Breaking Patterns of Sterility and Breaking Patterns of Abuse. Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations, attempts to delve into the Victorian gender construction. Incorporated within this persona is the struggle to break away from the cycles of generations of abuse and patterns of sterility. Through the eyes of his young protagonist, Dickens arranges an immediate gender conflict through absent mothers and deficient mother substitutes as the pivotal female characters in the beginning of the novel; Pip’s dead mother, and his care ....