Great Expectations: A Human Garden

By Chie Theresa Fujioka

In Great Expectations, Dickens uses plants to represent people. By describing plants, as associated with characters, the author portrays a perspective separate from the subjective light of Pip’s emotions. Similar to the other motifs of light/dark, death, chains, bars, and jails, the plants characterize the internal condition of their respective persons. Although the health (or presence in some cases) of plants, indicative of the person, is not necessarily sickly, more often than not, it is, emphasizing Dickens’ social commentary. Throughout the story, the plants are used to make obvious descriptions about the cast, yet the underlying idea of Pip’s plant-hood is implied. The reader is left seeing that a plant in such a “dismal” environment as Pip’s cannot fail to be stunted and immature. And indeed, it is not until Pip’s foundations and fantasies are taken out from beneath him that he matures to gratitude and contentment.

From the very first, Pip’s life is filled with the metaphor of the plants. Raised near the marshes, his first recalled memory describes the convict who is to play such an important role in his future. The convict has been “stung by nettles, and torn by briars;” he has been tricked and betrayed by wicked, untrustworthy people, including such as Compeyson. These plants are not dying, but indicate the tangled and difficult life of this convict as he “[eludes] the hands of the dead people” and death.

Pip then encounters plants on his first visit to Miss Havisham. At Pumblechook’s shop, the seeds are organized into little drawers, wanting to “burst out” of their “little brown paper” jails. Likewise, Pumblechook has sorted the people he knows into levels of social status and respect. Setting himself up as the authority of this matter, he treats Pip as an inferior (which when contrasted with his later requests of “May I?” makes his hypocrisy all the more odious). Like Pip, many others wish to better themselves into gentlemanliness, but are bound by their prisons, both mental and social.

The next day, more botanical imagery can be found in Miss Havisham’s garden. Unlike Barnard’s Inn, completely lacking in plant-life and pervaded with “rot,” Havisham’s garden exists, a slight improvement, sickly, overgrown, and “rank” as it may be. Like Havisham, it was abandoned, and now is full of weeds of bitter regret and vengeance. The only life comes from Estella: Miss Havisham’s adopted weapon upon male humanity. It is she who often visits the garden; she lives with the old decrepit woman. She is everything to Miss Havisham.

Decay being not at all unassociated with money, when Pip becomes a gentleman, his character flaws are amplified by the presence of money. Arrogantly categorizing, in Pumblechookian style, his best friend Joe, he accuses Biddy of grudging envy when her words disturb his slumbering conscious. During their brief conversation in the garden, Pip condescendingly requests Biddy to teach Joe properly and offers financial assistance. As he speaks, Biddy plucks and examines a blackcurrant leaf. Her scrutiny of Pip seems to match that of the leaf until when Pip’s true nature exposes itself, she rubs the leaf into pieces.

At Barnard’s, where Pip resides, Joe, the gentlemanly commoner, states that even a pig, a low and dirty creature, could not do well in such conditions. How then could Pip do better since he shuns his true friends in the country and dwells constantly on Estella, the blighted flower?

Perhaps the strongest and most pungent of the garden images is Wemmick’s greenhouse, the Newgate Prison. Wemmick, like Jaggers, watches for unhealthy plants, i.e. those most likely to get in trouble. Taking advantage of these men’s needs, Wemmick plays a sympathetic friend, for the purpose of gathering as much of the fruit of portable property as he can before the plant is killed.

Obviously, Dickens wants the reader to see that moral and mental integrity are more important than money or status or propriety. For each pathetic case of rotting humanity, the people have only themselves to blame for letting their problems eat them away into mental chains. By using this motif, Dickens’ reflects the opinion of the now-Pip as compared to the then-Pip. This is the voice of the matured Pip as he looks back and sees just how corroded he and those around him were. Like a plant, people need care, sunlight (Havisham take note), and sustenance. Without it, they rot.

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