Victorian or Not: The Question of Dickens’ Novel

Even though Dickens’ novel Great Expectations was written in the Victorian period, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the novel strictly adheres to Victorian principles. While the text does include Victorian ideas, Dickens challenges such principles as social-class, love, and family.

Dickens takes a young blacksmith apprentice, Pip, and skyrockets him up to good fortunes and fame. Because people were so set in their ways during the Victorian period, the possible rise to fame that Pip had so suddenly would be highly unlikely. Even the title that Dickens chose – Great Expectations – leave the reader wondering what is to come of young Pip almost right away. To expect means to take an idea, interpret it in one’s own way, and prepare for the idea based on the interpretations: there is nothing to suggest that anything is concretely set into stone in the path of young Pip’s life. Pip can only guess and hope as to what is going to happen to his status: much like a child hopes for the puppy on Christmas.

Take, for example, when Joe and Biddy visit Pip in London for the first time in chapter XXVII; the way Pip treats his family and friend because they are ‘country-bumpkins’ is quite on the verge of contempt. Because Pip is so worried about becoming something greater than what he is that Pip-the-narrator writes: “Let me confess exactly, with what feelings I looked forward to Joe’s coming. Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no; with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money (168-9).” And, in a way, Joe and Biddy encourage this behavior by little things they do such as when Biddy signs her name to the letter she wrote Pip saying, “Your ever obliged, and affectionate Servant, BIDDY (168)” and Joe calling Pip “Sir (172,173)” several times in the meeting, and goes on to say that he feels like a falsity dressed in the good clothes, away from his forge, saying, “I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve beat out something night the rights of this at last (173).” Though Joe does tell Pip that the boy is being haughty, his acquiescence to the fact that now Pip is in the transition to a higher class by calling him Sir – and Biddy by her closing – and are showing Pip that they are in a different class. 

 There are, of course, ways that Dickens challenges Victorian ideas in the way that Pip views London and the surrounding area. When the boy first gets to London, he is surprised by the immensity of the city, saying that had he not been scared, “I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty (129).” Pip came from the country, which was gloomy, but the streets of London were not only gloomy, but also dirty and probably smelled completely different from the stink that Pip was used to with the marshes and the smithy.

Dickens also criticizes the people of the city when Pip comes to Newgate Prison, saying that he saw “…an exceedingly dirty and partially drunk minister of justice…” who took Pip on a tour of the prison, showing the boy the execution grounds saying that “ ‘four on ‘em’ would come out at the that door the day after tomorrow at eight in the morning, to be killed in a row (131).”  Dickens as a man didn’t agree with public executions, and, as the author, gives Pip the same feelings that he has, for Pip goes on to say that “This was horrible, and gave me a sickening idea of London (131).”  Because Dickens hates public executions so much, he used this as another way to help abolish the executions; aside from using his novels as a form of propaganda, Dickens also wrote daily to the papers in the area about his distaste in the public hanging of prisoners (131₆).  Because he was so opposed to the executions, that might explain why Dickens chose Mr. Jaggers as a benefactor for young Pip since Mr. Jaggers is a defense attorney in the courts.