Adverse Childhood Experiences and Identity Achievement in the Lives of Pip and Heathcliff

Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations and Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights both focus on characters orphaned at a young age. Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, are clearly present throughout these characters’ adolescent lives, as they face various types of neglect, abuse, and household dysfunction. The presence of these ACEs thus influences their identity achievement: the settling of their moral codes and ethical standards. Through the exploration of their identities from childhood to adulthood, the reader observes Pip attaining identity achievement—due to the influence of a positive parental figure—and Heathcliff failing to do so