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Idioms
Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Book 1, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—An Army in Pursuit:
When Provis is recounting what fleeing from the prison-barge he was being held on felt like, he alludes to images of the British army pursuing him through the fog using powerful sensory language. Provis's intense fear of capture makes him feel like a battalion of men is chasing him in Chapter 3, as he tells Pip:
“Why, see now!” said he. “When a man’s alone on these flats, with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears nothin’ all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his number called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders ‘Make ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and is laid hands on – and there’s nothin’! Why, if I see one pursuing party last night – coming up in order, Damn ’em, with their tramp, tramp – I see a hundred. And as to firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day.
This passage makes the reader feel more connected to the danger the escaped convict is in, and emphasizes the powerlessness over the senses the marsh mist creates. The phrase "red coats" invokes the bright scarlet uniforms of British infantry soldiers in the 19th century. The grey and misty territory of the marshes, which Dickens had vividly described just before this, is imaginatively splashed with the bright scarlet of these military jackets. The sense of danger for the escaped convict is so intense that Provis doesn't just think he hears the soldiers: he says he "sees" them, vividly describing their uniforms "closing" around him. The "cannon" are so powerful that he sees and feels the "mist shake" with their reverberating sounds as he tries to file the iron from his leg.
Dickens incorporates sound, touch, and sight into this intense description, making the reader hear the "tramp tramp" of the soldiers' feet, the gunshots and the rattle of muskets, feel the push and shove of hands "being laid on them," and see the glow of red coats "lighted up by torches."
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Gems and Dust:
When Pip Pirrip meets Miss Havisham, he tells the reader she is the "strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see." Dickens uses a great deal of descriptive language in Chapter 8 to contrast the richness of Havisham's environment and the decay she has let it fall into:
Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. [...] I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone.
The language of brightness and affluence is placed in juxtaposition to that of rot and decay. This is a commentary by Dickens (among other things) on the relationship between wealth and happiness. Havisham's affluence has not prevented her misery, nor has it stopped the advance of the years. This passage comments on time passing in a very concentrated way: the reader is faced with the image of a girl's "rounded figure" shrinking into a haggard parody of itself. This is the first of many images of wilting and decay that Dickens surrounds Havisham with. The opulence and sparkle of the "splendid" things around her only underscore the tragedy of her failing body and the uselessness of her material possessions.
Havisham's own face and body also contain this contrast. Her skin, clothes, and "figure" hang closely on her, as she has "shrunk to skin and bone." However, in this body so dry it crackles like paper, her "sunken," mean little eyes still sparkle with the "brightness" of mischief, as Pip notes just before this. Like the minerals and metals she wears, her intellect and cruelty endure even as the delicate, perishable materials of fabric and flesh slip away from her and rot.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Wintry Branches :
Images of candlelight in Miss Havisham's museum-like house are paradoxically described as "dark" and "wintry" in two instances. When in Chapter 11 Havisham sends Pip into an unfamiliar room that contains the rotted remains of her wedding feast, the narrator relates that
Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber: or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness.
The candles, although lit and flaming, are depicted as "wintry branches," provoking sensory confusion in the reader. They don't light the dim, stuffy room, they just "faintly trouble" its darkness. This image of dark light is so striking that it persists for Pip when he returns to Satis House to see Havisham in Chapter 10:
The old wintry branches of chandeliers in the room where the mouldering table was spread, had been lighted [...] and Miss Havisham was in her chair and waiting for me.
This paradoxical lighting, which barely illuminates the same "mouldering table," makes Pip feel a strong sense of the past returning. Like Havisham's wedding arrangements, although Pip knows that time has passed, history seems to be frozen in this space, including the quality of the light.
When Pip returns as an adult in Chapter 38, he observes this paradox again. The light from the candles in Satis House somehow makes a "pale gloom." The author makes the torpor and tragedy of life in Satis House seem even more overwhelming than it would be otherwise in moments like this. Miss Havisham's aura of stagnation is so strong that even the light in her house is hushed and rotting.
Book 2, Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—Wintry Branches :
Images of candlelight in Miss Havisham's museum-like house are paradoxically described as "dark" and "wintry" in two instances. When in Chapter 11 Havisham sends Pip into an unfamiliar room that contains the rotted remains of her wedding feast, the narrator relates that
Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber: or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness.
The candles, although lit and flaming, are depicted as "wintry branches," provoking sensory confusion in the reader. They don't light the dim, stuffy room, they just "faintly trouble" its darkness. This image of dark light is so striking that it persists for Pip when he returns to Satis House to see Havisham in Chapter 10:
The old wintry branches of chandeliers in the room where the mouldering table was spread, had been lighted [...] and Miss Havisham was in her chair and waiting for me.
This paradoxical lighting, which barely illuminates the same "mouldering table," makes Pip feel a strong sense of the past returning. Like Havisham's wedding arrangements, although Pip knows that time has passed, history seems to be frozen in this space, including the quality of the light.
When Pip returns as an adult in Chapter 38, he observes this paradox again. The light from the candles in Satis House somehow makes a "pale gloom." The author makes the torpor and tragedy of life in Satis House seem even more overwhelming than it would be otherwise in moments like this. Miss Havisham's aura of stagnation is so strong that even the light in her house is hushed and rotting.
Explanation and Analysis—Insects and Decay:
Motifs of partial preservation and decay appear in almost every chapter of Great Expectations, but are often bookended with the vivid descriptions of hordes of insects, multitude of rodents, and colonies of thriving fungi in Satis House. Dickens uses these descriptions to link the natural cycles of life and development in this coming-of-age novel with Miss Havisham's bizarre choice to live in the past. When Pip enters the room where Havisham's wedding feast dries out and rots away, Dickens lavishly describes the skitter and scramble of living pests from the dead table:
I saw it written, as it were, in the falls of the cobwebs from the centre-piece, in the crawlings of the spiders on the cloth, in the tracks of the mice as they betook their little quickened hearts behind the panels, and in the gropings and pausings of the beetles on the floor.
Almost this entire passage is made up of auditory imagery in the gerund (-ing) tense. This tense is usually reserved for things that are being done as a current action. Dickens employs it here to reinforce the vitality of the life in this room. Things are always moving and happening, even in this sepulcher. In a house where so much is still and dead, life is actually everywhere, if one looks. The list of the animals living in Satis House reads like a taxonomy, as if Pip was looking at a zoo exhibit as well as a museum of failed nuptials.
When Pip returns to Satis House in Chapter 29 to see Estella, he actually describes the decaying manor as being like the castle in Sleeping Beauty. He feels like it's up to him to
restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms, set the clocks a going and the cold hearths a blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin – in short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and marry the Princess.
The house is so dead that Pip feels a moral obligation to destroy the "cobwebs" and "vermin" that thickly coat it. He casts himself as the prince in a fairy-tale, imagining scattering the plague of insects and darkness away in front of him. This is an impossible task, however. Almost every room in Satis House is corroded with neglect, so much so that the only signs of life are these hordes of uninvited guests.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 33
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Statue:
Imagery of stone, sculpture, and statuary permeates sensory language and similes describing Estella Havisham. Dickens uses these chilly descriptions to highlight her emotional unavailability, and to show that her feelings have been trapped inside her cold, hard exterior. When Pip kisses her on the cheek in Chapter 33, he leans down
and her calm face was like a statue's.
No gestures of affection can move her, at this point. Even a kiss from Pip leaves her "calm," with a face as unchanging as a bust. Miss Havisham's schooling has frozen her feelings and her body into stone. By Chapter 38, when Estella's relationship with Havisham has deteriorated, her caretaker encounters the rocky, cold outside of her ward's personality and calls it out this way:
You stock and stone! You cold, cold heart!
Estella's stony personality is not selective, as Havisham's training has worked too well. The old woman is horrified when Estella is finally "cold" to her, as it means she can no longer use Estella as her revenge puppet. "Stock and stone" is an English expression denoting fixedness and the unchanging, and Havisham's use of it here reveals her horror that Estella will not bend at all now, even to her. When she realizes this, Havisham begins to repetitively moan and mourn aloud:
So proud, so proud! [...] So hard, so hard!
These complaints bounce off Estella like echoes off a rock-face, repeating themselves as they fade away. Estella does not soften her statue-like presence until the last page of the novel. When she and Pip reunite, she has been "bent and broken" into a better shape. Stone can break, but not bend: even this limited language implies she has gained some flexibility.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 38
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Statue:
Imagery of stone, sculpture, and statuary permeates sensory language and similes describing Estella Havisham. Dickens uses these chilly descriptions to highlight her emotional unavailability, and to show that her feelings have been trapped inside her cold, hard exterior. When Pip kisses her on the cheek in Chapter 33, he leans down
and her calm face was like a statue's.
No gestures of affection can move her, at this point. Even a kiss from Pip leaves her "calm," with a face as unchanging as a bust. Miss Havisham's schooling has frozen her feelings and her body into stone. By Chapter 38, when Estella's relationship with Havisham has deteriorated, her caretaker encounters the rocky, cold outside of her ward's personality and calls it out this way:
You stock and stone! You cold, cold heart!
Estella's stony personality is not selective, as Havisham's training has worked too well. The old woman is horrified when Estella is finally "cold" to her, as it means she can no longer use Estella as her revenge puppet. "Stock and stone" is an English expression denoting fixedness and the unchanging, and Havisham's use of it here reveals her horror that Estella will not bend at all now, even to her. When she realizes this, Havisham begins to repetitively moan and mourn aloud:
So proud, so proud! [...] So hard, so hard!
These complaints bounce off Estella like echoes off a rock-face, repeating themselves as they fade away. Estella does not soften her statue-like presence until the last page of the novel. When she and Pip reunite, she has been "bent and broken" into a better shape. Stone can break, but not bend: even this limited language implies she has gained some flexibility.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Insects and Decay:
Motifs of partial preservation and decay appear in almost every chapter of Great Expectations, but are often bookended with the vivid descriptions of hordes of insects, multitude of rodents, and colonies of thriving fungi in Satis House. Dickens uses these descriptions to link the natural cycles of life and development in this coming-of-age novel with Miss Havisham's bizarre choice to live in the past. When Pip enters the room where Havisham's wedding feast dries out and rots away, Dickens lavishly describes the skitter and scramble of living pests from the dead table:
I saw it written, as it were, in the falls of the cobwebs from the centre-piece, in the crawlings of the spiders on the cloth, in the tracks of the mice as they betook their little quickened hearts behind the panels, and in the gropings and pausings of the beetles on the floor.
Almost this entire passage is made up of auditory imagery in the gerund (-ing) tense. This tense is usually reserved for things that are being done as a current action. Dickens employs it here to reinforce the vitality of the life in this room. Things are always moving and happening, even in this sepulcher. In a house where so much is still and dead, life is actually everywhere, if one looks. The list of the animals living in Satis House reads like a taxonomy, as if Pip was looking at a zoo exhibit as well as a museum of failed nuptials.
When Pip returns to Satis House in Chapter 29 to see Estella, he actually describes the decaying manor as being like the castle in Sleeping Beauty. He feels like it's up to him to
restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms, set the clocks a going and the cold hearths a blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin – in short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and marry the Princess.
The house is so dead that Pip feels a moral obligation to destroy the "cobwebs" and "vermin" that thickly coat it. He casts himself as the prince in a fairy-tale, imagining scattering the plague of insects and darkness away in front of him. This is an impossible task, however. Almost every room in Satis House is corroded with neglect, so much so that the only signs of life are these hordes of uninvited guests.
Related Themes:
