Connections and Picture

In Great Expectations, the main character and narrator Pip leaves his family to become a gentleman in London. This opportunity helped him meet new people and see London with the eyes of an innocent adolescent. But shame and guilt overwhelmed him with the thoughts of home and other things which Dickens uses as a motif. These themes along with many more relate almost directly to the book Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, a literary contemporary of Charles Dickens.

Along with being set in around the same time, Little Women and Great Expectations both start out with the narrator being an innocent young person. Jo March and Pip are both young and guilty but for different reasons, but both authors are trying to say the same thing. Jo is guilty for not being polite and not doing the dishes or cleaning the kitchen, and Pip is guilty for helping a convict and stealing his sisters pork pie. Both of theses instances are portraying the motif of guilt and trying to say that young people are still learning what is right and wrong and what they learn from when they are wrong and all of their experiences will stay with them their whole life and make them better and more intelligent adults.

In the 1800's many of the men were fighting in wars so many children were missing a father figure and had to make up for it. This is what life in the March house was like for the little women who lived there. In Great Expectations Pips parents died when he was young so he is brought up by his sister and her husband, the blacksmith, who is intellectually equivalent to Pip. With these restrictions of parental issues the characters from both books were limited to their homes and were not supported if they went off on their own. Theses confinements led to the theme of wanting to go away from and essentially wanting to be a gentleman or lady. Pip ends up going to London and feeling ashamed of his family, and Jo goes to New York because she wants Beth and Laurie to fall in love but also to get away from home for awhile.

On of the main themes in Little Women and an important idea that is satirized in Great Expectations is being a good person leads to happiness. In Little Women, the character Amy turns down Fred Vaughn when he asks her to marry him, because even though he has money she doesn't love him. Also, the girls love each other to death and would never betray any of them and they all end up very happy in the end with good lives. Alcott uses positive examples to show this theme, while Dickens uses the opposite and shows the outcomes. Pip hates his home and is condescending towards people who he thinks is lower in social stature, causing people to dislike him and make him feel like he always needs more. He also spends a lot of money, and the cliche money can't buy love applies greatly to Pip because he always seems to be missing some important personality trait that would cause him to be happier.