Great Expectations

The second time Pip visits Satis House, what is the mood and scene of the room Stella brings him in?

Estella takes him to a different part of the house, a room occupied with "other occupants"

Asked by
Last updated by jill d #170087
Answers 1
Add Yours

Pip makes a second visit to Miss Havisham’s house. He sees some other people who wait on her, most of them cousins and various other relations. He is taken into a room where a table is decorated with a wedding cake that has long since rotted and is now full of insects. Miss Havisham tells Pip that when she dies, they will put her body on the table. Then Pip plays cards with Estella. On his way back, he comes across a thin, pale boy who dares him to fight. Pip knocks the boy down and Estella grants him the reward of kissing her cheek.

Pip’s second visit proves to be an important one, though the significance is for now unrealized. He meets two people with whom he will have a long association: Mr. Jaggers, a lawyer, and the boy with whom he fights. The boy will become his most trusted friend in a few years.

The room with the wedding cake is yet another symbol in the novel to mark the house that has been forgotten by time. The cake and Miss Havisham’s dress are eerie monuments to the unfulfilled past--monuments that have rotted and yellowed with age, but that still stand.

Estella’s reward is only a temporary victory for Pip; it does not mean he has become less common, at least to her.

Source(s)

http://thebestnotes.com/booknotes/Great_Expectations_Dickens/Great_Expectations10.html