Charles Dickens Attitudes to Victorian Life

This essay will go through the first chapter of Great Expectations and how Charles Dickens tries to raise awareness of Victorian life. Great Expectations was originally published in the All Year Round magazine and it was published in 3-4 chapters and it was aimed at middle class people as he tried to show people how life was for those less fortunate. The other thing about the way Great Expectations was published was that the end of each section he would have to end on a cliff hanger to keep the readers interested and that was very appealing then and still is now.Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth on the 7th February 1812 and he was the second child of eight. He learnt his basic reading and writing skill at William Giles which is in Camden, at a very young age he became very interested in reading and developed a love for novels by Tobias Smollet and Harry Fielding.

At the infantile age of 12 his father was sent to prison for debt and this comes through in Great Expectations when Pip goes into debt after he has his accident but Joe relinquishes his debt for him.As soon a Charles was old enough his mother insisted that we worked to support the family and he started working at Warrens Boot Blacking Factory where he worked 10 hours a day. When he had earned enough money to support his family he was not allowed to leave the job be cause his mother made him stay there to show him the being working class was hard and he disliked his mother till her death for that.He was brought up to always respect the things that he had and to be great full and Pip is much the same as he is depicted as a very respectful child even when he is scared senseless by Magwitch, he also repents greatly for what he is about to do as he thinks the cows a judging him. In the 19th century life was very hard for many working class people as the Industrial revolution had just came and many people who worked in the factories had to work very long days in the worst conditions.

The way life was for many people was unfair as the rich stayed rich and the poor stayed poor, this was not for Pip as he was given a second chance by an unknown benefactor and he did indeed "change his stars". The opening of this novel is so very important because through the text he can sometime imply to the reader what may come later on in the book and he uses foreshadowing to convey these implications.When pip is in the grave yard at the end of the first chapter he sees "beacon by which the sailors steered" and beacon is a symbol of light and it implies that after this bleak start there may be light at the end of the tunnel. In the opening chapter Pip is portrayed as a very young and childish through the was he speaks, "my father's family name being, Pirrip and my Christian name being Philip, my infant tongue could make nothing more explicit that Pip", this piece of text shows us that his tongue is very immature although he speaks in a very grown up and polite manor.

The name Pip is very symbolic in itself as we all know a pip is a seed which given the right amount of attention and love will grow into a great strong structure which will provide shade for many things, in that respect young Pip is just a child but given the opportunity he will grow into a strong, caring man who will look after those around him.His "first fancies regarding" his parents were "unreasonable derived from their tombstones", only a child could have the imagination to form a person out of a tombstone and only a child with much heartache in his life would try, this makes the reader feel for Pip and this hooks the reader because they would want to find out what is to come in the so far bleak life of Pip.Dickens uses pathetic fallacy to show the reader just how unfortunate this child is, "the marshes were just long black horizontal lines" which shows us that in Pip's life so far there has been nothing good that has gone and maybe nothing good to come, the dark colour that Dickens uses to descried the line show that so far he has been living in the dark with no glimmer of hope. "The sky was just a row of long angry red line and dense black lines intermixed" which gives us the feeling that all Pip has experienced is red fury from his sister (Mrs.Joe) who raised him by hand, in other words beat him and that all this young helpless soul has to look forward to is more anger and darkness shown by the "red lines and dense black lines intermixed", the text that Dickens uses demonstrates Pips isolation in his short yet very lonely life.

"As I never saw my father or my mother or no likeliness of them" , he never once experienced the love of a mother of a father and not one of us could imagine a life like that and by using the facts in such a unique way in the first few paragraphs he paints Pip as a very lonely and unloved character.I think Dickens makes us feel so sorry for Pip that all the reader would see is more terror and pain but then the reader is hooked because every person holds hope for a good future and they would like to see if Pip is rewarded for all the pain he has been through. Pip speaks in a very polite and formal way because from a very young age pip has wanted to be a gentleman and he has always wanted to change his destiny, always wanted to "change his stars".Pip is very childish and as every child thinks that if they do something long enough and want something enough then it will come true and drawing the same conclusion he thinks that by talking like gentleman he will become one himself. The story is narrated by an older Pip and when Magwitch is introduced into the story we see him through the eyes of Pip and this changes they was we see Magwitch, Pip is a young, infantile person and the was he might see Magwitch would be different to the was we would see him.The first thing we would see on Magwitch would be the chains and we would automatically run without giving him a chance but the way Pip sees him is completely different, by seeing Magwitch in the chains we would think that he is a terrible man who has committed a crime worse than murder but the infantile Pip sees a man who has been battered by the environment he sees "a man soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints", he does not see a terrible convict he sees a man who needs help and that is why he steals the food and the file for him, he does it out of pity and out of fear.

Magwitch is described using very long and complex sentences and he also has a very long description but some people would think why would Dickens waste good text on a convict but Dickens does not use that word in his description and the reader would think that Magwitch's character is farley insignificant to the story but Pip meeting Magwitch is the most important thing that could have happened.By using very complex and descriptive text Dickens tries to illustrate that we are going to be seeing more of Magwitch and that he is more significant that the reader may think at first. Magwitch speaks with a dialect, "tell us your name", "what fat cheeks you ha' got", which is very snappy and short and he has a strange accent. This shows us that he is the complete opposite to Pip and he uses the short sentences to try implant fear into the heart of Pip so that he would do what he wants.I think that Dickens is trying to convey across to people that not everything is as black and white as people would like to think. Through Pip he shows us that there are many children in the world who are growing up with almost nothing or no-one, he also tries to depict that a child who's destiny would not allow could change the way his life could turn out.

Dickens tries to show people that how much a working class child struggles and how lonely there lives can be, especially Pip's because he has never seen his parents. Dickens tries to show that the way society treats people differently, like how the rich people can get an education and become a gentlemen and ladies but how the poorer people are treated, how the upper class people think that they do not have a right to an education because they do not have money.He is trying to say that every person has the right to an education, rich or poor. By describing Magwitch without using the work convict Dickens depicts Magwitch to be this man who is hurt and needs help and he does not even tell us why he was a convict in the first place as it is irrelevant to the person that Magwitch is because his past plays no importance in his future.

In the opening chapter he is described as a man who has been bashed, beaten and bruised by the surrounding environment and not as a convict with a cold heart, and later on the novel he reveals to us that for over 10 years he worked himself as hard as he could just so that Pip could have his "Great Expectations" come to life, so I think the message that Dickens tries to portray through Magwitch is that you cannot judge a book by it's cover and that not all convicts are cold blooded killers or thieves, some of them may be the kindest and giving people a person could meet.The novel is written in a Gothic style which in the 19th century was a very popular style of writing and partly why this novel became successful, the way the scene at the end of the first chapter is described in a very dark and gothic way, this would appeal very much to the reader as this style was very popular in that era. Dickens uses pathetic fallacy to help the reader empathise with Pip and by creating such vivid descriptions of the surroundings is helps the reader feel what Pip feels. The way that Pip is introduced as this poor lonely and isolated child appeals to the reader as it has quite a gothic feel and the readers liked this.I think that the tale of death and loneliness at the start of the opening chapter hooks the reader because they want to know what will happen with this poor soul.

The story had so much terror and woe in just the first chapter and this makes the reader want to read more as the gothic style was preferred then and everyone thought the novel would end in even more heartache for young Pip but they were all surprised when he gets the girl and lives happily ever after, which is an end that Dickens was unfortunately deprived of.The novel is being Narrated by himself many year in the future and he describes himself as a "small bundle of shivers" and that he was "undersized for my years and not strong", by these description it shows us that he is looking over himself, he analyses and scrutinises himself and by describing himself as "a small bundle if shivers" it is like he feels sorry for his young self. Magwitch is thought to be an insignificant addition to the story but the way he is introduced into the story would make the reader there is something more to this seemingly irrelevant character.Dickens uses fairly complex sentences to show that Magwitch is not as simple as some may think, he is a convict and always will be which is the way it was back then but Magwitch proves himself to be a man not worthy of being labelled a convict, but that he is so much more. I think this book appeals to the reader so much because of the style that it is written in and they was Pip is introduced as this small, lonely, childish boy with no hope in the world and who has no chance of changing his destiny.The novel is such a great book because it is different to most things even though it is written in the same style as a lot of other novels of the same time, many of the books written at the same time likeThe Insulted and Humiliated by Fyodor Dostoevsky, had very bleak and miserable story lines and ended with misery but not Great Expectations, I think that Dickens had such a bad story much the same to Pip that he wanted different for him and so he gave him what he wanted in the end.