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Capitalism in Great Expectations

This document provides an analysis of how Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations depicts and critiques capitalism in Victorian England. It discusses how the novel illustrates the negative impacts of wealth, class differences, and materialism on human relationships. It also describes how the industrialization of London during this time period led to an influx of poor workers but not enough jobs, resulting in poverty, crime, and living conditions in places like workhouses and prisons. The character of Magwitch represents the poor residents of London who turned to theft out of necessity. The document examines how new industries like breweries and banks arose to serve the growing middle class, but that London was also overcrowded and dirty as a result of industrialization.

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Shahzeen Jahangir
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314 views2 pages

Capitalism in Great Expectations

This document provides an analysis of how Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations depicts and critiques capitalism in Victorian England. It discusses how the novel illustrates the negative impacts of wealth, class differences, and materialism on human relationships. It also describes how the industrialization of London during this time period led to an influx of poor workers but not enough jobs, resulting in poverty, crime, and living conditions in places like workhouses and prisons. The character of Magwitch represents the poor residents of London who turned to theft out of necessity. The document examines how new industries like breweries and banks arose to serve the growing middle class, but that London was also overcrowded and dirty as a result of industrialization.

Uploaded by

Shahzeen Jahangir
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Shahzeen Jahangir

Roll no.0011

E1802

Capitalism in Great Expectations

During these tumultuous times of drastic changes in the second half of the nineteenth century in
England, Charles Dickens started writing his novel, Great Expectations, described by Bernard Shaw as
“his most compactly perfect book . . . all of one piece and consistently truthful as none of his other
books are.” That period witnessed the growth of capitalism accompanied by cycles of booms and
drawbacks. Dickens’ Great Expectations refers to the manipulation of the bourgeois employers, assisted
by the government, against the working class.

In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens warns that wealth and status are corrupt and corrupting,
inducing social emptiness, inertia, snobbery, and vengefulness. The novel elucidates the disastrous
impacts of materialism and class difference on human relationships. For instance, we find that
characters such as Pip, Miss Havisham, and Magwitch are transformed into corrupt, arrogant,
manipulative, greedy, and machine-like entities blinded by their insatiable desire for ownership,
property, and revenge.

Set in the Victorian Age, a time of great industrialization in England, the narrative of Charles Dickens's
Great Expectations presents a tableau of a London characterized by industrialism which brought about
the influx of many people in hopes of work. However, because all were not able to procure jobs, they
turned to crime or died in poverty. The character Magwitch, a gamin of the streets of London, who
engaged in theft and other crimes as a young man is representative of these poor people. Mr. Jaggers,
the rather unscrupulous and exigent barrister deals with some of these people from London's lower
class. Poorhouses, workhouses, and Newgate prison housed many in London. And, it is in the area of
Newgate that Jaggers works and that Pip arrives in the Second Stage to witness a dismal sight:

...I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul's bulging at me behind a grim stone building which a
bystander said was Newgate Prison. Following the wall of the jail, I found the roadway covered with
straw to deaden the noise of passing vehicles; and from this and from the quantity of people standing
about smelling strongly of spirits and beer, I inferred that the trials were on.

However, because there were many people working in the factories, there were demands from these
people for merchandise; thus a new middle class arose from the shopkeepers who supplied products for
the Londoners. Uncle Pumblechook is representative of these shopkeepers, who often aspired to the
upper class and foolishly imitated them as does Pumblechook and Melinda Pocket, Matthew's wife.

Free enterprise is represented by the brewery of the Havishams; although it is now in ruins. at one time
it has made a fortune for the family. And, with production of goods and the promise of new wealth for
borrowers and lenders, new banking houses arose to serve the middle class whereas before the
Industrial Revolution the Bank of England was sufficient as there was little money to exchange except by
a well-known few. Clarikers' Banking House where Pip procures Herbert a position is an example of the
new banks that was built to meet the needs of the rising middle class.
Those with sufficient funds to escape the dirt and dangers of London began to build up the outlying
towns. Walworth, Wemmick's home is located in such a town; Wemmick walks to and from work each
day and cleanses himself of what London has dealt him that day.

Certainly, the London of Pip's dreams is not what he has imagined. Instead it is a noisy, bustling city of
merchants and bankers, but, it is also a sooty city in which crime abounds

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