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Great Expectations Love Quotes Page 3
Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
- Pip
- >
By degrees she led me into more temperate talk, and she told me how Joe loved me, and how Joe never complained of anything – she didn't say, of me; she had no need; I knew what she meant – but ever did his duty in his way of life, with a strong hand, a quiet tongue, and a gentle heart. (2.35.40)
As opposed to Pip’s feverish, inconsistent, and irrational love of Estella, we are here presented with Joe’s even, constant, and unconditional love of Pip. The two kinds of love contrast with each other heavily.
"At least I was no party to the compact," said Estella, "for if I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could do. But what would you have? You have been very good to me, and I owe everything to you. What would you have?" "Love," replied the other. "You have it." "I have not," said Miss Havisham. (2.38.36-39)
Here we stumble upon a third kind of love, a love that is all-consuming in a different way, in a conditional way. Miss Havisham creates the monster Estella in order to carry out her plans for revenge, but the monster turns on its creator and bears no love for the creator. The creator is therefore wounded by the missile she has built. Having raised Estella, bought her pretty things, given her all her jewels, Miss Havisham expects Estella to love her in return.
"Estella," said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my trembling voice, "you know I love you. You know that I have loved you long and dearly." (3.44.37)
Just as Pip questions Miss Havisham’s definition of "love" when she employs the word, hearing darker connotations in the sound of it, we can’t help but think that when Pip uses the word "love" here, he means something else. When we hear him profess his love in such a way, we can’t help but think of the love he’s thrown away and how that love is so very different from this love. Great Expectations is like a library full of little books about different kinds of love.
