Pip] again (ibid). Though Joe
is apparently meant to look like a victim, he seems to be impervious to
his wifes moods, his apparent dread of her being described as comic or
passive. Joes unresponsiveness makes Mrs. Joe even more furious and,
therefore, even more grotesque and ridiculous.
Yet though Mrs. Joe is intended to be a comic character, her portrayal
reveals a tragic dimension which is associated with narcissism. Contrary
to the general critical belief that Miss Havisham is the narcissist in the
novel, I shall argue that Mrs. Joe too displays symptoms of narcissistic
personality disorder.
According to Elsa F. Ronningstam, a psychotic narcissist shows contempt and depreciation of others, lacks empathy and understanding, is
egotistical, craves to be the center of attention, becomes enraged for unreasonable causes and, whenever cross, becomes authoritarian and aggressive (12). Mrs. Joe despises both her brother and her husband: she
calls the former a monkey (1985: 41) and the latter a staring great
stuck pig (43). When at the Christmas dinner scene others allude to
Pip as a four-footed Squeaker, a Swine (58), Mrs. Joe consents. She
seems to have no womanly feelings of love or pity as she describes Pips
illnesses and tumbling during his infancy almost as criminal acts (59).
Her politeness towards the people who do not belong to her household
lasts as long as she is praised or addressed as the central figure in the conversation. In her uttermost egocentricity, she opposes her husbands education for fear [he] might rise (79). She is authoritarian and becomes
aggressive for no reason: following the capture of the convicts, when the
whole company returns home, she clutches Pip as a slumberous offence
to the companys eyesight, and takes him up to bed with such a strong
hand that [he] seemed to have fifty boots on and be dangling them all
against the edges of the stairs (73). The news we keep hearing of her
is that she is on the Rampage (40). The scene preceding her attack by
Orlick, where Mrs. Joe forces herself to become blindly furious by regular stages (142) is an iterative one: Here my sister, after a fit of clappings and screamings, beat her cap off, and pulled her hair down which
were the last stages of her road to frenzy (142). She becomes a perfect
Fury and a complete success (142). Her rampaging is deliberate and
induced by her wish of always having the upper hand.
Mrs. Joe is narcissistically concerned by the way she looks when she
has guests or goes to town. She likes to draw attention by showing off
the spotless cleanliness in the house and by wearing ostentatious clothes
or carrying unnecessary articles of property, when she goes out a
very large beaver bonnet, . . . a basket like the Great Seal of England in
plaited straw, a pair of patterns, a spare shawl, and an umbrella despite
its being a fine bright day (127).
As a result Mrs. Joe emerges not merely as a functional grotesque figure but as a person whose narcissism points to psychological depth in
Dickenss portrayal of secondary characters. Her grotesque rampaging
is replaced by meek behavior after the criminals attack. One may choose
to see that as a comic punishment for her improper behavior, or else as a
morbid return to the bliss of the Victorian patriarchal family in which the
wife is gracious and silenced. Yet one may go a step further and read her
inability to speak, her partial paralysis and impaired sight and hearing after
the blow on the head as Dickenss depriving her of the abused instruments
of her former power: physical violence has turned into physical immobility while psychological aggression has caused her becoming mute. Her
dearest desire is to share the company of the aggressor, Orlick, to watch
him, to conciliate him (151). This behavioral twist goes beyond the
symbolism of misconduct and punishment, into the psychological realm:
it is a regression to a childhood stage reminiscent of Lacans Imaginary
order. In her relation to Orlick, Mrs. Joe displays the bearing of a child
towards a hard master (151) reduced to infantilism, she is forced back
to the childs neediness and is able only to express needs (for food, drink,
people to see) and to communicate to the outside world through a few
sounds. The order in her house is restored with the coming of young Biddy
who takes over the chores and looks after the disabled mistress.2
2
This is the ideal order that Dickens himself had in his own house when his wife became incapacitated after ten births and several miscarriages and her sister Georgina Hogarth
moved to the Dickenses and became, as Biddy is called in the novel, a blessing in the
household (150).
Mrs. Gargerys connection with the real world is almost cut off: from
time to time she would put her hands to her head, and would then remain
for about a week . . . in some gloomy aberration of mind (150). The aberration, however, may be read as continuing some disorder of mind
that existed before Orlick hit her. After that catastrophe, just like before
it, Mrs. Joe craves for everybodys attention and, desperately clinging to
people and objects, still manages to create a world in which she holds
the central place. She is now spared the hateful daily house chores; she
is well looked after never left alone now (154); she is surrounded
by all the attention she presumably lacked when she was healthy. As a
victim, she enjoys everyones compassion. Her narcissism moves from
the psychotic form to a more passive shy one, complete with shame
reactions, modesty, humility, yearning and ability to wait (Ronningstam
104105). Pip sees an air of humble propitiation in all she does (1985:
151); her mood is positive: she laughed and nodded her head a great
many times (170). Before she dies, she has her arms put round Joes
neck and miraculously manages to utter the words Joe, Pardon, and
Pip (302). Her wish to see Orlick daily, her enjoyment of the company
of the people whom she had victimized, and her eagerness to be reconciled with them may be read in moral terms, as repentance; but this
conduct can also be read in psychological terms as a Narcissistic attempt
to embrace, through the others, her ideal self, the object of her real love.
***
A similar case of a characters struggle for an ideal self at the expense
of the real one is Miss Havisham. Since the serialized publication of the
novel Miss Havisham has intrigued critics and readers alike. This character defies categorization. Is she insane, sadistic or merely cold-hearted
and utterly calculated? Is she a victim turned victimizer or a woman who
becomes aggressive through self-victimization? Her famous portrait at
the beginning of the novel seems to be cut out from a parallel reality:
She was dressed in rich materials satins, and lace, and silks all of
white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent
from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was
white. Some jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other
jewels were sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress
she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite
finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on the other was on the table
near her hand her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were
not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with
her handkerchief and gloves, and a prayer-book, all confusedly heaped
about the looking-glass. (87)
definition of love (blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole
world), which she utters in a hurried, passionate whisper. The desire
for love pitted against the desire for revenge creates the victim-aggressor
duality, which overlaps with the narcissistic pattern. It is always the other
side, the other image of her ego that Miss Havisham continually misses.
This also accounts for her failure in achieving either of her goals: to be
loved and to be avenged.
Miss Havishams externalizing some of the self-love on to other objects, which, according to Juliet Mitchell, is responsible for the psychotic
form of the narcissistic personality, is also relevant in the Havisham-Estella relationship. In her essay, Spiders, Spinners, and Spinsters: Dickenss Great Expectations, Shuli Barzilai dwells on Ovids story of the
woman metamorphosed into a spider and discusses Miss Havisham as
both spider and spinner, weaving the web in which Estella and Pip get
entangled (8597). The bond between Miss Havisham and Estella can,
therefore, be metaphorically read as a spider-prey bondage, in which the
spider, Miss Havisham, reveals cannibalistic drives (94). The aggressive dimension of Miss Havishams personality is thus heightened by the
overtones of the myth of Arachne.
My reading of the Havisham-Estella relationship also takes into account the less famous aspect of the Narcissuss story, the Narcissus-Echo
link. In love with Narcissus, Echo is unable to connect to him because
of his fascination with his self and because of her inability to express
herself in words, the consequence of Junos curse upon her. Echo ends
up being no more than the repetition of words provided by Narcissus
(Segal 17071). Similarly, Estella repeats Miss Havishams teachings,
though turning the tables on her:
So proud, so proud! moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her grey
hair with both her hands.
Who taught me to be proud? returned Estella. Who praised me
when I learned my lesson?
So hard, so hard! moaned Miss Havisham, with her former action.
Who taught me to be hard? returned Estella. Who praised me when
I learned my lesson? (323)
The above passage may also serve to illustrate Julia Kristevas description of mother-child relationship as subject and object and subject-object reversal, guaranteeing and mirroring each other (43). According to
her, the child directs to its mother not only the drive for survival, but
also its mimetic aspirations. Dickens shows Estella echoing her adopted
mothers aspirations, both verbally and in shaping her own emotions.
In the Echo-Narcissus story, in which both Echo and Narcissus are victims, Echo is considered to be a less vulnerable survivor compared to
Narcissus. Like Echo, Estella manages to survive in spite of her early
experience; Miss Havisham perishes, symbolically, in the fire. Yet, Miss
Havishams ultimate repentance (write under my name I forgive her,
410) gives her a tragic touch.
***
The third grotesque female character in the novel is, obviously, Molly,
Jaggerss housekeeper, Magwitchs wife and Estellas biological mother. Introduced as a dangerous and mysterious woman, Molly bears the
typical name of a tramp.3 She is actually a tramp, and a murderess, who
started to work in Jaggerss house after being acquitted of a murder she
had indeed committed. Moreover, she has given up her three-year old
daughter for adoption apparently with no regrets. Is this the reason why
she never looks for or asks about her? Will she ever be interested in
her whereabouts or meet her during her life? When the novel ends, both
Estellas biological father and her surrogate mother die. As Estella has
inherited Miss Havishams money, she must have also inherited Jaggers
as her attorney and financial executor. Is it likely that she will meet her
mother one day and find out about her origins?
Molly is a handsome woman who had some gypsy blood in her
(405), a wild beast, who murdered an older, larger, and stronger woman out of jealousy and was close to destroying her own child in order to
punish her man for his infidelities. When young, Molly most probably
haunted the dockyard slums (she lived in Gerrard Street), where fighting between women was an ordinary event, against the background of
prostitution and violence.
In his description of London in the decade between 1860 and 1870,
the French historian Hippolyte Taine includes a passage about the London docks, in which he mentions the following form of entertainment:
Three times in ten minutes I saw crowds collect round the doorways, attracted by fights, especially by fights between women. One of them, her
The name Molly is also found in popular songs about poor and pretty women who
accept and grant favors easily.
3
face covered with blood, tears in her eyes, drunk, was trying to fly at a man
while the mob watched and laughed. (Pearsall 284)
Gerrard Street where Dickens places young Molly (1985: 405) was also
known for its brothels and prostitutes (Pearsall 288). Molly had been
living there with Magwitch over the broomstick (405), a mark of their
marginal social status. Her fighting another woman was not extraordinary, what was extraordinary was its ending in the other womans being
killed and Jaggerss bid for fame in getting Molly acquitted.
Young Molly is therefore described as a perfect fury in point of jealousy (405). Though belonging to a lower social class than Mrs. Joe
Gargery, Molly could be compared with her in terms of wild rages,
fits of fury. Like Mrs. Gargery, she is tamed, not by a hard blow on
her head, but by blackmail. She is acquitted and allowed to live, due to
Jaggerss brilliant, but dishonest defense, on condition that she gives up
her daughter and restrains her wild nature. In Jaggerss power and under
his spell (he kept down her violent nature whenever he saw an inkling
of its breaking out, by asserting his power over her in the old way, 425),
she becomes a wild beast tamed (404). Yet, does she indeed? Could she
really overcome her violent nature only because Jaggers holds her in his
power? And what is it that may tie her to Jaggers forever?
In his essay Fictional License: The Case of (and in) Great Expectations, Randall Craig claims that Mollys submission to Jaggers after
acquittal is due to his constant reminding her that she owes everything to
him and that she, like his other female clients, have sold themselves to
him soul and body (11617). This is what Molly also seemed to have
done for terror of death (as Jaggers claims, 425), out of the instinct of
survival. Contrary to Jaggerss belief that passion and the terror of death
had a little shaken the womans intellects and that when she was set at
liberty, she was scared out of the ways of the world and went to him to
be sheltered (425), Mollys acceptance of her subjected role in Jaggerss
house may be read through the Narcissus-Echo myth as well. Jaggerss
narcissistic self-hugging personality needs the support of a mirroring image, an image that would remind him of his God-like power over peoples fates and would give him the strength to continue.
According to Virginia Woolf, women have served all these centuries
as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size (35). Therefore, the larger
the mans size, the smaller in stature the woman becomes. In our case,
Mollys submissiveness (she kept her eyes attentively on my guardian,
she would remove her hands from any dish she put before him, hesitat-
ingly, as if she dreaded his calling her back and wanted him to speak
when she was nigh, if he had anything to say, 1985: 235) is the mirror
which Jaggers needs for constant reassurance of his being the Master, of
his domineering attitude which creates an enlarged patriarchal image of
himself. As Pip perceptively notices, Jaggers was very much aware of
Mollys submissive, yet tentative attitude towards him, as there was in
his manner a consciousness of this, and a purpose of always holding her
in suspense (235).
Jaggers makes plenty use of his dominant image both at his office
(he bullies people around, scares them off) and at home where he treats
Molly as if she were a tamed animal. Against her will, Jaggers clapped
his large hand on the housekeepers, like a trap (236) and ordered her
to show both her wrists to his young visitors. Her pleas to be left alone
(Master, Dont, Please, 236) are met with stubborn refusal until
Jaggers considers that the show was over: Thatll do, Molly, said Mr.
Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; you have been admired, and can go
(237). Jaggers addresses Molly as if she were a trained tamed beast used
to entertain people. Yet, even if she is reduced to a lesser human, to Pip
she has not lost the aura of a monster and witch:
I cannot say whether any diseased affection of the heart caused her lips to
be parted as if she were panting, and her face to bear a curious expression
of suddenness and flutter; but I know that I had been to see Macbeth at the
theatre, a night or two before, and that her face looked to me as if it were
all disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches
caldron. (235)
Molly is the other facet of Miss Havisham. The difference between them
lies in the distinction between the social classes they belong to. If the financial situation had been reversed, they would have very well fitted into
each others models. Missing a partner to reflect and be reflected by, Miss
Havisham needs the looking glass to mirror the other that completes her
ego. In the Molly-Jaggers relationship, Molly serves as the speculum for
her masters conflated ego just as the master is a constant reflection of the
consequences of Mollys wild nature. As Jaggerss slave, Molly is the extension of his Narcissistic personality. In their master-slave relation, the
strong ties that connect them reveal a more or less subconscious recognition of each other in a mutual reflection of their personalities of subject
and object into each other. They are both the subject and the object of the
other. Yet, the balance of their relationship is rather delicate. As a matter
of fact, it may be held under control as long as Molly is kept silent (as
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