Beginning of Essay
Breaking Patterns of Sterility and Breaking Patterns of Abuse. Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations, attempts to delve into the Victorian gender construction. Incorporated within this persona is the struggle to break away from the cycles of generation ....

Middle of Essay
.... pain of unrequited desires. Dickens produces an image of women either devoid of femininity and impotent, or love-mad and utterly absurd. The female first described in Great Expectations is Pip’s deceased mother. Having never seen his parents he imagines his mother as "freckled and sickly" (Dickens, 3). The novel thus begins with a negative image of women and motherhood. Later Pip introduces his sister and mother substitute, Mrs. Joe Gargery describing her as harsh and unapproachable, far from the mother of Victorian fantasy. In Mrs. Joe’s marriage to Joe the typical male and female roles are reversed. This reversal is pointed out ....