Discuss Great Expectations as a classic 'bildungsroman' (a novel about growth and development of the hero).Charles Dickens's Great...

You have identified a vital element in this novel. It is
clearly a bildungsroman, just like Jane Eyre and other similar
novels, in that it traces the development of a main character from their youth and to
their maturity. At the end of bildungsromans, the characters have normally gone through
some hard times but have found their place in society and end up a maturer, wiser
individual because of what they have suffered.

Thus in
analysing this novel as a bildungsroman, it is important to note how Pip changes and
develops. Key to the early stages of the novel is Pip´s growing sense of class
consciousness and his dissatisfaction with his own position in society. We can see that
this comes through his first meeting with Miss Havisham and Estella, and how he becomes
ashamed of his humble roots. The end of Chapter 9 clearly marks this event as a
fundamental point of change in his life.

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That was a memorable day to me, for it
made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day
struck out of it, and think how different its course would hgave been. Pause you who
read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or
flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one
memorable day.

This passage
is key because it introduced the notion of being "bound" - something that is developed
in Ch. 13 when Pip is "bound" into his apprenticeship. This indicates how Pip sees his
lowly position. It is important to note that this awareness or realisation comes before
Pip receives his "Great Exepectations", and so it is likely that if Pip had not received
his Great Expectations he would have lived a frustrating and sad life, consciously aware
of the limitations of his position in society and unable to do anything about it. With
his visit to Estella, gone is the ability to accept his
fate.

Moving forward to the rest of the novel, it is key to
identify the retrospective omniscient voice that narrates Pip's tale, and how it
demonstrates how Pip has matured and become wiser. Certainly the wisdom that the
narrator demonstrates has only come through the sufferings and trials that the younger
Pip experiences - there is a definite sense that this is a novel of maturing, of change
and growth in character. The incident where Pip saves Miss Havisham from being burnt and
also burns himself in the process, and his loss of his "expectations" and the fever that
cripples him have a sense of purgatorial repayment for the wrongs that Pip has committed
- he learns just how much of a snob he has been, and how he has hurt others through his
actions, and begins to right his wrongs. Thus we see at the end of the novel a sadder,
but much wiser Pip, who has definitely learnt a lot through his experiences, and has
found his place in society working with Herbert.

It is
surely significant that at the end of the novel, Joe and Biddy call their son Pip after
the main character of the novel. After reading a novel which is so much concerned about
parental figures and the kind of (bad) influence they can have on their "children" (just
think of Miss Havisham and Estella and Magwitch and Pip), we can only think that this
naming will have a good impact, as the younger Pip now has an appropriate role model to
follow in his life - one that can guide him with sensitivity and
wisdom.