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How Does Great Expectations Change Throughout The Novel

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‘Great Expectations’, written by Charles Dickens during the Victorian era while England was adapting to the industrial revolution, is a life-long story of a boy called Pip. This was a period where England was experiencing major social and cultural changes, and society was unstable – there were clear hierarchies and a gulf between the rich and the poor, and children were not treated with respect or care. Despite the fact that England was a powerful and a formidable nation, Dickens criticises English society throughout this book. Pip in ‘Great Expectations’ grows up later to suddenly receive a huge sum of money. He also fulfils his expectations of being what he thinks is a ‘gentleman’, only to later realise how foolish he has been and how wrong in his understanding of what a gentleman really was. At the start of the novel, ‘Great Expectations’, Dickens successfully enables the readers to understand both Pip …show more content…

He is wearing grey clothing, with a great iron on his leg, which tells the readers that he might as well be an escaped convict, seeking for shelter and food after a long and a hard journey. Magwitch also proves himself to be violent, as he “seized me [Pip] by the chin”. It could be that Magwitch is pretending to be more fierce and violent than he actually is, to hide his inner feelings, to not show Pip how he is actually afraid of what is happening to him. In addition, Magwitch is both physically and mentally ‘chained’ at the start of ‘Great Expectations’; as he is a convict who has committed a serious crime. Society had never given him a chance to prove that he could actually be a better person. Magwitch adds tension to the first chapter of ‘Great Expectations’ since he is a character who terrifies

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