Great Expectations –Charles
Dickens
Themes
Ambition and Self-Improvement
The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection,
loyalty, and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and
class. Dickens establishes the theme and shows Pip learning this lesson,
largely by exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvement—ideas that quickly
become both the thematic center of the novel and the psychological mechanism
that encourages much of Pip’s development. At heart, Pip is an idealist;
whenever he can conceive of something that is better than what he already has,
he immediately desires to obtain the improvement. When he sees Satis House, he
longs to be a wealthy gentleman; when he thinks of his moral shortcomings, he
longs to be good; when he realizes that he cannot read, he longs to learn how.
Pip’s desire for self-improvement is the main source of the novel’s title:
because he believes in the possibility of advancement in life, he has “great
expectations” about his future.
Ambition and
self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectations—moral,
social, and educational; these motivate Pip’s best and his worst behavior
throughout the novel. First, Pip desires moral self-improvement. He is
extremely hard on himself when he acts immorally and feels powerful guilt that
spurs him to act better in the future. When he leaves for London, for instance,
he torments himself about having behaved so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy.
Second, Pip desires social self-improvement. In love with Estella, he longs to
become a member of her social class, and, encouraged by Mrs. Joe and
Pumblechook, he entertains fantasies of becoming a gentleman. The working out
of this fantasy forms the basic plot of the novel; it provides Dickens the
opportunity to gently satirize the class system of his era and to make a point
about its capricious nature. Significantly, Pip’s life as a gentleman is no
more satisfying—and certainly no more moral—than his previous life as a
blacksmith’s apprentice. Third, Pip desires educational improvement. This
desire is deeply connected to his social ambition and longing to marry Estella:
a full education is a requirement of being a gentleman. As long as he is an
ignorant country boy, he has no hope of social advancement. Pip understands
this fact as a child, when he learns to read at Mr. Wopsle’s aunt’s school, and
as a young man, when he takes lessons from Matthew Pocket. Ultimately, through
the examples of Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch, Pip learns that social and
educational improvement are irrelevant to one’s real worth and that conscience
and affection are to be valued above erudition and social standing.
Social Class
Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens explores the class system
of Victorian England, ranging from the most wretched criminals (Magwitch) to
the poor peasants of the marsh country (Joe and Biddy) to the middle class
(Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss Havisham). The theme of social class is
central to the novel’s plot and to the ultimate moral theme of the book—Pip’s
realization that wealth and class are less important than affection, loyalty,
and inner worth. Pip achieves this realization when he is finally able to
understand that, despite the esteem in which he holds Estella, one’s social
status is in no way connected to one’s real character. Drummle, for instance,
is an upper-class lout, while Magwitch, a persecuted convict, has a deep inner
worth.
Perhaps
the most important thing to remember about the novel’s treatment of social
class is that the class system it portrays is based on the post-Industrial
Revolution model of Victorian England. Dickens generally ignores the nobility
and the hereditary aristocracy in favor of characters whose fortunes have been
earned through commerce. Even Miss Havisham’s family fortune was made through
the brewery that is still connected to her manor. In this way, by connecting
the theme of social class to the idea of work and self-advancement, Dickens
subtly reinforces the novel’s overarching theme of ambition and
self-improvement.
Crime, Guilt, and Innocence
The
theme of crime, guilt, and innocence is explored throughout the novel largely
through the characters of the convicts and the criminal lawyer Jaggers. From
the handcuffs Joe mends at the smithy to the gallows at the prison in London,
the imagery of crime and criminal justice pervades the book, becoming an
important symbol of Pip’s inner struggle to reconcile his own inner moral
conscience with the institutional justice system. In general, just as social
class becomes a superficial standard of value that Pip must learn to look
beyond in finding a better way to live his life, the external trappings of the
criminal justice system (police, courts, jails, etc.) become a superficial
standard of morality that Pip must learn to look beyond to trust his inner
conscience. Magwitch, for instance, frightens Pip at first simply because he is
a convict, and Pip feels guilty for helping him because he is afraid of the
police. By the end of the book, however, Pip has discovered Magwitch’s inner
nobility, and is able to disregard his external status as a criminal. Prompted
by his conscience, he helps Magwitch to evade the law and the police. As Pip
has learned to trust his conscience and to value Magwitch’s inner character, he
has replaced an external standard of value with an internal one.
