Contents: introduction chapter. I about Charles dickens biography

CHAPTER.II. The problem of guilt retribution and correction in the novel by charles dickens "Great Expectations"
2.1. Pip Has the Guilt Beat Into Him
Pip begins life in a guilty environment. He lives with his sister and her husband, Joe the blacksmith. Mrs. Joe continually makes Pip feel guilty for living when the rest of the family, their parents and five brothers, are lying in the churchyard. It is continually mentioned in the first few chapters by Mrs. Joe and her friends that Pip is lucky that Mrs. Joe has taken on the awful task of bringing him up "by hand." She makes him feel guilty for just about everything he does, and she emphasizes her point by beating him with a switch that is named the Tickler. "Tickler . . . represents the corporal punishment meted out to children" [Morgentaler 5]. In Pip's case, it is punishment for all the things that he has done and should feel guilty about. The blacksmith's forge and house are set in the countryside near the marshes. The Hulks, or prison ships, loom over this scene across the marshes. These prison ships symbolize the guilt that looms over the novel. In chapter two, Pip and his family discuss these prison ships over dinner after Joe has heard the firing of a gun, indicating the escape of another convict. Pip asks so many questions about the mysterious place that Mrs. Joe loses her patience and reprimands Pip, placing guilt on him once again. It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. 'I tell you what, young fellow,' said she, 'I didn’t bring you up by hand to badger people's lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise, I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking questions . . . With this statement, she has placed into Pip’s young mind that he will grow up to be a criminal, because it is part of his nature. Living in this guilt ridden environment, Pip encounters the convict Magwitch in the churchyard. Pip agrees to help Magwitch in his escape by bringing him food and a file from the forge. Stealing the file and the food “produces agonies of guilt in Pip” [Stange 113]. Dickens describes this guilt by making the environment in which Pip has to run through dark, misty, shady and mysterious. In his words, “the mist was heavier yet when I got upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind” [Dickens 17]. This incident in Pip’s youth stays with him throughout the rest of the novel in his unconscious; “he associates guilt not with particular events, but with a general unease which he has felt as long as he can remember . In the next phase of the novel, Pip moves to London to begin his new life of great expectations. The lawyer, Jaggers, is the overseer of Pip’s new fortune in place of the unknown benefactor. Jaggers is connected with guilt as well. He is a lawyer who works with guilty criminals on a daily basis. He is an overbearing man who “dominates by the strength of his knowledge the world of guilt and sin – called Little Britain – of which his office is center” [Stange 119-120]. Jaggers brings Pip from one guilty environment into another. In place of the Hulks is Newgate Prison which looms over Little Britain just like the Hulks loom over the marshes. Jaggers works with criminals that are detained in Newgate Prison on a daily basis. At the end of the day, he obsessively washes his hands, suggesting the attempt to wash the dirt and grime of his clients’ guilt off of his hands.