Great Expectations Foreword

 

Great Expectations is a bildungsroman set in nineteenth century England, written by Charles Dickens as his thirteenth novel in 1860 and published in 1861. Dickens initially had his novel published as a serial in his weekly periodical All the Year Round, and his success grew after his fourth publishment from four hundred sales, to forty thousand copies per month. After learning that Dickens had his work published in All the Year Round, I felt an attachment to him. It had come to me that he was not simply a novelist, rather a revolutionist for the poor. His publishing method was inspiring, not only was it of intelligence, through the foreboding nature of the novel to entice mass readers, but more so how he crafted it to be easily accessible to those who may have not usually had the opportunity to enjoy the entertainments of literature. He had his work published in the newspaper through his awareness that it could reach the masses, as well as provide entertainment for the lower class, because newspapers were open to the majority. His method for me, was what separated him from other novelists of the nineteenth century. Dickens was writing to socially reform, his proposal to the audience in higher social standings was for them to perceive the lower class in approach to not how difficult it is for them, but more so this is how it would be if you were them. He himself had suffered the hardships of working as a child, in the lower class. Dickens generated sympathy towards the poor where the nature of Great Expectations’ realism simply centered through the presentation of the moral growth in Pip. Thus, enhancing Dicken’s overarching meaning to be, a projection of equal opportunities and treatment for all.

Great Expectations was pivotal to the Victorian Era, while it demonstrated the coming of age of the protagonist, Pip, who is initially introduced as an orphan with little ambition to be no more than a black smith like his brother and father figure, Joe. He is depicted to have received a benefactor with the enterprise of becoming a gentleman; the novel depicts the alterations Pip must make to suit his movement through the class system. However, a Victorian archetype that Dickens explored in Great Expectations is the notion of being born into a social class, and that is the position where one is to remain, as well as belong throughout their life - a mandatory of the collective Victorian consciousness. It is wonderful how Dickens introduced Pip’s coming into consciousness of social class, prior the peripeteia of wanting a more “genteel” approach in life. He comes into awareness of his poverty on his first visit to ‘Satis House’ where he is to notice his “coarse hands” and “common boots”. The notion that it required only one visit for Pip to realise his social standing emphasises the extent of the class divides within the Victorian England social hierarchy.

In the social analysis, Great Expectations, Dickens became an outspoken critic of unjust economic and social conditions, enlightening those who had been ignorant to the sufferings of the proletariat. Dicken’s echoed Karl Marx’s theory that capitalists could only become richer by lowering wages, thereby reducing the living standards of workers until they had no choice but to revolt. One can perceive this through the contrast of the hard-working life Joe leads in the forge, in comparison to the flamboyant lifestyle of a gentlemen. Politically, Victorian England was conservative with the government being composed heavily of aristocratic men. Great Expectations highlights Dickens individuality as a reformist, providing evidence of him being an advocate for inhumane treatment of the poor, for example, the exploration of Pip’s suffering from childhood to adulthood; the first-person narrative directly emphasises such pain of this suffering inflicted. From Dickens using such literary techniques he generates a closeness with the reader, where one's perception of the poor embodies a shift. The mode of summoning his messages to society through literature heightens my admiration for him, it provided an alternative method for reformation, and through the political changes within society after the publishment of his novels, proved a gradual success, with more beginning to revolt against the class system. After his novels infiltrated within the minds of society, the Factory Act was induced of the 1833 and the Mines Act, 1842.I believe without the influence from his works such as Great Expectations such movements taking place may have elongated as less individuals would have been enlightened to such turmoil in the lower class. Although Great Expectations performs as a critique of societal conventions, it also conveys universal themes of family, love, and religion - a form of uniting the people regardless of their class.

When one is to read Great Expectations, they should take caution in ensuring they read it with the heightened awareness of the class systems, and the socially imposed identities that this gave to characters- a symbol of the Victorian people. It could be questioned how Pip could truly identify with the higher class when his upbringing had differed massively from theirs. If one is to delve further into this notion, they can use the example of Pip being bought up by Mrs Joe Gargery who did not conform to the ‘Angels in the House’ yet bought him up “by hand "as an automatic differentiation to those being bought up in the social class of etiquette. Another hindrance for Pip was also his lack of education, which was imperative in climbing the social ladder. It was not until 1880 an Education Act was induced within British society, which made school attendance compulsory between the ages of five and ten. Leaving children like Pip being forced into any advances that were proposed to them, in this instance being forced into ‘Satis House’ as merely ‘the boy’.  Through the works of such like Great Expectations, Dickens became a huge driving force of these movements as he treated his fiction as an encompass of the debates surrounding moral and social reforms. He starred most of his novels around the lack of guidance for children which was becoming a huge issue in Victorian society - resulting in mass child labour. Dickens explores the lack of opportunities for the lower-class children, in Victorian society children were sent off to work without any freedom of choice; they essentially could not afford to have one. Many were forced to work in dangerous conditions. Due to the industrial revolution, there was a higher demand for factory workers, so children were sent to work in factories and coal mines to accumulate as much money for their families as possible.

Dicken’s works all rendered a similar collective meaning, with a common motif being a poor and vulnerable protagonist receiving fortune yet having the outcome of the character executed differently. Thus, serving an array of new meanings surrounding disregarded social dilemmas each time. If one is to take Dickens’ famous Oliver Twist for instance, there is similarities to Great Expectations, where for example, the protagonist is an orphan that falls into the arms of wealth. However, in Great Expectations Pip’s hamartia of ambition prevents him from maintaining his position within his newly, affirmed social class. Whereas, in Oliver Twist the hardships of being an orphan within the mistaken class lead to him permanently being liberated from his poverty. Furthermore, the difference which was highlighted for me in the individual journeys of Pip and Oliver was that Oliver was born from a family of nobility. Therefore, Oliver’s struggle through the harsh conditions and brutal treatment that he encountered was durable, because he had this intrinsic sense of nobility from his heritage. It was the spirit of nobility that empowered him, which considerably directed him back to the arms of where he ‘belongs’. Whereas, Pip had no sense of nobility and was almost defeatist in the face of others in the higher class for example: his submission to Estella’s insulting nature as children. I suppose that Dickens may have used Oliver’s success and Pip’s defeat as a social critique of the archetype which was, you are supposed to stay where you are born. Oliver is successful in the mission of liberating himself from the workhouse and his frowned upon social standing. Whereas Pip, is left to accept his downfall- was Pip a weaker character as he lacked the heritage of nobility?

Edmund Wilson concluded that Dickens's public persona as a successful novelist and energetic social reformer were a cover for the deep pain he held due to his own sense of shame and rejection as a child – when he had to work in a boot-blacking factory at the age of ten, and his family were imprisoned for debt. Wilson inferred that this pain had emerged in his fascination for outcasts, criminals, and murderers, often coupled with a sympathetic portrayal of neglected children such as Pip. After reading Great Expectations, one can agree with Wilson, due to the fact the connection felt with Pip is so intense that it is inevitable to believe that his character was carved from a source of self-experience- in this sense Dickens. The works of Dickens, I believe, consist of his own empirical evidence of Victorian society, highlighting him as a realist of the nineteenth century, and that is what makes his work so striking – it is from the core of his pain caused by society. He laid bare the tensions within himself in such a way as to reach the deep and typical anxieties of his own age – and ours, shaped as it is by its predecessors.