Women and Property in Great Expectations Essay - 1888 Words

Women and Property in Great Expectations Women and property is one of the central themes in Charles Dickens Great Expectations. Dickens wrote this novel during the mid-nineteenth century, a period when womens property rights were being intensely debated in England. His depiction of propertied women in the novel reflects Victorian Englands beliefs about womens inability to responsibly own and manage their own property. Miss Havisham is presented as the embodiment of womens failure to properly manage wealth and property. Mr. Havishams settlement of the bulk of his estate on his daughter, despite the existence of a male heir, is unconventional, as the property system operated on a patrilineal basis. Estellas†¦show more content†¦Havisham was very displeased with his son and considered disinheriting him, but relented on his deathbed and left him well off, though not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham (176; ch. 22). Mr. Havisham believed he was making a sensible decision in bypassing the patrilineal system a nd settling most of his wealth and brewery on his daughter. Thus, Miss Havisham is now situated as the character through whom Dickens presents and explores the social and economic consequences of propertied women. Susan Walsh argues that Miss Havisham is an important index to the local economies beneath the more ahistorical fairy tale motifs that structure Great Expectations; she is one of the means by which Dickens demarcates the commercial parameters within which Victorian men operated (74). As an unmarried woman in Victorian England, Miss Havisham enjoys the legal status of feme sole, which gives her complete control over her wealth and property. Miss Havisham, now a wealthy young heiress, becomes the target of an opportunistic swindler. She falls in love with Compeyson and accepts his marriage proposal. Miss Havishams love for Compeyson makes her vulnerable to the systematic way, that he got great sums of money from her (177; ch. 22). Against the advice of Mr. Pocket, Miss Havisham is induced by Compeyson to buy her brother out of a share inShow MoreRelatedEssay about The Volatile Role of the Women in Great Expectations1081 Words   |  5 PagesThe women in the novel, Great Expectations, are not given the ample opportunities that they would have liked in order to live out their lifelong dreams and hopes. Instead, they have some type of devastating impact that has been brought upon them through a situation that they themselves cannot help. This is evident in th e lives of Mrs. Joe, a mere teenager who is forced to raise her brother in a time that is hard to support herself, and Miss Havisham, an elderly woman who’s dreams were torn awayRead MoreAnalysis Of Chopin s Desiree s Baby 1125 Words   |  5 Pagesher points of inequalities and expectations. 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