Great Expectations
There are many common, familiar cliches about illusion versus truth. "All that glitters is not gold" and "Things are seldom what they seem" are the most universal hackneyed phrases, but they do not cover entirely every aspect of appearance versus reality. In Charles Dickens' novel, Great Expectations, there are several differences between the illusion and the truth. The appearance of certain things is often detrimental to the outcomes of characters when the reality of a situation is revealed. These illusions are revealed through Pip, a lower class boy caught in the struggle of the social classes of 19th century England. Throughout the book, Charles Dickens emphasizes the difference between appearance and reality through Pip's expectations of something better, social status, and settings in the book.
The most important illusion Great Expectations is Pip's confident expectations of a better life. Pip began the book out poor, and was sent for to spend time every week with an upper-middle-class crazy woman and her heartless adopted daughter, Estella. From the moment he met Estella, he was in love with her. Later on in the book, he was provided with financial support from an un-named benefactor that should be used to go to London and become a gentleman. Pip assumed that Ms. Havisham, Estella's adoptive mother, was the benefactress. "My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale." (154) This was the reality that Pip had invented for himself, although it was really just a misimpression that his mind had created for himself. Because he thought that Ms. Havisham was his benefactress, Pip anticipated that Estella was meant for him. "I was painting brilliant pictures of her plans for me. She had adopted Estella, and had as good as adopted me, and it could not fail to be her intention to bring us together. She reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms, set the clocks a-going and the cold hearths a-blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin, -- in short, do all the shining deeds of the young knight of romance, and marry the princess.... I had made up a rich attractive mystery, of which I was the hero." (252) This is a very obvious illusion of what Pip anticipates for the future. When the reality of this illusion was revealed, Pip realizes the truth behind the appearance of his false dreams. "Miss Havisham's intentions towards me, all a mere dream; Estella not designed for me." (348) Pip realizes that he is not meant to be with Estella, and that the false appearance of his expectations that he put out for himself were completely untrue. Before he left for London, he thought that it was going to be grand, wonderful, and illustrious. However, when he got there he was very under-impressed by the city. "While I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty". (178) He had expected it to be the world, the beginning of a new future, and the start of a new life. However, it did not meet up with his anticipated expectations. The reality of London was dreary and dismal, unlike the appearance of it from afar.
High social status seems to have a beautiful appearance, but the veracity of the class system is not as good as it would seem. When Pip realizes that his true benefactor is an escaped convict named Abel Magwich, he instantly does not want the money. Magwich's intentions were to turn Pip into a gentleman through the use of his money because of a hard lesson that Magwich learned. Magwich had been a poor man and had worked for a rich man named Compeyson. Compeyson had the appearance of a gentleman. "He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too... but he'd no more heart than an iron file, he was as cold as death, and he had the head of the devil afore mentioned. " (372-3) Compeyson's appearance helped him in a case against him and Magwich. Compeyson said a very divulging quote to Magwich: "To judge from appearances, you're out of luck" (373) In the trial, this was very evident. Although Compeyson had been the worse of the two in their crime, Magwich "noticed how heavy it all bore on me, and how light on him...warn't it me as could only say, 'Gentleman, this man at my side is a most precious rascal?' And when the verdict come, warn't it Compeyson as was recommended to mercy on account of good character and bad company..." (276) Magwich was sentenced to twice Compeyson's jail time. When Magwich spoke of Compeyson in front of soldiers deciding their fate, he even stated that the appearance of a gentleman is often confused with the truth. "He's a gentleman, if you please, this villain." (44) When told this, a soldier said, "You're not much to look at." He of course was judging by mien. In this illusion of the social classes of society, one horrible, wealthy man is placed above a good poor man because of the false appearance that the upper class is better. When Estella found out that Pip had come into a vast fortune, she recommended that "'Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed your companions.... And necessarily,' she added in a haughty tone;' what was fit company for you once would be quite unfit company for you now.'" (257) Estella's true father is Magwich and true mother is a servant, but she is raised by a rich woman and is therefore upper-middle-class. By birth, however, she is in the bottom of lower class. In contrast, Biddy, an orphan maid, and Joe, Pip's brother in law, both maintain the appearance of lowly on the social classes of 19th century England. However, they both have such wonderful personalities and great views on life that in reality, they are better people than the upper class.
Setting in Great Expectations was also an important contrast of illusion and the truth. Pip grew up the beginning of his life in two places: the forge and Satis House. The forge would normally have the appearance of being a dreary place, with fires blazing and the shadow of it lingering everywhere. However, it was actually a place where love was taught from all corners, and good morals were instructed. Satis house, the home of the Havishams, seemed like it should have the appearance of an upper-class home: much more comfortable and wonderful than a lower class home because of the money that the Havishams possessed. Satis means "enough" and that "whoever had this house could want nothing else." (66) The appearance that this house would be "enough" for the Havishams shows what kind of people that they really are in reality. Satis house was "of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred." (64) Satis house was not welcoming at all, and in actuality it was very uncomfortable. Another contrast between truth and illusion is of Walworth, Mr. Wemmick's home. Mr. Wemmick, Pip's coworker, has a slight case of multiple personality disorder. In the office, he is like a machine. This appearance he puts forth as an illusion of a hard working man while the truth is that he is very vivacious and sprightly. At his comfortable, castle-like home, Wemmick is very pleasant and cheerful. Pip made the mistake of mentioning Mr. Wemmick's dual personality in the work place, in front of Mr. Jaggers, the boss. Pip "turned to Wemmick, and said, ' Wemmick, I know you to be a man with a gentle heart. I have seen your pleasant home, and your old father, and all the innocent cheerful playful ways with which you refresh your business life. '" (443) Mr. Jaggers, utterly surprised, said, "'What's all this? You with an old father, and you with pleasant and playful ways? This man must be the most cunning impostor in all London.'" (443) Wemmick's appearance to the public and his work place concealed the truth behind his true personality. He was very embarrassed at this glimpse into the truth of his illusion, and retorted, "'Not a bit of it,' returned Wemmick, growing bolder and bolder. 'I think you're another.'" (443) By this quote, Wemmick reveals that Jaggers too can conceal the truth. In one of Jaggers cases as a lawyer, he had to try a woman named Molly for a murder case. He dressed her up in smaller, womanly clothes to make her appearance seem smaller and more petite. She was acquitted due to this illusion, although the reality behind this appearance was that she really had committed this crime. In more than one instant in this novel, the outcomes of situations are often decided on the appearance of illusions versus the truth of reality.
The mendacity of the characters and the settings in this book enforce that if one can pursue reality, the truth can be found behind an illusion. Pips expectations were thwarted because his actual dreams were shattered when the truth was revealed. The social status of 19th century England was just a forefront to rate people by their financial and economical advantages and disadvantages. In reality, social status does not mean that those richer lead better lives. In actuality, the lower class is above the upper classes because of the moral merit that they possess in comparison to those above them. The settings in Great Expectations emphasize the differences between appearance and reality in that illusions are not always the truth.
Great Expectations - a look at themes, characters and style
General Info: A story of moral redemption. The hero is an orphan raised in humble surroundings, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, comes into a fortune, and promptly disavows family and friends. When the fortune first loses its lustre, then evaporates completely, he confronts his own ingratitude, and learns to love the man who both created and destroyed him. The story is told by the hero himself, and the challenge Dickens faced in devising this first-person narrative was two-fold. He had to ensure that ...
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Great Expectations - a look at themes, characters and style
General Info: A story of moral redemption. The hero is an orphan raised in humble surroundings, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, comes into a fortune, and promptly disavows family and friends. When the fortune first loses its lustre, then evaporates completely, he confronts his own ingratitude, and learns to love the man who both created and destroyed him. The story is told by the hero himself, and the challenge Dickens faced in devising this first-person narrative was two-fold. He had to ensure that Pip¡¦s confession of his faults ring true, so that we do not suppose him to be admitting them merely in order to win our sympathy. And he had to validate Pip¡¦s redemption by showing that it produces good deeds as well as good words. Its admirable briskness is nowhere more apparent than in Pip¡¦s account of the feelings with which he once greeted the prospect of a visit from his old friend and protector, the blacksmith Joe Gargery. ¡§Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties, with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money.¡¨ (218) There are times when Pip lays on the self-mortification a little too thickly, and times when he appears desperate for our approval. By and large, though, he is hard on himself to exactly the right (the convincing) degree.
Redemption
The proof of Pip¡¦s redemption lies in good deeds rather than good words.: his secret acts of kindness, in securing Herbert a partnership in Clarricker¡¦s, and in securing Miss Havisham¡¦s good opinion of the long-suffering Matthew Pocket; his final refusal to accept money from MH, or from Magwitch; and, most significantly, his love for Magwitch. The last of these good deeds, and the one hardest for the writer to authenticate, is made piercingly vivid by a subtle modification of narrative technique. This occurs in Vol III ch. XV, which describes the attempt to spirit Magwitch away down the Thames. Here, for the only time in the novel, the first-person narrative ceases to be Pip¡¦s way of thinking, however, honestly, about himself, and becomes instead an act of attention to others, and to the unfolding events. Ripples of unease spread through the narrative, in descriptions of the docks and the river, but this is a generalised anxiety, or alertness, rather than the self-absorption, justifiable or not, which has up to this time held Pip in its grip. The love Pip feels for Magwith, after his capture, is thus a knowledge earned by self-effacement (destruction).
Sins
Pip certainly has some sins to expiate (compensate), notable his ingratitude towards Joe and Biddy, and his initial revulsion from Magwitch. But his sense of guilt seems consistently in excess of the actual wrong he has done: less gradually intensifying recognition of moral failure than a deep mysterious affinity with criminal conduct. This becomes explicit when, awaiting Estella¡¦s arrival at the coach-office in Cheapside, he kills time by accompanying Wemmick on a tour of Newgate Prison.
Orlick
Orlick is Pip¡¦s shadow. We fist encounter him working side by side with Pip at the forge. When Mrs Joe is brutally struck down, Orlish assaults her, but Pip might be said to have supplied the weapon, a leg-iron. Pip is employed to entertain Miss Havisham; Orlick, somewhat later, to keep her gate. Pip regards Biddy as a sister, Orlick¡¦s intentions towards her are less honorable. Pip associates with Magwitch, Orlick with Magwitch¡¦s bitter enemy, Compeyson. Orlick, in short, seems embarked on some great expectations of his own, sullenly tracking Pip¡¦s upward progress from the marshes to Satis House and on to London. Pip cannot rid himself of this obscene shadow. In Vol III, Orlick lures Pip to an abandoned sluice-house on the marshes, meaning not only to kill him, but to overwhelm him with accusations. Pip, he claims, has thwarted him at every turn. But the charge he makes with the greatest conviction is that Pip bears the ultimate responsibility of Mrs. Joe¡¦s death, even though he himself struck the fatal blow. ¡§But it warn¡¦t old Orlick as did it; it was you. You was favoured, and he was bullied and beat. Old Orlick bullied and beat, eh? Now you pays for it. you done it, now you pays for it.¡¨ Orlick, who assulted Mrs Joe with intent, holds Pip, who inadvertently supplied the weapon, responsible for the crime. This fantasised inversion of responsibilities allows us to recognise Orlick as Pip¡¦s double.
Obstacles
Dickens knew that there are always obstacles to be overcome in the fulfillment of great expectations, and that hose obstacles must sometimes be overcome violently. Mrs. Joe was, in her refusal to see anything at all in Pip, an obstacle to great expectations. She had to go. And yet Pip, who childishly believes that achievement and status will be conferred upon him, without any effort on his part, cannot bring himself to get rid of her. Orlish puts into effect Pip¡¦s fantasy of vengeance. ¡§You done it; now you pays for it.¡¨ The guilt acknowledges the fantasy. No wonder that when Pip first hears of her death he assumes that he is in some way reponsible. There are other obstacles in his path, Uncle Pumblechook, who never misses an opportunity to patronise him or deprive him of credit. Orlick does for Pumblechook, too, leading a gang of thieves who loot his shop, drink his wine, pull his nose, and stuff his mouth full of flowering annuals. Since Pumblechook has done Pip insult rather than injury, the vengeance wrought on him is less severe, but vengeance it none the less it, as the gusto of Joe¡¦s description of the event makes plain (446). Some obstacles, however, are beyond Orlick¡¦s reach, and require the services of a second double, in the shape of Bentley Drummle. Drummle is an upper-class copy of Orlick. Like Orlick, he is powerful, swarthy, inarticulate, hot-tempered. Like Orlick, he lounges and lurks. After Estella has rejected Pip¡¦s love, Drummle marries her, and beats her up. Both men disappear from the narrative once they have fulfilled their function by executing Pip¡¦s unacknowledged fantasies of violent revenge.
Guilt
Pip, then, may well have something apart from ingratitude to feel guilty about. However, he associates guilt not with particular events, but with a general unease which he has felt as long as he can remember. Magwitch¡¦s appearance in the churchyard coincides with his first impression of ¡¥the identity of things¡¦ (3). Pip feels uneasy from the moment he begins to feel at all. But even that first impression is in some respects a second impression. It marks the moment not when he ¡¥found out¡¦, but when he ¡¥found out for certain¡¦, that the marshes were the marshes, the river the river, and so on. Magwitch is not altogether a new thing, but rather a thing peeled away from or toen off a landscape Pip has inhabited since birth. ¡§A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and toen by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose theeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin¡¦ (4). Magwitch is an atmosphere, a condition, not a moral dilemma. He soon returns whence he came. By the river stands a gibbet, with some chains dangling form it which had once held a pirate. Pip¡¦s last sight of Magwitch, after their first encounter, is of him ¡¥limping on towards this latter, as is he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again.¡¨ (7) Chapter II introduces us to Pip¡¦s sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who, having brought him up ¡¥by hand¡¦, needs no convincing of his aboriginal criminality. Mrs. Joe thinks it hard enough to be a blacksmith¡¦s wife (¡¥an dhim a Gargery¡¦) without also being Pip¡¦s mother (9). Her permanent sense of grievance has long since persuaded him that he must always have been a criminal. The guilt sharply reawakened by Magwitch is a familiar feeling. He thus takes a double ¡¥oppressed¡¦ conscience back out on to the marshes with him, in Chapter III. Criminality, in the shape of the convict, is and always has been a physical condition, of filth and hunger, which may at any moment enfold him, but which can also be annulled by an act of kindness.
Cognitive Revision
Great Expectations is, so it would seem, the story of cognitive revision- Pip¡¦s discovery that Magiwthc his benefactor, not Miss Havisham- which precipitates a moral revision: ¡¥I only saw in him a much better man that I had been to Hoe¡¦ (446). But the terms of that cognitibe revision throw considerable doubt on it efficacy. The task facing Pip is to replace a fairy god mother by an excaped convict; or, the world of desire by the world of guilt. Chapter VIII, which describes Pip¡¦s fist visit to Satis House, brutally emphasises the difference between those worlds. While the encounter with Magwitch repeats a sense of guilt with is as old as life and consciousness itself, the meeting with Estella and MH is the birth of a new concept of the self: it dates the first perception of the self as deficiency, as defined by lack and hence as subject to desire. Pip becomes aware, for the first time, of the coarseness of his hands and the thickness of his boots. The yearning created in that moment is a yearning both for Estella and for social status. It is because he feels a new feeling at Satis House, rather than the repetition of an old one, that he identifies his great expectations with MH and Estella. ¡¥That was a memorable day to me for it made great changes in me.¡¦ (72) The scene in VolIIChXI, in which Trabb¡¦s boy makes savage fun of Pip¡¦s new clothes and new manner, wonderfully catches the seer unfamiliarity of the self created by desire. QUOTE: ¡¥Words cannot state¡K..don¡¦t know yah!¡¨ (246) Trabb¡¦s boy was vigourous, containing uncontrollable and precise vengefulness.
Great Expectations: the world of laws, crime and punishment
Essay written by: Judith
The World of Laws, Crime and Punishment in Great Expectations
Great Expectations criticises the Victorian judicial and penal system. Through the novel, Charles Dickens displays his point of view of criminality and punishment. This is shown in his portraits of all pieces of such system: the lawyer, the clerk, the judge, the prison authorities and the convicts. In treating the theme of the Victorian system of punishment, Dickens shows his position against prisons, transportation and death penalty. The main character, a little child who has expectations of becoming a gentleman to be of the same social position of the girls he loves, passes from having no interest on criminality and its penalties to be very concerned on the issue. By means of other characters, for instance Mrs. Joe Gargery, Dickens tries to define the people's common view about convicts, transportation and capital punishment. In portraying the character of the convict, Dickens sets out the case in hand of two people sentenced to transportation for forgery of banknotes and analyses their psychology. By reading the novel, the reader becomes aware of the Victorian unfair justice regarding poor and illiterate people, but advantageous towards the rich and educated middle-class.
The prison system in England may have had a significant effect on the life and writing of Charles Dickens due to his father's imprisonment in Marshalsea Debtors' Prison as a consequence of his debts. These kinds of prisons came to be workhouses for people who had lost all their belongings. In case debtors had family, it must accompany them in prison. This painful experience may have kept way in his mind for the rest of his life. His involvement with the legal world came when he was employed as a clerk at a lawyer's office. His later interest in penology made him read many works related to this subject. For this reason, he incorporated both the treatment of convicts and capital punishment in many novels. Great Expectations is a harsh criticism on the British legal and penal System as well as on Victorian society, achieved after exploring his characters' behaviour, since the laws were only unfair for those on the bottom rung of the social ladder.
London was one of the greatest cities in the world in the 19th C. At this time huge amounts of money were invested in industry and buildings as trade with other countries increased. On the other side of the business world, made rich by the cheap labour of the exploited working class, there was a world of poverty, theft and criminality, increased by the Industrial Revolution. In this acquisitive society, the only important thing was to make fortune, so people were much terrified of losing it. Because of this, any sort of theft was regarded as a serious crime and laws were made to show people that this offence was harshly punished.
At the time when Great Expectations is set, the 1810-20s, there were a great number of offenders, most of whom were convicted of theft. Theft was considered a felony like homicide and was punishable with death. Jails were dark, overcrowded and filthy. All kinds of prisoners were kept together with no separation of men and women, the young and the old, or the sane and the insane. The poor conditions of the Victorian prisons are described in detail by Dickens in Great Expectations. In the 2nd volume of the novel, Pip comes across "a grim stone building" (163): Newgate Prison. Looking with horror, Pip offers us a portrait of the inside of the prison and criticism on capital punishment:
"As I declined the proposal on the plea of an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard and show me where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors' door, out of which culprits came to be hanged: heightening the interest of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand that ''four on 'em'' would come out at the door the day after tomorrow at eight in the morning to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a sickening idea of London" (164)
At this time the reformation of the British Prison System took place and a new alternative for punishment was found in transportation. Regarding the colonialist question, the Victorians believed that the easiest and cheapest way of eliminating the criminal element from the British society was sending them as far as they could and never allowing them to return under threat of having them executed. Many prisoners were convicted because of little thefts such as stealing pocket-handkerchiefs, watches, and jewellery, and the forgery of banknotes. All these little offences, considered as serious crimes, represented a threat to the Victorian commerce. Dickens writes about transportation in the 1860s, when it ceased to be a system of punishment. Probably, Dickens wanted to show how unfair it was to eliminate criminality of the Victorian society by sentencing convicts to transportation as it were not a social problem.
The hulks, the name that received the ships that transported convicts to the penal colony Australia, were used as floating prisons. In the novel, Dickens offers the reader a portrait of the convicts when being transported to the hulks:
"At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the dockyards by stage-coach (...) The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had irons on their legs-irons of a pattern that I knew well. They wore the dress that I likewise knew well. Their keeper had a brace of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm; but he was on terms of good understanding with them, and stood, with them beside him, looking on at the putting-to of horses, rather with an air as if the convicts were an interesting Exhibition not formally open at the moment..." (224)
Before reaching Australia, convicts spent about eight months on the hulks doing a hard labour for ten hours a day. It was very difficult to survive the horrors of the hulks because not only they were overcrowded, but also there were contagious diseases and malnutrition. As 'Convicts to Australia' reports, "Convicts were housed below decks on the prison deck and often further confined behind bars. In many cases they were restrained in chains and were only allowed on deck for fresh air and exercise. Conditions were cramped and they slept on hammocks". Also the treatment of convicts on trips was inhuman: "Cruel masters, harsh discipline and scurvy, dysentery and typhoid resulted in a huge loss of life". Governed by rules based on survival instead of mutual aid among convicts, the life on the hulks was quite difficult. The cause was that the legal system mixed thieves with criminals. That is, people who committed little thefts because of their poor condition and people with mental diseases capable of committing crimes. For all these reasons, many convicts attempted to escape from the hulks, which makes an appearance in the opening chapters of Great Expectations as the Hulks are part of Pip's habitat. Pip and his family were eating when the guns were fired, which warned people about convicts' escape from the hulks. Once the convicts entered Australia, they were assigned their labours: to work for the government or to work for a landowner.
The common view of Victorian society was that convicts were brutal and senseless criminals as, at the beginning of the novel, Mrs. Joe Gargery explains Pip "People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad" (14). Common people showed their solidarity with the forces of law when helping the soldiers to find the escaped convicts as happens in the first chapters. As showed in the last part of the novel, people liked witnessing trials and executions and enjoyed themselves seeing the condemned suffering. This was like a show, which reminds us of the Roman spectacle in the theatre with gladiators and Christians and lions.
Charles Dickens not only analyses the criminal psychology, but also that of the little pieces that compound both legal and penal system. In the novel, Mr. Jaggers is the representative figure of the lawyer of the time. His office is located in Little Britain, the street where lawyers had their offices, near the Old Bailey (criminal courts) and Newgate prison. That is, the Old Town of London: the world of criminality. Dickens describes the interior of the lawyers' offices through Pip the first moment he enters Mr. Jaggers' office:
"To Pip's eyes the rooms seem filled with shabby people (...).These are sinister misfits whose appearances suggest death and degradation and dirt rather than the predictability and neatness we associate with lawyers today. There is an atmosphere of corruption or at least the possibility of it" (Barnes).
This sinister office also contains in its walls the busts of two clients who died in gallows. This description has contact with reality, as there was a room in Newgate prison where there were many busts of executed prisoners, in which stuck out the mark that the rope had made in their necks.
"There were not so many papers about, as I should have expected to see; and there were some odd objects about, that I should not have expected to see-such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose" (162).
The lawyer's office is also near Smithfield market, a cattle market where animals were slaughtered publicly. The comparison between Smithfield and Newgate is established when Pip is conducted inside the prison and imagines that convicts are going to be executed in the same way as animals are in Smithfield.
Mr. Jaggers, the sinister lawyer, has a strong character in the exercise of power. He provokes horror on Pip as Pip notices his unpleasant tone when arguing with his clerk, Mr. Wemmick, and the way he threats his clients.
"The description of his office suggests that a large part of his work as a solicitor consists of manipulating evidence and he is always seen followed by a troop of supplicants whom he brushes off disdainfully, much as someone might try to get rid of a tiresome puppy (...). He bullies them and gleefully profits from their problems" (Barnes).
The treatment of his housekeeper, Molly, is also another example of his character. Molly was time ago one of his clients, accused of murder. After having defended her and won the trial, she became his submissive housekeeper. Being exhibited as an animal, she was forced to show her disfigured and scarred wrists to the guests Pip, Dummle and Startop in a meal (212). Another example of Mr. Jaggers' power is the fact that his clients have never dared steal in his house despite never locking the door and having objects of great value because they fear him. Furthermore, there is also another passage in which Pip accompanies Mr. Jaggers to the Police Court to examine a client. Here readers can see the fear the clients have of Mr. Jaggers when saying something that he didn't approve (200).
Regarding Mr. Jaggers' private life, the world of law is his only life because he has not disconnected the private life from the work. Thus his life is only focused on the office, which is contrasted with his clerk's life. Mr. Wemmick separates radically his personal life in the castle and his office life. The separation of the two lives almost makes him like two people who behave differently in the two spaces. As Anne Barnes observes, "Wemmick and other office clerks were more likely to move just south of the river to places like Walworth, from where it was easy to commute daily into the City".
"Wemmick himself, who in Walworth seems a model of upright living, sees nothing sinister about wearing pieces of jewellery which have been given to him as bribes by people who have now been executed for their crimes. The acquiring of portable property by dubious means is regarded as a normal part of legal life" (Barnes).
Contrary to him, Mr. Jaggers lived in a gloomy apartment, near to Little Britain, filled with books related to his profession.
The Lord Chief of Justice (the judge) and the prison authorities are also treated in the novel. Not only are they presented as people who made business by charging the entry for the judicial spectacle, but also stealing clothes after executing prisoners:
"(...) the more so as the Lord Chief Justice's proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes, which had evidently not belonged to him originally, and which, I took it into my head, he had bought cheap of the executioner" (164).
Moreover, there was a law whereby the money of an emancipated convict who dared to return Great Britain was confiscated by the government. Dickens exemplifies this in the novel when Magwitch is caught in the river and all the money given to Pip is seized by the government. Apart from this, prison authorities made business just inviting people to enter there by some money, which is shown through Pip's eyes:
"While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially drunk minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and hear the trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front place for half-a-crown, whence I should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice in his wig and robes-mentioning that awful personage like waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced price of eighteenpence" (164).
Through the novel, Dickens tries to demonstrate that convicts were victims of the cruel laws that sentenced people to death or transportation, just only for being poor. By doing this, he explores the criminal psychology to difference the good-hearted criminal punished for his/her social status and that greedy criminal who uses people to get profit. As Leavis and Lewis point out, "Dickens is always asking questions such as 'Why do people in similar circumstances and under the same pressure behave differently?' ".
Abel Magwitch is one of the two criminals portrayed in the novel who represents the honest man punished for his social status. He was a vagrant who survived due to little theft. He spent all his youth "in jail and out of jail" (342) and all his adulthood in Australia. He was imprisoned for putting forged banknotes into circulation, a common activity that increased during the first half of the 19th C. He received a harder sentence because of his harsh manners when defending himself and his wretch appearance, but mostly for his antecedents (346). Then, he was punished with transportation and was sent to New South Wales, Australia. There, he was assigned to a private landowner and worked as a shepherd until his master's death (also an emancipated convict), when he was left all his money and emancipated himself. As an honest man he earned the money by working several years instead of stealing it. Australia meant a new life for the convicted poor because it was rich in primary resources and there were lots of opportunities to get rich.
Magwitch understands that despite being wealthy, he will never ascend the social ladder in a heartless society that rejects convicted and ex-convicted people. Magwitch once heard a colonist saying: "He was a convict, a few year ago, and is an ignorant common fellow now, for he's lucky" (317). So He became a benefactor of the little child who helped him on the marshes of Kent and decided to make him a gentleman as a symbol of gratitude towards Pip. When he returned England to see the boy he helped, he was sentenced to death, without pardon. As Leavis and Lewis claim, "Charles Dickens was very sensitive to the physical and psychological effects that punishment had on the individuals" . The psychological effect that transportation left in Magwitch is the fact that he sleeps with a pistol on the pillow (320).
Another theme in this novel regarding Magwitch is the idea of fatherhood. He was not allowed to take care of his daughter, Estella, and he was said that she was dead. So the protection for his daughter and his feelings of parenthood are shown in his relationship towards Pip considering himself as Pip's second father. However, Pip, being a respectable gentleman, feels repugnance towards the convict. His snobbish attitude cannot support the idea of being a gentleman because of the gratitude of a convict.
Compeyson is the other criminal portrayed by Dickens who represents meanness, greed and disloyalty. He was a gentleman as he was educated in a boarding school. He forged the banknotes so that his associate Magwitch could put them into circulation. He used Magwitch, like he used Miss. Havisham to get her money, to get profit of him in case they were caught. In the trial he got a lesser sentence due to his education and rich appearance, which Magwitch had not. Here Dickens demonstrates that laws were unfair for those on the bottom of the ladder, but not for the gentlemen.
The theme of prisons as punishment is also treated in the novel. As I mentioned before, the first time Pip meets Newgate prison, he goes out of the tour round the prison with horror. This feeling is widened when Magwitch is sentenced to death and sent to this prison. Despite being ill, he is jailed in the common prison with sane and insane prisoners. There, some sick prisoners acted as nurses for the prisoners who were worse (453).
It is said that Dickens Newgate prison not only is part of the history of England, but also a part of Dickens life. The experience Dickens obtained in his childhood and the visits he made to Newgate may have given him such information to write the novel with a realist tone. By means of the narration of Pip taking care of Magwitch in Newgate, Dickens express his attitude towards the conditions of the British prisons and his totally rejection of capital punishment when the condemned are waiting for the sentence of execution:
"Penned in the dock (...) were the two-and-thirty men and women; some defiant some stricken with terror, some sobbing and weeping, some covering their faces, some staring gloomily about (...). They were all formally doomed, and some of them were supported out, and some of them sauntered out with a haggard look of bravery, and a few nodded to the gallery and others went out chewing the fragments of herb they had taken from the sweet herbs lying about" (451-452).
It is when Pip learns to feel beyond the mask of respectability that he sees the unfair justice that condemns people with good-hearts:
"For now, my repugnance to him had all melted away, and in the hunted wounded shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man who meant to be my benefactor, and who had left affectionately, gratefully, and generously, towards me with great constancy through a series of years" (441).
As a conclusion, Charles Dickens criticises both sorts of punishment, the prison system and transportation as well as the unfairness carried for the judicial systems when creating laws little favourable for the poor. At the same time, he points out the Victorian hypocrisy of the rich and the lack of culture of the poor regarding the world of criminality
The three stages of Pip's expectations are also stages of his personal and moral development
Essay written by: A_writer
When Pip was a child, he was a contented young boy. He wanted to grow up to be apprenticed to Joe and "had believed the forge as the glowing road to manhood." He was a very sensitive child and afraid of doing something wrong this was shown when his guilty conscience along with his imagination haunted him with images of him being caught after he stole food for the convict. His fear of doing wrong was made clear when he referred to the time they took to discover the stolen items as "prolonging my misery." The way his conscience had to wrestle with the idea that he had done a good deed showed insecurity as well as being afraid of doing wrong. He was an insecure child and would do anything but lose Joe's love such as when he would not tell Joe about the stolen file.
"The fear of losing Joe's confidence, and thenceforth sitting in the chimney-corner at night, staring drearily at my forever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue."
After visiting Miss Havisham's and meeting Estella, Pip began to think about things he would not before. Estella insults him about his thick boots and coarse hands, before he would not have even thought that he had had thick boots let alone the fact that it was a bad thing. Pip became upset by the fact that he was ignorant and inadequate. He was ashamed of being a common labouring boy and he now thought everything to be coarse and common. As Estella looked down upon him, he did to, however Estella was attractive, and he confessed "She's more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account." This was the cause of his new discontented disposition and so he looked down on things and people that prevented him becoming a gentleman, and even started to feel "disaffection to Joe and the forge." He begins to despise the things that kept him at the forge and believed that he "should never like Joe's trade." This also showed ingratitude, as he was not thankful for anything he had. Pip was inconsiderate and since he believed Biddy to below him he talked carelessly and made comments such as "If I could only get my self to fall in love with you-". These refer to him being unfeeling as he could not see that these comments were unkindly.
Estella brings about changes in him; he is no longer contented at being at the forge. He does not consider Joe's companionship as anything very important and most of all he is completely dissatisfied with his place in life and his future.
When Pip receives the news that he is to come into money, he becomes patronising towards Biddy, accuses her of being "envious and grudging," and talks in a "Virtuous and superior tone." When he asks Biddy to improve Joe and she does not think that that is necessary. He began to regain a little warmth when he cried and was sorry for the way he had behaved but obviously not enough to make him go home and rectify what he had done. All the guilt he felt was soon forgotten when he reached London. He became frivolous using his money carelessly not realising the consequences. Pip began to feel increasingly superior towards Joe, and became easily influenced by others around him. He did not go and visit Joe on returning to Satis House because he felt that to be below him and because he thought that Miss Havisham "would be contemptuous of him." While Pip was in debt a friend advised him to spend even more money to join a club called the Finches, which would swallow up even more money, and he would gain nothing for it. This shows once again a person who has a weak mind.
His friendship with Herbert was solid and they showed this by each being able to tell each other things they were unable to tell anyone else. Such as when Estella was plaguing Pip's mind he told Herbert about it and he tried to help. The same thing applied when Herbert was able to tell Pip about Clara. Pip showed that he was still compassionate when he realised what he was doing to Herbert and tried to resolve it. He saw that he was the cause of Herbert's debt and so he tried to help him, he wanted for his "own good fortune to reflect some rays upon him." This showed that Pip still realised friendship was important and that doing a good deed was important no matter how much other people believed it to be a bad idea. At the end of the second stage Pip had slightly redeemed himself and looked like he was becoming a better person by wanting to do something good with his money and not caring about other people views.
At the beginning of the third part of Pip's expectations, he has discovered who his benefactor is. The idea completely disgusted him, "involuntary shudder" referring to the way he reacts when thinking about Magwitch. He felt that Magwitch was below him in society and would never be a gentleman. This showed that he was selfish and conceited as he did not welcome in his benefactor but showed contempt for him.
As Pip realised that Magwitch was a good person after he was told the story of Compeyson. Pip's attitudes towards Magwitch change and he seems to realise that what is on the inside counts and the exterior is not important. He sees that the law had wronged Magwitch and that this poor man had "worked hard, that" Pip "should be above work" . Pip became more concerned about Magwitch, which showed that Pip was becoming a more caring person.
After Magwitch had been captured, Pip became increasing attentive and all his contempt had gone. He became a man who shamelessly loved a convict when he says "Please God, I will be as true to you, as you have been to me!" Pip does everything in his power to change the sentence. However knowing Magwitch did not have long to live he makes his last hours happy by telling him of his successful daughter and concealing from him that after he was dead he will not receive any of his money. Pip was able to see the good in someone who was openly supposed to be bad; this showed that he was not blinded by prejudice.
When Pip became ill and Joe nursed him back to health Pip realised the importance of friendship "We have had a time together, Joe, that I can never forget. There were days once, I know, that I did for awhile forget; but I shall never forget these."
This showed that he knew what he had done was wrong and wanted to change. He was ready to repent for everything he had done. He wanted forgiveness from the people he had treated the worst. He showed his willingness to become humble by saying, Biddy would ask what she will of him
"It shall rest with you to say whether I work at the forge with Joe, or whether I shall try for any different occupation down in this country, or whether we shall go away to a distant place, where an opportunity awaits me, which I set aside when it was offered until I knew your answer."
Pip had developed into a sensitive young man regaining his lost values and realising what a real gentleman was.
Pip went through the whole book wanting to be a gentleman but to be one he needed to know what one was. At the beginning, Pip thought that a gentle man was someone with lots of money and was frivolous. He also thought that they had to be a scholar and to have an extensive general knowledge. However, he was taught that even if you were rich and had a good education you still might not be a gentleman such as Bentley Drummle. Someone like Joe who is just a common man is a true "gentle-man." He helped Pip even after he had been so rude to him and he wanted no thanks in return. To be a gentleman, you have to be charitable.
At the end of the book, Pip was as close to being a gentleman as he ever was and therefore had a chance with Estella.