Larry observes in the assignment for Essay 3 that Pip’s five dreams are on pages 15, 79, 258, and 339. It’s unclear what dream is discussed on 339, and, more obscurely, there are only four entries for five dreams.
The first three seem to work.
15:
If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for there was no getting a light by easy friction then; to have got one I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and have made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his chains.
(This and all quotations drawn from the Gutenberg e-text.)
79:
I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of the strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of conspiracy with convicts,—a feature in my low career that I had previously forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear. I coaxed myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham’s, next Wednesday; and in my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of a door, without seeing who held it, and I screamed myself awake.
258:
Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert’s Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham’s Ghost, before twenty thousand people, without knowing twenty words of it.
However, on 339 there is only this general reference to Pip’s dreams:
…for my nights had been agitated and my rest broken by fearful dreams…
What, then, are the other dreams which Claire Slagter identifies as evidence of Pip’s inner turmoil? I don’t have access to Slagter’s article, but my guess is that there are only four specific dreams, and that the fourth dream comes earlier in GE rather than later. Here is Pip, sleeping the night before he moves to London:
159:
All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong places instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs, now cats, now pigs, now men,—never horses. Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were singing.
If this is right, then the four dreams Dickens describes occur before Pip learns that Magwitch is his patron.
However, I think the motif of dreaming in GE is far more sophisticated than just these four references would suggest—indeed, the “inner turmoil” Slagter apparently discusses appears to be attached to another kind of emotional unrest.
Visit the Gutenberg e-text of Great Expectations and run your own search for “dream.” You should find 17 appearances of the word. I’ll list them in abbreviation here so you can survey their sweep of meaning:
- My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.
- I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to think this was a dream.
- But still I felt as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as if this must be a dream.
- We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences which had so wrought upon me…
- “a good fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action and dreaming, curiously mixed in him.”
- Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all cancelled…
- Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me, all a mere dream…
- Then I washed and dressed while they knocked the furniture about and made a dust; and so, in a sort of dream or sleep-waking…
- …my nights had been agitated and my rest broken by fearful dreams…
- “I have seen it, Herbert, and dreamed of it, ever since the fatal night of his arrival.”
- I had the wildest dreams concerning him, and woke unrefreshed…
- I would tell him, little as he cared for such poor dreams, that I had loved Estella dearly and long…
- “Pip,” said he, “we won’t talk about ‘poor dreams‘…”
- “But add the case that you had loved her, Pip, and had made her the subject of those ‘poor dreams‘…”
- I had never dreamed of Joe’s having paid the money…
- But I had as sound a sleep in that lodging as in the most superior accommodation the Boar could have given me, and the quality of my dreams was about the same as in the best bedroom.
- “But that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by…”
(You can find where these passages come from by looking them up on the Gutenberg text and then finding the nearest chapter marker.)
Tags: 2009, Charles Dickens, Essay 3, Essay stuff
