Pip’s Ego Oscillations in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

Abstract

This research project studies Pip’s ego fluctuations in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Freud’s division of the human psyche into id, ego and superego is appropriate for the analysis of the rise and fall of the hero in his pursuit to attain gentlemanhood. Four main questions have been addressed: First, what makes up Pip’s id? Second, what are the main components of his superego? Third, does Pip’s ego succeed or fail in striking a balance between his id and superego? In what ways does it fail? And fourth, how does Pip’s ego eventually succeed in striking a balance between his id and superego? The study finds out that Pip’s id is demonstrated through his fascination with high-class lifestyle and relinquishment of common life. It shows that his superego is constructed from the hurdles that prevent him from pursuing gentlemanhood, namely past common life restraints and present high class deficiencies. It also demonstrates how Pip’s faulty ego comes as a result of his frustration at high class lifestyles and resentment of his old common life. The study eventually reveals that two important factors contribute to the success of Pip’s ego: His reconciliation with the past and appreciation of the present in order to have more realistic expectations of the future.

Love in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations: A Psychoanalytic Approach

“…As in the case of Saoudi et al (2021), applying Freudian criticism to the analysis of the theme of love in Great Expectations has proven to be a productive exploration of literature. This project can be taken as a model to study other works of literature that lend themselves to examination through psychoanalytic criticism, or even other aspects of Dickens's same novel.…”

“…Part One: The Id Pip's great expectations are representative of his id as he seeks gratification of three vital needs throughout the novel: security, gentlemanhood and love (Saoudi et al, 2021). This project is devoted to the study of love, a basic component of the id that is at the heart of the pleasure principle.…”

“…The superego stands at the opposite end of pleasure that manipulates the id. Saoudi et al, (2021) state that the ego plays the role of mediator between the id and the superego. If the ego succeeds in restraining the id-superego conflict in the mind, it turns into a healthy functional ego, as opposed to a faulty defective ego if it misses the mark and fails in the mission.…”

“…Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies ISSN: 2550-1542 | www.awej-tls.org 92 264). The authors (Saoudi, et al, 2021) maintain that psychoanalytic criticism could be approached in many ways including laying the focus on the way Dickens's own life impacted his work, on the readers' psychological identification with the characters in the novel, on the relationships between a character and society, and/or on the psychoanalytic analysis of one or more characters. The current study focuses on the last approach.…”

“…A number of studies, mentioned in Saoudi, et al (2021), have analyzed Great Expectations from psychoanalytic perspectives. One of the reasons is that the novel "enters the abyss of Pip's inner self" (Bloom, 2010, p. 1).…”