Dickens’ baptismal allegory

In a 1994 article in the South Atlantic Review , John Cunningham proposes to read Great Expectations as a baptismal allegory. In the first half of the novel, baptismal imagery is inverted, but as the book progresses everything turns rightside up:

” Great Expectations attains a comic resolution as the perverted figures of baptism discussed hitherto are metamorphosed into true ones and as regenerations open onto new lives. Despite the almost pervasive presence of death in the novel, evidence of life nevertheless persists; but the life present in death must be freed, usually by the discipline of suffering that characterizes most comedy. Pip calls the night on which Magwitch comes to his London chambers ‘the turning point of my life’ (318). That night is characterized both by figures of rain and flood (typologically associated with baptism) and by figures of destruction, of apocalypse (also typologically associated with baptism [Danielou 75-85]). These images reach their symbolic completion in death-by-water when Magwitch, Compeyson, and Pip suffers shipwreck and descending into the Thames . . . .

“In the rhythm of the final chapters, the counter movements-one of death and one of life-come to their resolutions. Pip must come to see that his great expectations are not Estella and Miss Havisham’s money but regeneration, which will offer him the paradise within that the allusion to Milton-‘the world lay spread before me’ (186)-finally invokes. Dickens renews the motifs of baptism that have had negative connotations throughout much of the novel and gives them positive meanings: the death of the old man makes possible the birth of the new man; unprofitable guilt gives way to fruitful contrition and humility; life comes out of living death through painful baptismal fire and through life-giving water, violence and malice metamorphose into forgiveness. Magwitch, Miss Havisham, and Mrs. Joe experience various aspects of regeneration that precede and anticipate Pip’s rebirth. Light replaces darkness, and Dickens transforms the perverted Christmas of the opening chapters into genuine celebration at the end of the novel.”