How far do you agree that Great Expectations is a condemnation of Dickens contemporary society?

How far do you agree that Great Expectations is a condemnation of Dickens’ contemporary society?

I believe that to quite a large extent, this statement appears to be true, because in the novel, Dickens’ condemns the justice system and the class system, to show the injustice that is present in Victorian society.

Firstly, Dickens shows his condemnation of the justice system by presenting the excessive influence of lawyers within the system; Jaggers made ‘magistrates shiver under a single bite of his finger’ which on the face of it is very concerning, because these people who must make a decision on whether a person is guilty or not, and so if a person has such great influence that they can make people ‘shiver’ with fear if they disagree with them, then something can be said to be wrong with the system, as everybody should be equal and not be threatened. In addition, the fact Magwitch had to ‘sell all the clothes on his back’ to be able to afford a lawyer shows that it was hard for poor people to afford a lawyer and so they were most likely to lose in court, and it therefore shows us how unfair this is because people have to go to extreme lengths to be represented properly. Furthermore, the fact that a defence on the part of Compeyson was ‘he you has afore you, side by side, two persons as your eyes can separate wide… always wi’his guilt brought home’ is also interesting, because his lawyers are using their physical appearance and known stereotypes as defence, and this should not be present in a respected legal system, because a stereotype is a generalisation, and so cannot be true about everyone. Dickens condemns the fact that people can be made guilty just because of the social class that they belong to.