Visions of punishment: The
Romanticism of individual autonomy
and the reality of social control in Great
Expectations
Lecture 4
Romance and Realism
ACL2007
Semester 2 - 2008
Summary
Introducing
Dickens and Great Expectations
The Social Background
The Literary Background
Dickens:
Romance and Realism debates
The
failures of romance
The society as prison
The individual success story
Subverting the Romantic subplot
Moving
toward modernism
The Social Background 1
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GE was published in 1860 when Dickens was a highly popular and
famous author.
Victorian England was a society of
 high industrialisation and colonial expansion
 unregulated urban development and massive migration from
countryside to city
 social experimentation in
 Education
 Factory regulations
 Prison system
 Policing
 Management of poverty
 Sanitation reform
The Social Background 2
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The idea of society as an interconnecting system
emerged: the beginnings of ‘sociology’
Similarly, the idea of money and its organisation
as a system developed: economics.
Systems for understanding, managing and
possibly improving society began to develop.
Utilitarianism
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In the first half of the 19th century a combined economic
and social philosophy derived new systems for social
regulation.
A central precept of Utilitarianism was ‘the greatest good
for the greatest number’: this often translated, for critics,
into a disregard of individual human needs in the interest
of the ‘social good’: a problem was who decided the
‘public good’?
The ‘panopticon’ (‘all-seeing’) a prison design feature for
watching prisoners, became, for the 20th century social
theorist Foucault, a metaphor for the society’s increasing
desire for surveillance ( See Discipline and Punish)
The Social Background: Social
Mobility?
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Increased transport/communication systems and the development of new
industries and occupations opened up more opportunities for some men to
acquire wealth and/or social mobility. To a far lesser extent, this also applied
to some women.
New jobs for men (for example, journalism) developed that relied more on
intelligence and personality than traditional education and inherited
privileges.
Part of the discourse of the mid to late-19th century was that of the ‘selfmade man’ and ‘self-help’: the promise that the pauper could become an
industrialist through the virtue of hard work.
It’s common feminine-gendered version was that of the new Cinderella:
factory girl marries mill-owner. The poor girl can find security through sexual
virtue and a good man.
A different story about capitalism was being written by Friedrich Engels and
Karl Marx.
Dickens and Social Reform
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Dickens was, in some ways, the living example of the individual success
story.
He had little formal education, was a child labourer, experienced poverty
first-hand and used his street knowledge and individual talents to become a
court-reporter and then a popular novelist, publisher, editor and public
speaker.
From the first, his writing includes portraits and descriptions of the
underclass of society and the urban lower and middle classes.
Many of these descriptions are framed by a clearly indignant narrative voice
and the plots of many of his stories and novels are centrally concerned with
issues of social reform.
As an editor he also favoured socially-conscious contributors and promoted
various social reform agendas.
Among his favourite causes were: education and children’s issues
generally; legal and prison reform.
The Literary Background 1:
childhood
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GE, like a number of Dickens’ fictions, begins in an
earlier period: the narrator’s and author’s childhood.
Dickens wrote extensively about the importance of his
childhood, for the development of his imagination.
His nurse’s fairy stories, often featuring monsters and
horror, had lasting impact.
Lacking a sustained formal education, he read widely
and without much guidance in a range of earlier authors
including Shakespeare, rather than in contemporary
writers.
He also sustained a lasting fascination with the theatre.
The Literary Background 2: The
Romantic Movement
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Dickens’ interest in childhood links him closely to
Romanticism
Romanticism valued the supposed innocence of
childhood as close to Nature and in opposition to
the damaging effects of constraining education
and social norms.
Poets and social reformers, strongly influenced
by Romanticism, used the image of the child as
the central victim of urbanised industrial society.
Blake and childhood
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William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and
Experience contrast the unlimited potential of the
newborn baby with the social ‘chains’ imposed .
In London Blake epitomises urban corruption
and degradation as an endemic child abuse :
child labourers such as chimney sweepers and
child prostitutes at the extreme end of a society
that is routinely cruel and callous to all children.
Dickens’ literary models:
picaresque
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Dickens read extensively in the 18th century adventure,
‘picaresque’ novels following a young male hero on his
travels.
Many of Dickens’ novels, particularly his early ones, also
use this structure.
This also fitted the customary publication mode :
episodes of a serial in monthly or weekly editions.
It also suited Dickens’ interest in the theatre: the use of
highly dramatic and colourful scenes with a lot of
dialogue.
Dickens’ literary models:
bildungsroman
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‘Bildungsroman’ developed in the 18th century as part of the rise of
Romanticism.
In its purest form, it tracks the character formation of the central (and only
important) character who usually tells his story in his own words.
There is usually a strong moral emphasis whereby the protagonist gains
insight into his own nature and the nature of society.
A sub-category of this form tracks the development of the artist/writer
(‘kunstroman’)
Its central difference from the hero-quest or picaresque story is its focus on
the inner life rather than the actions of the protagonist.
On the whole, the protagonist does not have to be exceptional or ‘great’.
There is clearly a connection between the development of this form and that
of autobiography: the sense that the individual life and its development can
have interest for others.
GE and the literary background: 1
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GE is often described as a bildungsroman
because
 The
plot structure follows the ‘moral
education’ of the protagonist, Pip
 The protagonist tells the story in his own
words: first-person narration
 It takes the story of an ordinary man’s
development as interesting without excusing
or exaggerating his failings (or virtues)
GE and the literary background: 2
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However, some critics argue that GE does not fit
neatly into the genre of bildungsroman because:
 The
social context and its inhabitants are at least as
important/interesting as the narrator
 There is no clear conclusive development in Pip’s
moral understanding
 Although there are moments when Pip reflects on
himself, they are not the continuing focus of the
narrative
GE and the Romance/Realism
debates 1.
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Critical reception of Dickens has tended to emphasise
either the Realist or the Romantic aspects.
This largely depends on the political interests of the critic
and how she or he is positioned regarding the
contemporary reception of Dickens.
For example, Tambling (this week’s reading) comments: ‘
This Romantic criticism became a way of attacking
commentators who emphasised the reformist Dickens’
(p.18). Tambling himself is quite dismissive of the earlier
critic Collins, while acknowledging that Collins did some
important historical research on Dickens’ society.
GE as Romantic?
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The underlying structure of GE draws on Romantic themes of individuality
including the idea that an ‘ordinary’ individual’s thoughts and concerns can
be interesting and of value.
The pursuit of Estella (the ‘star’) echoes romance quest narratives: the
woman as elusive object of the hero’s desire.
There are examples of Pip’s psyche having a life of its own, particularly in
the use of dreams: everything is not presented as it seems on the surface.
A further development of this is in the use of imaginative descriptions and
extended metaphors to heighten or explore different dimensions of the
characters and their settings:
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Extended use of the grotesque (see next week)
The interest in the child’s perspective, the value of imagination, and the
perception that children are different from mini adults are a direct legacy of the
Romantic Movement.
GE as Realist?
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While there are numerous fairytale and grotesque allusions, and
much use of figurative language, the events and characters have a
basis in the everyday although an everyday that is already historical
for Dickens’ own readers.
They have, in Pam Morris’s terms (Reading, Week 1), an historical
particularity that allows us to place the the novel in a time earlier
than 1860 (roughly between 1814 and 1840).
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Transportation to Australia and the use of the hulks was phased out by
the 1850s as a British prison system was developed.
 The characters are clearly positioned within a social system in terms of
class: they are individually portrayed, but they also are sociological
types produced by a particular society.
 Occupations are central to characterisation.
Or something else?
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GE is a later novel of Dickens in which he is blending a range of
different literary genres and styles as well as experimenting.
Tambling (this week’s reading) suggests that GE can be seen as
foreshadowing some modernist concerns with the possibilities of
language and form.
Some ways in which GE offers some new ways of writing:
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The less than happy ending: originally, the ending more clearly
prevented any reconciliation between Pip and Estella, but was rewritten.
The absence of any clear-cut moral or social solutions
The absence of a completely sympathetic protagonist (or any totally
sympathetic idealised characters)
The movement towards an uneasy lack of clear distinction between the
‘real’ observed world and the imagination.
The questioning of the possibilities of romance of any kind in the
‘modern’ society.
The failures of romance:
The prison
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Great Expectations in common with much of Dickens’
fiction is interested in the idea of prison.
In the classic romance, and in much Romantic literature,
‘prison’ is a specific enclosed place from which the hero
must escape or rescue another prisoner. It is a distinct
situation apart from society.
The Romantic prisoner is the victim of mistake or evil
intent to limit his freedom and capacity to act. He uses
his ingenuity, courage, strength to break out.
In the 18th century, this heroic notion of the wrongly
imprisoned was also transferred to revolutionary
movements against oppressive regimes.
19th century prison: real and
imagined
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The mid 19th century saw a completely new social approach to the
penal system: as an organised punishment for the convicted rather
than a holding device for those on trial. For some reformers it also
included the idea of rehabilitation as well as deterrence.
Rather than being a metaphor for an heroic and wrongful solitary
confinement with the possibility of escape, it became synonymous
with the oppressiveness of an organised and alienating society.
A modern perception, which Dickens sometimes seems to
anticipate, suggests that people within such a society collude by
creating their own psychological prisons and act as their own jailers:
they internalise oppression.
Such a prison is particularly antagonistic to Romantic individualism
because it is predicated on an idea of normality and conformity and
it cannot be overcome by individual heroic effort.
GE characters and prison
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Most, if not all, of the GE characters inhabit some form of prison:
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Miss Havisham tries futilely to stop time by refusing to live beyond the
space and moment of her abandonment as a bride and in turn imprisons
Estella in her image of heart-breaker
Mrs Joe becomes a prisoner to her former victim, Orlick, totally at his
mercy
Matthew Pocket is a prisoner to the social snobbery and other failings of
his wife
Herbert Pocket and his fiancee are prisoners to her father’s selfishness
Wemmick’s answer to the imprisonment of the drudgery of his
employment is to create an alternative prison: his domestic sanctuary.
Even characters who appear to have a more positive representation are
still limited in their possibilities: the apparently idyllic life of Joe and
Biddy is only idyllic as seen through Pip’s regretful vision: there is an
implied reading that reminds the reader of the limits and deprivation of
their life and, also, reminds us that their rural life is one on the verge of
disappearing as the city advances.
Discipline and violence
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A key term for Foucault in describing the development of 19th century
modern society was ‘discipline’: a form of control usually through the threat
of punishment that creates the ‘docile body’
GE characters are very concerned with issues of control and creating of
docility in others through the use of actual or implied violence.
Pip himself is an extremely docile character: he is invented by others and
rarely makes decisions.
Pip is controlled through his sense of omnipresent observation, by uncanny
figures whose reality is often in doubt and who only reluctantly become
present to him. From Magwitch’s threat to the young Pip of his imagined coconvict who tears out the hearts of boys, through to the uncertainty over the
identity of the unknown benefactor who intervenes unseen in his life, and
the ghostly Compeyson who follows Pip around London.
The ‘undisciplined’ side of Pip is represented by other characters who act
out violence for him: notably, Orlick one of the least ‘realistic’ characters.
Punishment
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The punishment for not being docile is literal imprisonment: the child Pip is
threatened with growing up as a convict if he doesn’t behave
Jaggers literally and metaphorically represents the punishing side of the
law, viewing everyone as a potential criminal and life in general as
something that needs to be carefully washed off in case it contaminates
him.
Underlying the theme of ‘real’ imprisonment is the theme that there is no
escape from the larger imprisonment of society: there is nowhere to go.
This has relevance to the time sequence: in the early chapters, prisoners
are seen as distinct from everyone else (but as humans by the more
sympathetic characters) by the end, the division between ‘them’ and ‘us’ is
narrowing as it approaches the more ‘modern society’ of Dickens’
contemporary readers.
The reader, like Pip himself, is taken on a journey to reassess how far (s)he
is/is not different from Magwitch.
Individual success
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The title of the novel echoes the rags-to-riches stories that were
popular in the period often based, allegedly, on real life.
It is, of course, ironic in that all the things that the protagonist, Pip,
and the reader expect prove to be illusory: like the rags-to-riches
story itself?
At key moments in the novel, Pip learns (usually after the reader has
already guessed) that his ‘fairy godmother’ is not Miss Havisham,
and that the convict is not a monstrous ogre.
One ‘romance’ element then is the hero quest for success: but rather
than battling dragons or being recognised for his unique wonderful
talents, Pip gets his questionable ‘reward’ for a small act of kindness
that was performed out of fear.
The ‘real story’
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For a boy like Pip, in ‘reality’, the best he could hope for was apprenticeship
to Joe and, possibly, marriage to Biddy.
His aspirations are based on mistaken values that see social status based
on wealth as creating a ‘gentleman’.
However, the novel’s development indicates that once he has started on the
quest to achieve his illusory goal he cannot, however much he wants, go
back: Biddy is not available; he hasn’t the talents, the temperament or the
training to be a blacksmith; having once seen Joe’s social inadequacies he
can’t magically not see them; he has seen the potential as well as the
horrors of the city and can’t go back to the country.
This ambivalence, which is echoed in the novel’s ending, is another link of
GE to modernist writing: there is no return to the easy happy endings of
conventional romance either for Pip or the reader.
The minor subplot of Mr Wopsle’s attempts to become an actor offer a
comic version of the futility of Romantic escape: he tries to change his life
and enter the larger world through the fantasy of the theatre but lacks ‘star
quality’
The romantic (sub)plot
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Conventional novels feature a love interest which provides the momentum
for events and the development towards a happy ending.
Estella is presented as almost a parody or logical extreme of the romantic
heroine in that she is totally programmed towards marriage: not however for
romantic fulfilment but as a weapon of revenge.
Breaking from the conventions of romance, Dickens does not attempt to
make readers share Pip’s desire: Estella is, as she herself acknowledges,
cruel and (self)destructive.
Interestingly, from a feminist perspective, this break with the convention
could be read as indicating the essential masochistic qualities of romance
fiction: Estella marries Drummle in the full knowledge that he will violently
abuse her.
However, this can be offset by a certain degree of misogyny in the portrayal
of the major female characters and the clear focus throughout on the male
perspectives.
Self-conscious narrative
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The idea of the ‘self-conscious’ narrative achieves its
fullest development from the 20th century. It is is
associated with the rise of ‘modernism’. It suggests a
move away from the illusion of mimesis (the mimicry of
‘reality’ through a transparent text) towards a focus on
the literary/textual .
There are ways in which Great Expectations, as
Tambling suggests, anticipates this self-consciousness.
Amongst them is the undercutting of conventional
romance and, with it, a degree of alienation of the
reader.