Examples Of Classist Society In Great Expectations

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Superlative Evil: Classist society’s impact on citizenry

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a coming of age story set in the early eighteen-hundreds through the late eighteen-hundreds, an era of Queen Victoria and a time for great progression and prosperity. Sadly, the progression and prosperity only benefited people belonging to a higher class putting a big division between the classes, and Dickens used this novel to reflect upon that society of time. The depiction of the greatest evil, the society, is made evident through Magwitch’s role as a boy growing up in poverty, as a criminal alongside of Compeyson, and the bond him and Pip shared.

Magwitch had a very hard upbringing considering he was an orphan in a poor community in the nineteenth …show more content…

I 'm your second father. You 're my son — more to me nor any son. I 've put away money, only for you to spend. When I was hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of sheep till I half forgot wot men 's and women 's faces was like, I see yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I was a eating my dinner or my supper, and I says, “Here 's the boy again, a looking at me whiles I eats and drinks!" I see you there a many times as plain as ever I see you on them misty marshes. “Lord strike me dead!" I says each time — and I goes out in the open air to say it under the open heavens — “but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I 'll make that boy a gentleman!" And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings of yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat 'em!” (286-287)
This proves that even though society did portray Magwitch as ‘evil’, he was still a good person deep down.

In the end, the greatest evil depicted in Great Expectations was the society. The character of Magwitch is one of the many ways Dickens conveys that idea. He uses Magwitch’s role as an orphan growing up in poverty, how he is treated unfairly by the justice system, and his role as the strongest father like figure in Pip’s life. Magwitch was a victim of the unjust and corruptive society which led up to his criminal lifestyle. Ultimately the superlative evil presented in the novel was the society and their impact on

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