The Gothic, Great Expectations

How is Gothic depicted in Great Expectations?
Great Expectations is not a Gothic novel in any simple sense. Like all of Dickens’s writings,

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and perhaps all writing, it belongs to more than one genre. At times it resembles a fairytale, at other times a realistic or a comic novel, at others a melodrama: most commonly, it blends together the qualities of several genres. But gothic is a persistent thread in the book and at times, particularly moments of psychological transformation and crisis, the whole book seems charged with the force of the Gothic through the characters and the setting of Satis House. In the very first chapter, for example, when Magwitch leaves the graveyard, he looks to Pip ‘as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.’ What is true for Pip is also true for us as readers of the book; at certain moments, the dead seem to reach up to grab you. Miss Havishams description made from Pip was very Gothic like, her looks, clothing and house was mostly compared to grim deathly things and her look is very strange to Pip.

"dressed in rich materials -- satins, and lace, and silks -- all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about ... I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes ... Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if could." (ch. 8)

Miss Havisham is haunted by her own dead past and when Pip first sees her, she seems almost to have willed herself into becoming this uncanny, haunting figure, through a performance in which she stages her own Gothic misery and draws others into her dead-alive world. She has become the living corpse of her own happiness. This self-destructive (but also self-preserving) staging of herself as a bride on the threshold of her wedding arrests her in time, at the moment of traumatic revelation. Unable to let the past go, unwilling to move forward or back, she is a figure simultaneously powerful and powerless. Miss Havisham is both the victim of her abandonment and the dominant, powerful, even seductive, oppressor of Pip and Estella.

What are the specifics elements of the uncanny?

Uncanny means strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way.  In relation to the quote in the previous paragraph when Pip describes Miss Havisham, the eeriness and uncanniness of the passage stem a good deal from its repetitions, in which some simple words – hair, dress, bride, white, brightness, waxwork, skeleton – repeat over and again. It’s as if Pip can’t let go of what he sees as its so strange, and that what he has seen is destined to return over and again, however hard he tries to escape it. His description resembles a strange incantation, suddenly punctuated by the simple words of his impossible exclamation: ‘I should have cried out, if could’.

How is the grotesque depicted in Great Expectations?

Grotesque is known as comically or repulsively ugly or distorted. The grotesque instills fear of life

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rather than death. Structurally, it presupposes that the categories which apply to our world view become inapplicable. Which in the case of Great Expectations it is to scare the reader. One of the literary modes Dickens employs is the grotesque. Many scenes throughout the story utilize the grotesque although it is particularly apparent in the opening chapters, where the protagonist Pip encounters the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. The grotesque in literature generally refers to a style of writing which presents the world in an exaggerated and fantastical manner. Unlike the fairy tale, the grotesque has a distinctly dark and ominous aspect. It runs contrary to literary realism which attempts to portray the world from an objective perspective. Critics have often interpreted Pip and Magwitch's relationship as being typified with conflicting emotions. They consider it to be grotesque or 'tragicomic'.I think the grotesque moment between Pip and Magwitch is when they first meet in the graveyard. I think how Dickens gives the uncanny a unique twist within the novel in terms of characterization is when Pip meet the character  Miss Havisham, her character is so unique and different that even the character in the novel are made to think of her as strange, odd and queer.

"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "keep still, you little devil or i'll cut your throat?" 

"O! Dont cut my throat, sir,"I pleaded in terror "Pray don't do it, sir" Pg 4

I think the meeting of the two was quite an impact to the start of the story when Pip first meeting Magwitch and being utterly terrified of him. I think this part of the book so early in struck me and scared me a little wondering what Magwitch would do to do as he was such a unfamiliar character to begin with. 

http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-gothic-in-great-expectations#sthash.vAdkJQo6.dpuf
http://www.sooperarticles.com/art-entertainment-articles/grotesque-great-expectations-pips-early-encounters-magwitch-652194.html