Charles Dickens' Great Expectations

Charles Dickens' Great Expectations

Introduction

Charles Dickens, ' Great Expectations' , portreys the main character

Pip's childhood in various ways. 'Great Expectations' is a pre 20th

century novel, showing how Pip's working class upbringing affects his

childhood.

Pip's Childhood

Pip is an orphan, who lives with his sister Mrs. Joe Gargery and her

husband Joe. We are led to believe that Pip's parents die when he is

young and although he is too young to remember them he still feels he

has some memories of them "unreasonably derived from their tombstones"

showing that Pip never had the chance to see them. Pip lives in a

poor, working class household, due to Joe being a low paid blacksmith.

He does not have any priviledges or luxuries and evrything is basic.

At the time Pip does not realise that this affects his lifestyle

because he is a child and this is all he has ever known.

Pip is treated by many of the adult characters, very unfairly. For

example his sister mrs.Joe is definately no mother figure, she is not

a loving parent, nor is she a responsible or willing parent. She is

just a parent. Mrs. Joe is always very aggressive towards Pip, She

doesn't see why she had to take him in and "bring him up by hand", she

sees Pip as awkward and "ungrateful", for this she repeatedly makes

Pip feel guilty. She constantly makes bringing up Pip seem like a huge

effort and that she's doing him a favour. She makes Pip feel he is a

complete irritant, even when he asks a simple question like "please,

what's hulks?" he is made to feel bad for asking, and Mrs.joe retorts

with " That's the way with this boy....." "...Answer him one quest...

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...he resources needed to learn, the little teaching people did was done

using the bible, spelling books or "mangnall's questions".

Schools for the poor were opened in the 19th century also, when it '

finally became apparent ' that children were being ' exlcluded ' from

learning because of their class. This wasn't necessarily the case.

Because children from lower classes had always been deprived of many

things, one being an education, but in the 19th century someone

decided at last to do something about it. These schools- named 'ragged

schools' because of their pupils' appearence, sought out much needed

voluntary teachers and raised funds to help children find work and

learn basic skills such as reading and writing. The main aim of the

'ragged schools' was to provide a basic level of care for the most

deprived children.