Great Expectations: Class, Crime and Victorian Self-Making
Connect class, crime and transportation to Pip's idea of becoming a gentleman. Use context to explain particular textual choices and test whether anyone in the novel is truly self-made.
Class judgement and self-making
Text
Great Expectations
By Charles Dickens
Chapter 8
[1] “He calls the knaves Jacks, this boy!” said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. “And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!”
[2] I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.
Notes
Paragraph numbers identify this extract. Original spelling and dialect are retained.
Study all 59 chapters of Great Expectations: Chapters 1–19 form Stage One, 20–39 Stage Two and 40–59 Stage Three. Whole-text responses draw on this complete development.
Social mobility is movement between social positions. Gentility can mean the money, education, manners and social recognition associated with a gentleman, but it can also suggest inward gentleness: loyalty, generosity and consideration. Self-making is the attempt to form a new identity through choices, work or self-presentation.
Great Expectations makes each definition unstable. Pip can acquire the appearance of a gentleman without earning his money, while characters denied gentlemanly status can behave with moral gentleness. His first act of self-making therefore begins before his fortune arrives: he learns to judge himself through somebody else's class values.
In Chapter 8, Estella calls Pip a "common labouring-boy" and mocks his "coarse hands" and "thick boots". Hands and boots are physical signs of work and limited money, not proof of lesser human worth. Her contempt turns them into class evidence.
The sequence of Pip's response matters:
- Estella applies a class judgement to ordinary features of Pip's body and clothing.
- Pip admits that he had not previously been ashamed of his hands.
- He adopts her judgement and begins to experience his present self as defective.
- Education, manners and higher status then seem able to repair that supposed defect.
This is not a simple story of natural aspiration. Pip's desire to change is produced by a relationship: Estella supplies the standard by which he finds himself wanting. Social class enters his inner life as shame, so "making" a new self begins with misrecognising honest labour as personal failure.
Chapter 8 is especially revealing evidence because it shows the cause before Pip receives either money or opportunity. A later scene of London spending might show how he performs gentility, but it cannot establish as precisely where the desire to escape his class position began.
Testing the gentleman ideal
The word gentleman creates a problem of classification. Society may recognise wealth, education, accent, clothing and polished behaviour, but these outward signs do not necessarily reveal moral worth.
In Chapter 22, Herbert reports his father's principle that no one who is not a "true gentleman at heart" can become a true gentleman in manner. The phrase offers an ethical standard, but it is one character's belief rather than a final definition imposed by the novel. Dickens tests it through contrasts among characters:
| Character | Socially recognised signs | Conduct that complicates judgement |
|---|---|---|
| Drummle | Rank, wealth and access to gentlemanly society | His brutality prevents status from proving gentleness. |
| Compeyson | Education, controlled speech, dress and courtroom polish | He uses the performance of respectability to conceal exploitation and crime. |
| Joe | Manual labour, dialect and social awkwardness | His patience, care and generosity give "gentle" a moral meaning. |
| Magwitch | Convict status, rough speech and colonial wealth | His violence and possessiveness coexist with gratitude, loyalty and sacrifice. |
These contrasts prevent a mechanical answer. Joe does not show that all labouring people are automatically virtuous, and Magwitch's loyalty does not erase his crimes. Instead, the novel repeatedly separates social gentility, which can be performed or purchased, from moral gentleness, which has to be judged through conduct.
The idea of Victorian self-making adds another tension. Samuel Smiles's Self-Help, published in 1859, gave contemporary prominence to industry, perseverance and self-culture. Pip's initial rise resembles a success story from a distance, but it is funded by an unknown benefactor rather than achieved through his own work. Later, when he earns a living and accepts responsibility, the novel moves closer to a work-based ideal without making Pip a fully independent self-made man.
This context should change the interpretation rather than sit beside it. The important question is not "What did Victorians believe?" as though they all agreed. It is how Dickens tests a recognisable ideal: money and manners can manufacture a social gentleman, but work alone does not guarantee goodness, and moral growth depends on other people as well as the self.
Class-coded justice
Text
Great Expectations
By Charles Dickens
Chapter 42
[1] “Well!” he said, “I was, and got convicted. As to took up on suspicion, that was twice or three times in the four or five year that it lasted; but evidence was wanting. At last, me and Compeyson was both committed for felony,—on a charge of putting stolen notes in circulation,—and there was other charges behind. Compeyson says to me, ‘Separate defences, 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.
[2] “When we was put in the dock, I noticed first of all what a gentleman Compeyson looked, wi’ his curly hair and his black clothes and his white pocket-handkercher, and what a common sort of a wretch I looked. When the prosecution opened and the evidence was put short, aforehand, 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 defence come 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, seldom if ever seen in these here transactions, and only suspected; t’other, the elder, always seen in ’em and always wi’ his guilt 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 Compeyson as had been to the school, and 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? And warn’t it me as had been tried afore, and as had been know’d up hill and down dale in Bridewells and Lock-Ups! And when it come to speech-making, warn’t it Compeyson as could speak to ’em wi’ his face dropping every now and then into his white pocket-handkercher,—ah! and wi’ verses in his speech, too,—and warn’t it me 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 got never a word but Guilty? And when I says to Compeyson, ‘Once out of this court, I’ll smash that face of 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 ain’t it him as the Judge is sorry for, because he might a done so well, and ain’t it me as the Judge perceives to be a old offender of wiolent passion, likely to come to worse?”
Notes
Paragraph numbers identify this extract. Original spelling and dialect are retained.
Chapter 42 brings the gentleman ideal into the courtroom. In Magwitch's account, Compeyson has education, controlled speech, respectable clothes and the appearance of a gentleman. Magwitch presents himself as poorly educated, roughly spoken and visibly marked as the more threatening man.
The men have participated in the same criminal enterprise, yet Compeyson receives seven years and Magwitch fourteen. Dickens makes the numerical contrast stark, but the explanation lies in class performance: Compeyson knows how to look and sound like the kind of person the court is prepared to trust.
Two qualifications keep the interpretation accurate.
- The scene is Magwitch's retrospective account, not a neutral court transcript. Its language positions the reader to feel how class judgement operated against him.
- Unequal treatment does not make Magwitch innocent. He remains legally culpable and capable of violence; the contrast questions whether punishment and moral judgement have been distributed justly.
This distinction separates law from justice. Law identifies and punishes offences. Justice asks whether people are treated fairly and whether punishment reflects responsibility rather than prejudice. Compeyson's social polish gives him legal advantage without giving him moral superiority.
Historical context makes the opening and Magwitch's later fate more concrete. The National Archives records that Britain used moored prison hulks from the late eighteenth century, including for some prisoners awaiting transportation; conditions could involve irons and hard labour. This does not mean that every hulk prisoner had the same experience. It does show that the chains, marshes and threatened transportation surrounding Magwitch belong to a material penal system, not merely to Gothic atmosphere.
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