¶ … Crime When Justice is Neither Deaf nor Blind: Crime and Punishment in Dickens' Great Expectations

Charles Dickens' Great Expectations is epic in scope, covering the rise and fall of its hero Pip through the class system of nineteenth century England with the growth and failure of a tragic romance tied into the package. The several interconnected plot lines, the wide cast of detailed and fully human characters, and the many timeless and universal themes that play integral roles throughout the story all mark this novel as one of the masterpieces of English literature, and its social commentary is important both historically and as an ongoing dialogue with modern society. One theme in particular continues to reverberate all too resoundingly in a modern context: the novel deals with crime and punishment in many ways both fundamental to the plot and incidental, and the perspective this gives on the relationship between justice and wealth -- and more specifically, between justice and class -- is quite cutting indeed.

Through an examination of the many instances in Great Expectations in which the theme of crime and punishment appears, it becomes quite clear that not only does Dickens disapprove of the criminal justice system as he witnessed it being carried out, but that many of the same issues Dickens observed are still problems today. Perceptions of class and manipulations of appearance are shown to be more important than actual facts in many cases, affecting both the establishment of guilt and the scope or degree of punishment inflicted, and yet at the same time crime provides the means by which Pip's education and rise out of his class is facilitated. Crime is the way up and the way up is the way out of crime (or punishment), in other words, in a complex, ironic, and often cynical yet entirely honest and poignant portrayal of how social systems impact personal lives. From Pip's role in Magwitch's escape to his visits to Newgate and through several other experiences, crime, criminals, and their punishments form an incredibly important role in shaping Pip's life and perspective as well as the narrative that the reader experiences. Dickens' ultimate message is that crime does not affect one's humanity nor should punishment degrade it, and a recognition of humanity outside of class is necessary for a recognition of humanity that extends beyond criminality.

When Crime Pays

Great Expectation's plot depends upon criminality and specifically on Pip's complicity in helping a criminal, Magwitch, to escape. It is Magwitch, made rich not through his crimes but rather through a twist of circumstances resulting out of his punishment, who becomes Pip's anonymous benefactor and gives him the opportunity to move beyond the blacksmith's forge and into, for a time, the upper-middle class of English society. Pip's trajectory through the novel is thus directly tied to issues of crime and punishment, with the great irony being that the lack of humanity in the criminal justice system that Dickens so often and so clearly decries in the novel is also responsible for elevating Pip to a position of recognized humanity. That is, even as Dickens and Pip both recognize the injustice and the inhumanity inherent to the issues of crime and punishment as they are dealt with by society, Pip (and, it should be acknowledged, Dickens) both benefit indirectly from criminality and from the very injustices of the system as recognized.

Critic Goldie Morgentaler sees a strong strain of Darwinian struggle in Great Expectations, a reading made stronger by the temporal proximity of the novel's writing to the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species. Noting the phrase "universal struggle" in the second paragraph of Dickens' novel -- a phrase that first occurred with similar meaning in the third chapter of Origin of the Species -- Morgentaler sees Pip's journey and much of the other commentary of the novel as evidence of a sort of social Darwinism at work, with only those best suited to the rules, values, and constraints of society able to achieve any measure of success within it (p. 707). Magwitch's criminality is what sets him on the road to achieving his fortune, but simple wealth is not enough to make Magwitch a gentleman or...

Pip, despite his lowly birth and his circumstances as a parentless apprentice to his brother-in-law and father figure, the blacksmith Joe Gargery, is still malleable, and thus the fruits of Magwitch's crime (albeit indirect and non-criminal fruits) are able to propel Pip to greater heights as he adapts to the demands of society. While Magwitch is punished for his crime far beyond what is justly deserved because he is too low-class in language and mannerism to make use of his wealth, Pip is rewarded for his assistance in Magwitch's criminality with the very traits society requires.
At the same time, all of Pip's education and refinement ends up a punishment in its own right, as Magwitch does not have the wealth to sustain Pip in any sort of gentlemanly fashion -- Pip becomes unable to remain in the class to which he was born given the broader views and higher vistas he has been granted through his education, yet he is equally unable to remain in the class to which h has become accustomed due to a lack of money. By the time Pip learns the identity of his mysterious benefactor, in fact, he is in danger of becoming a "criminal" himself due to his mounting debts, the non-payment of which was a crime that could come with a prison sentence during Dickens' era. Pip's story is one that directly illuminates the "social evils" of the criminal justice system as it existed and was applied during Dickens' day, with his social rise facilitated indirectly through criminal funding and with his lack of funding as an erstwhile member of the upper-middle class tantamount to criminality (Hagan, p. 169). Crime pays, and not being able to pay is a crime -- Dickens' and Pip's society is one in which money truly defines not only class but the capability of culpability, with the moneyed classes almost entirely above the law and the lower classes in constant fear of it.

Estella benefits from criminality in a manner quite similar to Pip's own, though this is also not discovered until late in the novel; the daughter of Magwitch and Molly, a murderess-cum-maid, Estella is adopted by Miss Havisham while her parents face -- or attempt not to face -- the consequences of their crimes. Like Pip, she is raised above her station as the direct result of others' crimes, though unlike Pip she is well and truly elevated to a new social station and level of wealth. Pip's idolization of Estella is also cast in an ironic light by the knowledge of her origins in a manner that even more strongly highlights the impact of money on class and the perception of individual worth. After Pip has learned the truth of his own trajectory but before he has discovered Estella's origins, he bitterly reflects on the manner in which criminality has shaped his own life and the fact that he might be imprisoned. While thus mentally engaged, Pip recalls that he "thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud and refined & #8230; I thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her" (Dickens, p. 284). Estella contrasts with the jail only because of the class in which she is raised, which is so foreign to the concept of criminality in Dickens' world that the two seem polar opposites to Pip's far-from-naive (at this point in the novel) mind. Estella goes on to marry an abusive husband, and the violence he carries out with her hands is an interesting foil to the violence Estella's mother Molly practices with her strong wrists, again defining the gap between the poor and the wealthy when it comes to crime and punishment in Dickens' world. There is no chance that the wife-beating husband will ever be called to task for his actions by the system of temporal justice in place in Dickens' England, and there is equally no question that Molly will be called in for her role in any crime to which she is even tangentially attached, saved only by the good graces of her lawyer.

This leads to yet one more way in which the larger plot of the novel is shaped by visions of crime and punishment, and more specifically of the ability for the moneyed classes to profit further from crime while the poorer are punished and made further destitute, whether guilty or innocent. Pip's apprenticeship with the lawyer Jaggers provides him ample opportunity to see the legitimate profitability of crime for the legal profession, and his ambition to practice law himself is strangely consistent with yet notably different from the first action he is seen taking in the novel, assisting Magwitch in…