On the bicentenary of his birth, this short account of the emotional life of Charles Dickens examines his relationships with some of the women to whom he was closest. They include the mother who failed to recognise his early promise; the young woman who spurned him before he was famous; the wife he cast aside in middle age; the benefactress for whom he managed a house for 'fallen women'; and the actress, less than half his age, with whom he spent his final years. Each woman casts light on a different aspect of Dickens's personality. But they were united by a common theme: whatever they gave him, it was rarely enough to satisfy Dickens's sense of entitlement.

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2 (B), University of Frankfurt (Main) (Institute for England - und American Studies), course: Charles Dickens - Great Expectatoins, language: English, abstract: 1. Introduction Charles Dickens' novel "Great Expectations" as a Bildungsroman or gothic novel depicts the growth of a young boy from low social class origin to an adult gentleman containing the struggles with women, employers and relatives. The main character Philip 'Pip' Pirrip introduces the reader to the novel as a young boy from about six years, although Pip indeed wrote down the story of his life as an adult. Pip has always dreamt of becoming well-educated and of being introduced to a higher social class than he actually belonged to at first. Fortunately, Pip is granted the chance of social rising and he gets to know a lot of people who influence him and his great expectations from his early youth crucially. In Victorian times women and men were regarded to be different in their nature but never-theless complementary. Women should be a guideline for their husbands in moral and reli-gious questions. When the husbands were at home they were protected from "destructive tendencies of the market" (Farrell). In "Great Expectations" it is not easy to find one woman who fits into this ideal. Especially the three main female characters are rather de-structive than protective for men. However, throughout the novel Pip is confronted with several women of different calibre, from shrewd and hysterical, cold-hearted and distant to caring and loveable. On the follow-ing pages I am going to introduce and characterise the three main female characters who influence Pip's life the most: his sister Mrs. Joe Gargery, Mrs. Havisham and Estella. Of course Pip gets to know more women, but since they play only a more or less minor role in his life, I am not going to put them under consideration. After having descr

Dickens, of course, had to accept the conventions of his time. Clearly the Victorian problem - which was man's problem as much as it was woman's - was that of bringing the ideal woman and the libidinal woman together. It is obvious, argues Holbrook, that Dickens idealized the father-daughter relationship, and indeed, any such relationship that was unsexual, like that of Tom Pinch and his sister, but why? And why, for example, is the image of woman so often associated with death, as in Great Expectations? Dickens's own struggles over relationships with women have been documented, but much less has been said about the unconscious elements behind these problems.

A captivating portrait of some of Charles DickensOCO most memorable female characters presented by popular actress Miriam Margolyes to accompany her hugely successful one-woman show touring the world in 2012. In his novels Dickens presents a series of unrivalled portraits of women, young and old. From Little Nell to Miss Havisham, these girls and women speak to us today, making us laugh and sometimes cry. The popular British actress Miriam Margolyes will be touring the world in 2012, the bicentenary of Dickens birth, with a one-woman show about DickensOCO women, and this book accompanies the show by building on the script and expanding to include many more of the female characters Dickens described and analysed so astutely in his novels. ?Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury.OCO"

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2 (B), University of Frankfurt (Main) (Institute for England - und American Studies), course: Charles Dickens - Great Expectatoins, language: English, abstract: 1. Introduction Charles Dickens’ novel „Great Expectations“ as a Bildungsroman or gothic novel depicts the growth of a young boy from low social class origin to an adult gentleman containing the struggles with women, employers and relatives. The main character Philip ‘Pip’ Pirrip introduces the reader to the novel as a young boy from about six years, although Pip indeed wrote down the story of his life as an adult. Pip has always dreamt of becoming well-educated and of being introduced to a higher social class than he actually belonged to at first. Fortunately, Pip is granted the chance of social rising and he gets to know a lot of people who influence him and his great expectations from his early youth crucially. In Victorian times women and men were regarded to be different in their nature but never-theless complementary. Women should be a guideline for their husbands in moral and reli-gious questions. When the husbands were at home they were protected from “destructive tendencies of the market” (Farrell). In “Great Expectations” it is not easy to find one woman who fits into this ideal. Especially the three main female characters are rather de-structive than protective for men. However, throughout the novel Pip is confronted with several women of different calibre, from shrewd and hysterical, cold-hearted and distant to caring and loveable. On the follow-ing pages I am going to introduce and characterise the three main female characters who influence Pip’s life the most: his sister Mrs. Joe Gargery, Mrs. Havisham and Estella. Of course Pip gets to know more women, but since they play only a more or less minor role in his life, I am not going to put them under consideration. After having described and char-acterised the three women, I am going to analyse their relationship towards Pip and in the end come to a final conclusion. 2. Characterisation of three main female characters

Analyzes the Victorian conception of both demonic and divine nature of women in Victorian art and literature.

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person.