Crime and punishment in Dickens’s Great Expectations.

In his novel, Great Expectations Charles Dickens’ characters often seem to be operating
outside or just outside the law in gray areas where what is legally correct clash with what
is morally the right thing to do. The theme of crime in Dickens’ novels is used as a focal
point to explore his deep concern for the pervasive array of social problems that
permeated England in the nineteenth century (Ford 82-83).

Dickens frames this novel as an individual’s struggle to rise above the social and political
conditions of that time. Criminality, punishment, and a perverse sense of justice are
some of the themes Dickens surfaces to explore this world. At several points throughout
the novel convicts come into the story, Pip encounters Magwitch on the marshes in the
first chapter (Dickens 2), Magwitch and Compeysen are recaptured by the soldiers
(Dickens 52), a mysterious figure appears at the Three Jolly Bargemen stirring his drink
with the file Pip stole for Magwitch (Dickens 88), Pip overhears two convicts talking on
the couch, when Pip moves to London he almost immediately sees Newgate Prison
(Dickens 163), and Magwitch eventually reappears as Pip’s benefactor (Dickens 297).

The plot revolves around on crimes committed in the past, both Magwitch and
Compeyson were convicted of fraud (Dickens 325), Molly, Jagger’s housekeeper has
been acquitted of murder, although she is most likely guilty, and in a greater sense Pip’s
contacts with Wemmick and Jaggers’ housekeeper as well as his visit to Newgate
(Dickens163) make him aware of the consequences of crime and the sentences that are
often out of proportion with the committed transgression. At the end of the novel Pip’s
helping Magwitch in his effort to escape places Pip in jeopardy with the law.

Throughout the novel Pip speaks of his sense of guilt (Lucus 299). He feels guilty about
his attitude toward Joe, Biddy, and Magwitch among others during the course of the
novel. This guilt is sometimes associated with his frequent encounters with criminal
elements. During the novel the Pip character learns to feel guilty about the right things,
such as his treatment of Joe and Biddy and his initial revulsion at the returned Magwitch
when he discovers him as his benefactor (Dickens 297).

The inequitable application of the law is also examined. In Jagger’s office when Mike
brings an obviously false witness, Pip becomes aware of how the law operates (Dickens
162). Another example is the story of how Jaggers has Molly cover her strong wrists to
make her appear innocent (Dickens 206). Magwitch’s own story of his trial and
imprisonment insinuates that the law is biased toward those who can present a good
appearance and speak eloquently such as members of the educated middle and upper
classes (Dickens 325).

In the world Charles Dickens was writing about in 1861 when Great Expectations was
first published criminality was closely linked to class in society and this tenet holds a
constant presence in this story. Rules are broken in order to overcome a society that is
inherently unjust and flawed. The moral codes and values that prevail in English society
are questionable. While Pip longs to be accepted by society, he is ultimately linked to a
criminal, and thus comes to understand the problems associated with his dream of
becoming a gentleman.

This idea of social class is an important element in the novel. Pip’s desire to become a
gentleman and escape his roots drives the action within the novel. Lucus (290) notes
that in life we can never be sure which associations constitute the biography or identity
of the real self. Pip experiences guilt because the pursuit of his dream has caused him to
abandon the people he should most care about. The social pressures to which he
becomes exposed shape his attitude toward his own way of life. Estella’s influence has
deeply conditioned the way he sees people. Pip knows that Biddy is better than Estella,
but it is Estella who becomes the ideal by which Biddy is measured. “She was not
beautiful…she was common, and could not be like Estella…but she was pleasant and
wholesome and sweet-tempered” (Dickens 130). Because he sees Biddy this way he
chooses a path from which there is no return. He cannot destroy the education that Miss
Havisham has arranged through Estella (Lucus 295).

This rejection of his past is most poignantly expressed with Joe’s visit to Pip in London.
Pip admits, “If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid
money” (Dickens 209). There are many elements that have conspired to create this
attitude in Pip: his sister’s and Mr. Pumblechock’s negative regard for expectations, Miss
Havisham’s malice, Magwitch’s gratitude for a small boy’s act of kindness, Pip’s love of
Estella, and Pip’s growing vanity and determination to become a gentleman (Lucus 296).

Maywitch speaks of the inequities in the justice system as it pertains to social class when
describing his trial with Compeyson, “At last, me and Compeyson was both committed
for felony- on charge of putting stolen notes in circulation — and there was other
charges behind. Compeyson says to me, “Separate defenses, no communication,” and
that was all. And I was so miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I had, except what
hung on my back, afore I could get Jaggers” (Dickens 323). From this passage it is
evident that the quality of a defendant’s defense was highly dependent on the resources
available.

Maywitch goes on to tell of the trial:

“When we was put in the dock, I notices first of all what a gentleman Compeyson
looked, wi’ his curly hair and his black clothes and his white pocket-handercher, and
what a common sort of wretch I looked. When the prosecution opened and the evidence
was put short, aforhand, I noticed how heavy it all bore on me, and how light on him.
When the evidence was giv in the box, I noticed how it was always me that had come
for’ard, and could be swore to, how it was always me that the money had been paid to,
how it was always me that had seemed to work the thing and get the profit. But, when
the defense came on, then I see the plan plainer; for, says the counsellor for Compeyson,
‘My lord and gentlemen, here you has afore you, side by side, two persons as your eyes
can separate wide; one, the younger, well brought up, who will be spoke to as such; one,
the elder, ill brought up, who will be spoke to as such one, the younger, well brought up,
who will be spoke to as such; one, the younger, seldom if ever seen in these here
transactions, and only suspected; t’other, the elder, always seen in ’em and always wi’ his
guild brought home. Can you doubt, if there is but one in it, which is the one, and, if
there is two in it, which is much the worst one?’ And such-like. And when it come to
character, warn’t it his schoolfellows as was in this position and in that, and warn’t it him
as had been know’d by witnesses in such clubs and societies, and nowt to his
disadvantage? An warn’t it me as had been tried afore, and as had been know’d up hill
and down dale in Bridewells and Lock-up’s? And when it came to speech-making, warn’t
it Compeyson as could speak to ’em wi’ his face dropping every now and then into
his white pocket-handhercher-ah! And wi’ verses in his speech, too — and warn’t it mes
as could only say, ‘Gentlemen, 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, and giving up all the information he could agen me,
and warn’t it me as not never a word but guilty? And when I says to compeyson, ‘once
me out of this court, I’ll smash that face o’ yourn?’ ain’t it compeyson as prays the judge
to be protected, and gets two turnkeys stood betwixt us? And when we’re sentenced,
ain’t it him as gets seven-year, and me fourteen, and aint it him as the judge is sorry for,
because he might a done so well, and ain’t it me the judge perceives to be an old
offender of wiolent passion, likely to come to worse?'”(Dickens 323-324).

In this passage Dickens clearly demonstrates the prejudice nineteenth century British
society held against members of the lower class, and the predisposition of the judicial
system as well as the others maintain this norm.
 

Later in the novel, Pip accepts Magwitch and gives up his dream of clean money. But
there are others in the novel who know that money is never clean, that it is on the
contrary always dirty. For Wemmick and Jaggers life is never less than dirty business.
Wemmick is a good man who fully accepts the rottenness of a system by which he
exists, but who managers not to be destroyed by it (Lucas 305).

Jaggers, the lawyer, is made to speak of how he is exposed to ‘an atmosphere of evil’,
where nearly all the children he sees are regarded as “so much spawn, to develop into
fish that were to come to his net to be prosecuted, defended, forswore, made orphans,
bedeviled somehow” (Dickens 377). Dickens paints the picture of this ruthless, cool-
headed, hard man whose awareness of what his commitment to the dirt of life comes
out in the fact of his compulsive hand-washing (Lucas 308).

Dickens describes the squalor of the penitentiary when Pip first arrives in London comes
to Newgate Prison:

“When 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 a 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 a reduced price of eighteen pence. As I declined
the proposal on the plea of an appointment, he was so good as to take me into his yard
and show me where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publically
whipped, and then he showed me Debtor’s 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 that door day after to-morrow at eight in the morning to
be killed in a row. This was horrible and gave me a sickening idea of London…” (Dickens
163).

Jeremy Tambling (250) asserts that for Dickens the prison is not the “human condition”
but a symbol for enforcing the models of helplessness. The more aware the self is of its
position in society, the more it confirms the prison of one’s class, and thus is cutoff
further from the idea of self-improvement and individuality. In a sense Pip himself is in a
prison created by his desire for self-improvement and the reality that because of the
power structures of society individuality is itself as delusory as a hope.

 
The relationship between Pip and Magwitch means more to Magwitch than it does to
Pip (Lucus 297). Pip is bound to Magwitch only by the intensity of Magwitch’s regard for
him. In fact Pip recalls Magwitch just as he sets out for London:

I had often thought before, with some allied to shame, of my companionship with the
fugitive whom I had once seen limping among those graves, what were my thoughts on
this Sunday, when the place recalled the wretch, ragged and shivering, with his felon iron
and badge! My comfort was, that it happened a long time ago, and that he doubtless had
been transported a long way off, and that he was dead to me, and might be veritably
dead in the bargain” (148-149).

But it is this convict who is responsible for Pip’s great expectations, his chance to escape
the prison of his class, and his hope for the freedom associated with becoming a
gentleman. Furthermore, we can see that Pip has not entirely forgotten Magwitch and
he cannot escape from the bonds Magwitch has forged between the two. The irony is
that the world Pip is most anxious to escape to is only available to him through the
benevolence of those who are irreversibly trapped in the world he wishes to escape
from.

Great Expectation is a story about people and Dickens portrays people as spiritual beings
(Wagenknecht 136). They may be unjustly oppressed by political institutions and heavily
handicapped by economic injustice, but in Dickens’s view, neither politics nor economics
will prevail over the human spirit.

The themes of crime, guilt, and innocence are 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.

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 become a superficial standard of morality that Pip must learn to look
beyond to trust his inner conscience (Lucus 291).

 
Pip feels guilty because he is aware of the human ties that conflict with social obligations
and class distinctions. Lucus (296-297) points out that this is a natural conflict in many
people that have ambition, aspirations or a purposeful dream. The problem arises in fact
that Pip’s aspirations, to be a gentleman, are frivolous and not worth the effort.

Dickens uses crime, punishment, and justice and Pip’s desire to become a gentleman to
drive the novel and facilitate growth in the protagonist that is defined by Pip’s changing
understanding of the values and beliefs imposed by society through the interpretation of
right and wrong. Magwitch scares Pip at first because he is a criminal. Pip feels guilty for
helping him and he is afraid of the consequences brought on by the police. However, by
the end of the novel, 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 (Lucus 300).

Works Cited

Davie, Neil. “History Artfully Dodged? Crime, Prisons and the Legacy of ‘Dickens’s
England’.” Dickens Quarterly, Vol. 28, Issue 28, December 2011: 261-272. EBSOC Web.
6 December 2012.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Janice Carlisle (Ed.) New York: Bedford Books of
St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Print.

Ford, George H. Dickens & His Readers. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1965.
Print.

Lucas, John. The Melancholy Man: A Study of Dickens’s Novels. London, UK: Methuen &
Co. LTD., 1970. Print.

Rogers, Perry, M. Aspects of World Civilizations: Problems and Sources in History. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2003. Print.
 

Tambling, Jeremy. “Prison-bound: Dickens and Foucault.” Modern Critical

Interpretations: Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Harold Bloom (Ed.). Philadelphia,
PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 2000. Print.

Wagenknecht, Edward. Dickens and the Scandalmongers. Norman, OK: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1965. Print.