ENG 1120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Malapropism, Parsley, Chisel

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: English
• Course: ENG 1120
• Professor: All

Document Summary

Great expectations can be understood as a critique of social inequities. Magwitch, for example, is the victim of an unjust society, the product of poverty, class discrimination, indifference, and cruelty, and he is aware of this himself. Pip, is conditioned by the injustices of his society: they measured my head, some on. "em they had better a measured my stomach (317). More than this, the novel is also a comment on how the materialistic values of society, or the perceived importance of status and class, can ruin individual lives. In this novel, pip is bought and sold more than once. Mrs. joe is perfectly aware, when pumblechook brings the summons, that she is selling him to miss havisham; miss havisham is aware of the terms, too, and she rewards him for his playing with twenty-five guineas. Jaggers offers, virtually, to buy him from joe when the articles of apprenticeship are cancelled.