Charles Dickens

 1812, Charles Dickens is known for his highly descriptive prose and his ability to create detailed
settings and characters. His writing is often lively and humorous, punctuated by moments of
profound emotional depth. His narratives also feature intricate plot structures and complex social
commentary.
 He often used irony and satire to criticize social inequities. His novels also feature multiple plot
lines that weave together to create a larger narrative whole.
 A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, published in 1859, immerses readers in the contrasting
worlds of London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel weaves a
complex narrative involving characters like Charles Darnay, Sydney Carton, and Lucie Manette,
each grappling with love, sacrifice, and the profound societal transformations brought about by
historical upheaval. Dickens’s iconic opening line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times,” encapsulates the stark dichotomy that permeates the narrative, capturing the turbulence of
the era.
 The historical setting of the novel adds depth to the story, vividly portraying the social disparities
and political unrest of the late 18th century. Dickens skillfully utilizes the backdrop of the French
Revolution to explore timeless themes of resurrection, sacrifice, and the potential for positive
change, making the novel a compelling exploration of human resilience in the face of societal,
political, and personal challenges.

The three most important aspects of A Tale of Two Cities:

 A Tale of Two Cities is told from the omniscient, or all-knowing, point of view. The
narrator, or storyteller, who is never identified, has access to the thoughts and feelings of
all the characters.
 A Tale of Two Cities, which is one of two historical novels written by Charles Dickens, is
set in London and in Paris and the French countryside at the time of the French
Revolution. The book is sympathetic to the overthrow of the French aristocracy but
highly critical of the reign of terror that followed.
 Dickens characterizes the men and women who populate A Tale of Two Cities less by
what the book's narrator or the characters themselves say, and more by what they do. As a
result, the novel seems somewhat modern, despite being set in the 18th century and
written in the 19th century.
 The year is 1775, and social ills plague both France and England. Jerry Cruncher, an odd-job
man who works for Tellson’s Bank, stops the Dover mail-coach with an urgent message
for Jarvis Lorry. The message instructs Lorry to wait at Dover for a young woman, and Lorry
responds with the cryptic words, “Recalled to Life.”
 Lucie to Paris, where they meet Defarge, a former servant of Doctor Manette, who has kept
Manette safe in a garret.
 Charles Darnay stands accused of treason against the English crown. A bombastic lawyer named
Stryver pleads Darnay’s case, but it is not until his drunk, good-for-nothing colleague, Sydney
Carton, assists him that the court acquits Darnay.
 In France, the cruel Marquis Evrémonde runs down a plebian child with his carriage.
Manifesting an attitude typical of the aristocracy in regard to the poor at that time, the Marquis
shows no regret, but instead curses the peasantry and hurries home to his chateau, where he
awaits the arrival of his nephew,
 the Marquis is murdered; the murderer has left a note signed with the nickname adopted by
French revolutionaries: “Jacques.”
 Madame Defarge sits in the shop knitting a secret registry of those whom the revolution seeks to
execute. Back in London, Darnay, on the morning of his wedding, keeps his promise to Manette;
he reveals his true identity and, that night, Manette relapses into his old prison habit of making
shoes. After nine days, Manette regains his presence of mind, and soon joins the newlyweds on
their honeymoon.
 Gabelle, a man charged with the maintenance of the Evrémonde estate, is imprisoned. Three
years later, he writes to Darnay, asking to be rescued.
 Carton arrives in Paris with a plan to rescue Darnay and obtains the help of John Barsad, who
turns out to be Solomon Pross, the long-lost brother of Miss Pross, Lucie’s loyal servant.
 Madame Defarge, it turns out, is the surviving sibling of the man and woman killed by the
Evrémondes. Carton arranges for the Manettes’ immediate departure from France. He then visits
Darnay in prison, tricks him into changing clothes with him, and, after dictating a letter of
explanation, drugs his friend unconscious. Barsad carries Darnay, now disguised as Carton, to an
awaiting coach, while Carton, disguised as Darnay, awaits execution. As Darnay, Lucie, their
child, and Dr. Manette speed away from Paris, Madame Defarge arrives at Lucie’s apartment,
hoping to arrest her. There she finds the supremely protective Miss Pross. A scuffle ensues, and
Madame Defarge dies by the bullet of her own gun.
 A Tale of Two Cities is structured around a central conflict between Charles Darnay’s desire to
break free of his family legacy, and Madame Defarge’s desire to hold him accountable for the
violent actions of his father and uncle. This conflict embodies conflicting aspects of the French
Revolution in general: on one hand, the Revolution led to the deaths of many people who hadn’t
done anything wrong, and were likely good people on a personal level. On the other hand, the
Revolution was a response to generations of well-documented injustices. Like Darnay, many
French aristocrats could be considered guilty by association, or as a result of profiting from
systems of exploitation.
 The violence of the Revolution doesn’t just come out of nowhere: it breaks out because of the
accumulation of decades of unjust treatment and abuses of power. Similarly, crimes committed
generations earlier continue to haunt and threaten Darnay, Lucie, and Dr. Manette. Key events
like Darnay building a career for himself in England, getting married, and starting his own
family seem to be taking him closer to his desire of living a good and honest life without
exploiting or hurting anyone. However, as Darnay eventually realizes, he hasn’t actually
resolved the conflict because he has never taken responsibility for the suffering his family has
caused: he has only run away from it. As Darnay admits, “He knew very well that in his love for
Lucie, his renunciation of his social place… had been hurried and incomplete.” In order to fully
obtain his desire and break all bonds with a system he despises, Darnay returns to France.
 Carton’s death has provided much material for scholars and critics of Dickens’s novel. Some
readers consider it the inevitable conclusion to a work obsessed with the themes of redemption
and resurrection. According to this interpretation, Carton becomes a Christ-like figure, a selfless
martyr whose death enables the happiness of his beloved and ensures his own immortality. Other
readers, however, question the ultimate significance of Carton’s final act. They argue that since
Carton initially places little value on his existence, the sacrifice of his life proves relatively easy.
 Novelist E. M. Forster famously criticized Dickens’s characters as “flat,” lamenting that they
seem to lack the depth and complexity that make literary characters realistic and believable.
Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette certainly fit this description. A man of honor, respect, and
 courage, Darnay conforms to the archetype of the hero but never exhibits the kind of inner
struggle that Carton and Doctor Manette undergo. His opposition to the Marquis’ snobbish and
cruel aristocratic values is admirable, but, ultimately, his virtue proves too uniform, and he fails
to exert any compelling force on the imagination.
 Along similar lines, Lucie likely seems to modern readers as uninteresting and two-dimensional
as Darnay. In every detail of her being, she embodies compassion, love, and virtue; the indelible
image of her cradling her father’s head delicately on her breast encapsulates her role as the
“golden thread” that holds her family together. She manifests her purity of devotion to Darnay in
her unquestioning willingness to wait at a street corner for two hours each day, on the off chance
that he will catch sight of her from his prison window. In a letter to Dickens, a contemporary
criticized such simplistic characterizations:
 With A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens asserts his belief in the possibility of resurrection and
transformation, both on a personal level and on a societal level. The narrative suggests that
Sydney Carton’s death secures a new, peaceful life for Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, and even
Carton himself. By delivering himself to the guillotine, Carton ascends to the plane of heroism,
becoming a Christ-like figure whose death serves to save the lives of others. His own life thus
gains meaning and value.
 Similarly, the text implies that the death of the old regime in France prepares the way for the
beautiful and renewed Paris that Carton supposedly envisions from the guillotine.
 Connected to the theme of the possibility of resurrection is the notion that sacrifice is necessary
to achieve happiness. Dickens examines this second theme, again, on both a national and
personal level. For example, the revolutionaries prove that a new, egalitarian French republic can
come about only with a heavy and terrible cost—personal loves and loyalties must be sacrificed
for the good of the nation. Also, when Darnay is arrested for the second time, in Book the Third,
Chapter 7, the guard who seizes him reminds Manette of the primacy of state interests over
personal loyalties. Moreover, Madame Defarge gives her husband a similar lesson when she
chastises him for his devotion to Manette—an emotion that, in her opinion, only clouds his
obligation to the revolutionary cause. Most important, Carton’s transformation into a man of
moral worth depends upon his sacrificing of his former self. In choosing to die for his friends,
Carton not only enables their happiness but also ensures his spiritual rebirth.
 The novel’s opening words (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .”)
immediately establish the centrality of doubles to the narrative. The story’s action divides itself
between two locales, the two cities of the title. Dickens positions various characters as doubles as
well, thus heightening the various themes within the novel. The two most important females in
the text function as diametrically opposed doubles: Lucie is as loving and nurturing as Madame
Defarge is hateful and bloodthirsty.
 Thus, for example, while Lucie’s love initiates her father’s spiritual transformation and renewal,
proving the possibility of resurrection, Madame Defarge’s vengefulness only propagates an
infinite cycle of oppression, showing violence to be self-perpetuating.
 Dickens’s doubling technique functions not only to draw oppositions, but to reveal hidden
parallels. Carton, for example, initially seems a foil to Darnay; Darnay as a figure reminds him
of what he could have been but has failed to become. By the end of the novel, however, Carton
transforms himself from a good-for-nothing to a hero whose goodness equals or even surpasses
that of the honorable Darnay. While the two men’s physical resemblance initially serves only to
underscore Carton’s moral inferiority to Darnay, it ultimately enables Carton’s supremely self-
elevating deed, allowing him to disguise himself as the condemned Darnay and die in his place.
 As Carton goes to the guillotine in his double’s stead, he raises himself up to, or above, Darnay’s
virtuous status.
 Shadows dominate the novel, creating a mood of thick obscurity and grave foreboding. An aura
of gloom and apprehension surrounds the first images of the actual story—the mail coach’s
journey in the dark and Jerry Cruncher’s emergence from the mist. The introduction of Lucie
Manette to Jarvis Lorry furthers this motif, as Lucie stands in a room so darkened and awash
with shadows that the candlelight seems buried in the dark panels of the walls. This atmosphere
contributes to the mystery surrounding Lorry’s mission to Paris and Manette’s imprisonment. It
also manifests Dickens’s observations about the shadowy depths of the human heart.
 With his depiction of a broken wine cask outside Defarge’s wine shop, and with his portrayal
of the passing peasants’ scrambles to lap up the spilling wine, Dickens creates a symbol for the
desperate quality of the people’s hunger. This hunger is both the literal hunger for food—the
French peasants were starving in their poverty—and the metaphorical hunger for political
freedoms.
 On the surface, the scene shows the peasants in their desperation to satiate the first of these
hungers. But it also evokes the violent measures that the peasants take in striving to satisfy their
more metaphorical cravings. For instance, the narrative directly associates the wine with blood,
noting that some of the peasants have acquired “a tigerish smear about the mouth” and
portraying a drunken figure scrawling the word “blood” on the wall with a wine-dipped finger.
Indeed, the blood of aristocrats later spills at the hands of a mob in these same streets.
 Even on a literal level, Madame Defarge’s knitting constitutes a whole network of symbols.
Into her needlework she stitches a registry, or list of names, of all those condemned to die in the
name of a new republic. But on a metaphoric level, the knitting constitutes a symbol in itself,
representing the stealthy, cold-blooded vengefulness of the revolutionaries. As Madame Defarge
sits quietly knitting, she appears harmless and quaint. In fact, however, she sentences her victims
to death. Similarly, the French peasants may appear simple and humble figures, but they
eventually rise up to massacre their oppressors.
 Dickens’s knitting imagery also emphasizes an association between vengefulness and fate,
which, in Greek mythology, is traditionally linked to knitting or weaving. The Fates, three sisters
who control human life, busy themselves with the tasks of weavers or seamstresses: one sister
spins the web of life, another measures it, and the last cuts it. Madame Defarge’s knitting thus
becomes a symbol of her victims’ fate—death at the hands of a wrathful peasantry.
 The French Revolution began on May 5, 1789, when the Estates-General (representatives
elected to represent the clergy, the nobility, and the rest of the population) gathered together for
the first time in more than 150 years. Most of the French population was frustrated by heavy
taxes and a political system that put virtually all power in the hands of aristocrats.
Revolutionaries tried to seize power, which led to rioting and violence in Paris, and on July 14,
1789, they stormed the Bastille fortress. Many French aristocrats fled to other countries,
including England, and French revolutionaries attacked and burned the homes of the wealthy. In
August 1789, the Revolutionary government published the Declaration of the Rights of Man,
proclaiming a new vision of social and political equality.
 Despite the hopes of creating a more just and equal society, violence and unrest continued. The
French King and Queen were executed during a period known as the "Reign of Terror,” which
lasted from 1793 to 1794.
 The roots of the historical novel can be traced back to the early nineteenth-century. In 1814,
Walter Scott published Waverley, or’ Tix Sixty Years Hence, which is usually considered the first
 example of the modern historical fiction. In this book and later works, Scott brought two key
innovations to his representation of the past.
 This combination of fact and fiction was very popular with audiences and authors in the
nineteenth century. Major works of historical fiction from the period include George
Eliot’s Romola (1863), the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The
Scarlet Letter (1850) and Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831).
 Curiously, one of the aspects readers most commonly overlook when studying A Tale of
Two Cities is the centrality of women in the story. The characters around whom the action
revolves in both London and Paris are women: Lucie Manette and Madame Defarge.
Additionally, Dickens uses women throughout the book to represent the moral climate of a group
or family. Although Dickens may not develop his female characters as fully as he does some of
the male characters in A Tale of Two Cities, nevertheless, the women provide the men in the
novel with an emotional foundation that causes the men to act for or react against what the
women represent.
 Lucie is a passive character who influences others through who she is rather than by what she
does. The comfortable home she creates comforts the men in her life and her devout compassion
for others inspires them. Her goodness enables them to become more than they are and to find
the strength to escape the prisons of their lives.
 On the other hand, Madame Defarge stands at the center of the revolutionary activity in Paris as
an active agent of change, even when she is just sitting in the wine-shop and knitting her death
register. Madame Defarge instigates hatred and violence, exemplified by her leadership in the
mob scenes and the way The Vengeance and Jacques Three feed off of her desire to exterminate
the Evrémonde line. Her patient ruthlessness helps to support her husband when he has doubts
about the Revolution.
 When Louis XVI became King of France in 1775, he inherited a country with economic distress,
social unrest, a debauched court, and problems with the nobility and parlement (the courts of
justice). The inheritance was fatal. At the time, the aristocracy was living on borrowed money
and the labors of the lower classes. The middle class was becoming wealthy from its trade,
manufacturing, banking, and contracting. The lower middle class consisted of tradesmen and
laborers, with a few government officials.
 The king, only twenty, was inexperienced and easily influenced, and he soon tired of his
country's problems. He was a shy man who was often indecisive and narrow-minded; he usually
depended on his ministers for advice but frequently would reverse their decisions and decide
matters for himself, simply because he wanted to show his authority. He sincerely believed that
he ruled by the will of God, by the Divine Right of Kings.
 The commoners of France, overjoyed when Louis established the Estates-General, soon became
disappointed. Initially, they thought that they would have their "own"Estate and, thus, a voice in
government policy-making They quickly realized, however, that they possessed no real power.
Organizing the new Estates-General on the same principle of the 1614 concept meant one vote
for each member of the Estates. Thus, the clergy and the aristocracy could easily out-vote the
Third Estate, two to one, which they did repeatedly.
 Political problems increased, and food riots broke out due to food shortages. Rainstorms and hail
ruined the crops of 1788, leaving people hungry. Paris, in particular, was a crowded, densely
populated city of poor people. The masses had no jobs and no money. They began burning and
looting the countryside, and even common soldiers began talking against their aristocratic
 officers. Political pamphlets aggravated the situation by demanding that the Third Estate have a
stronger voice in the government.
 By the middle of June 1788, poor parish priests who belonged to the First Estate began to desert
their political base and join the Third Estate. As a result, the Third Estate recognized that it was
the only Estate elected by "the people."They declared themselves "the National Assembly,"and
immediately banned taxes.
 This declaration placed Louis in an uncomfortable and difficult position. Recognizing the
legitimacy of the National Assembly would mean surrendering his power, but not recognizing it
might drive the Third Estate to even greater rebellion. Unfortunately, he chose to listen to
Jacques Necker, his Minister of Finance, and to his queen, Marie Antoinette, and decided to
oppose the National Assembly. He closed the chambers where the Assembly was to convene, but
the Assembly immediately moved to an indoor tennis court. Despite the confusion, the Assembly
took an oath not to disband until they had a constitution, and they openly defied the king. They
would have a constitution.

Great Expectations
 Pip, a young orphan living with his sister and her husband in the marshes of Kent, sits in a
cemetery one evening looking at his parents’ tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs
up from behind a tombstone, grabs Pip, and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg
irons. Pip obeys, but the fearsome convict is soon captured anyway. The convict protects Pip by
claiming to have stolen the items himself.
 One day Pip is taken by his Uncle Pumblechook to play at Satis House, the home of the wealthy
dowager Miss Havisham, who is extremely eccentric: she wears an old wedding dress
everywhere she goes and keeps all the clocks in her house stopped at the same time. During his
visit, he meets a beautiful young girl named Estella, who treats him coldly and contemptuously.
Nevertheless, he falls in love with her and dreams of becoming a wealthy gentleman so that he
might be worthy of her. He even hopes that Miss Havisham intends to make him a gentleman
and marry him to Estella, but his hopes are dashed when, after months of regular visits to Satis
House, Miss Havisham decides to help him become a common laborer in his family’s business.
 Pip works in the forge unhappily, struggling to better his education with the help of the plain,
kind Biddy and encountering Joe’s malicious day laborer, Orlick. One night, after an altercation
with Orlick, Pip’s sister, known as Mrs. Joe, is viciously attacked and becomes a mute invalid.
From her signals, Pip suspects that Orlick was responsible for the attack.
 One day a lawyer named Jaggers appears with strange news: a secret benefactor has given Pip a
large fortune, and Pip must come to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman.
 In London, Pip befriends a young gentleman named Herbert Pocket and Jaggers’s law clerk,
Wemmick. He expresses disdain for his former friends and loved ones, especially Joe, but he
continues to pine after Estella. He furthers his education by studying with the tutor Matthew
Pocket, Herbert’s father.
 Orlick reappears in Pip’s life, employed as Miss Havisham’s porter, but is promptly fired by
Jaggers after Pip reveals Orlick’s unsavory past. Mrs. Joe dies, and Pip goes home for the
funeral, feeling tremendous grief and remorse. Several years go by, until one night a familiar
figure barges into Pip’s room—the convict, Magwitch, who stuns Pip by announcing that he, not
Miss Havisham, is the source of Pip’s fortune.
 Pip decides to go abroad with Herbert to work in the mercantile trade. Returning many years
later, he encounters Estella in the ruined garden at Satis House. Drummle, her husband, treated
 her badly, but he is now dead. Pip finds that Estella’s coldness and cruelty have been replaced by
a sad kindness, and the two leave the garden hand in hand, Pip believing that they will never part
again. (Note: Dickens’s original ending to Great Expectations differed from the one described in
this summary. The final Summary and Analysis section of this SparkNote provides a description
of the first ending and explains why Dickens rewrote it.)
Analysis
 The major conflict of Great Expectations revolves around Pip’s ambitious desire to reinvent
himself and rise to a higher social class. His desire for social progress stems from a desire to be
worthy of Estella’s love: “She’s more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her
dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account.”
 The rising action progresses as Pip becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the prospect of living
a simple life as a country blacksmith. As he explains, “I never shall or can be comfortable …
unless I can lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead now.”
 The conflict surrounding Pip’s shame at his social background and desire to be a gentleman
continues as he struggles to protect Magwitch and get him to safety. Along the way, Pip realizes
that Magwitch is Estella’s father. This discovery transforms Pip’s understanding of social
position and criminality. Up to this point, Pip has considered Estella and the criminal underworld
Magwitch represents as oppositional to one another, but now Pip understands that Estella and
Magwitch have always been interconnected. At the novel’s climax, Pip confides to a dying
Magwitch that his lost child “is living now. She is a lady and very beautiful. And I love her!” By
showing kindness to a criminal and describing Estella as a both a lady and the daughter of a
convict, Pip shows that he no longer thinks about social position in a black or white way. The
conflict resolves with Pip letting go of his social aspirations in order to focus on reconciling with
the characters who have been loyal to him all along, paying off his debts, and earning an honest
living.
 As a character, Pip’s two most important traits are his immature, romantic idealism and his
innately good conscience. On the one hand, Pip has a deep desire to improve himself and attain
any possible advancement, whether educational, moral, or social. His longing to marry Estella
and join the upper classes stems from the same idealistic desire as his longing to learn to read
and his fear of being punished for bad behavior: once he understands ideas like poverty,
ignorance, and immorality, Pip does not want to be poor, ignorant, or immoral. Pip the narrator
judges his own past actions extremely harshly, rarely giving himself credit for good deeds but
angrily castigating himself for bad ones.
 When Pip becomes a gentleman, for example, he immediately begins to act as he thinks a
gentleman is supposed to act, which leads him to treat Joe and Biddy snobbishly and coldly.
 Often cited as Dickens’s first convincing female character, Estella is a supremely ironic creation,
one who darkly undermines the notion of romantic love and serves as a bitter criticism against
the class system in which she is mired. Raised from the age of three by Miss Havisham to
torment men and “break their hearts,” Estella wins Pip’s deepest love by practicing deliberate
cruelty. Unlike the warm, winsome, kind heroine of a traditional love story, Estella is cold,
cynical, and manipulative.
 Ironically, life among the upper classes does not represent salvation for Estella. Instead, she is
victimized twice by her adopted class. Rather than being raised by Magwitch, a man of great
inner nobility, she is raised by Miss Havisham, who destroys her ability to express emotion and
interact normally with the world. And rather than marrying the kindhearted commoner Pip,
Estella marries the cruel nobleman Drummle, who treats her harshly and makes her life
 miserable for many years. In this way, Dickens uses Estella’s life to reinforce the idea that one’s
happiness and well-being are not deeply connected to one’s social position: had Estella been
poor, she might have been substantially better off.
 Despite her cold behavior and the damaging influences in her life, Dickens nevertheless ensures
that Estella is still a sympathetic character. By giving the reader a sense of her inner struggle to
discover and act on her own feelings rather than on the imposed motives of her upbringing,
Dickens gives the reader a glimpse of Estella’s inner life, which helps to explain what Pip might
love about her. Estella does not seem able to stop herself from hurting Pip, but she also seems
not to want to hurt him; she repeatedly warns him that she has “no heart” and seems to urge him
as strongly as she can to find happiness by leaving her behind.
 The moral theme of Great Expectations is quite simple: affection, loyalty, and conscience are
more important than social advancement, wealth, and class. Dickens establishes the theme and
shows Pip learning this lesson, largely by exploring ideas of ambition and self-improvement—
ideas that quickly become both the thematic center of the novel and the psychological
mechanism that encourages much of Pip’s development. At heart, Pip is an idealist; whenever he
can conceive of something that is better than what he already has, he immediately desires to
obtain the improvement.
 Ambition and self-improvement take three forms in Great Expectations—moral, social, and
educational; these motivate Pip’s best and his worst behavior throughout the novel. First, Pip
desires moral self-improvement. He is extremely hard on himself when he acts immorally and
feels powerful guilt that spurs him to act better in the future. When he leaves for London, for
instance, he torments himself for behaving so wretchedly toward Joe and Biddy. Second, Pip
desires social self-improvement. In love with Estella, he longs to become a member of her social
class, and, encouraged by Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, he entertains fantasies of becoming a
gentleman.
 The working out of this fantasy forms the basic plot of the novel; it provides Dickens the
opportunity to gently satirize the class system of his era and to make a point about its capricious
nature. Significantly, Pip’s life as a gentleman is no more satisfying—and certainly no more
moral—than his previous life as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Third, Pip desires educational
improvement. This desire is deeply connected to his social ambition and longing to marry
Estella: a full education is a requirement of being a gentleman. As long as he is an ignorant
country boy, he has no hope of social advancement.
 Throughout Great Expectations, Dickens explores the class system of Victorian England,
ranging from the most wretched criminals (Magwitch) to the poor peasants of the marsh country
(Joe and Biddy) to the middle class (Pumblechook) to the very rich (Miss Havisham). The theme
of social class is central to the novel’s plot and to the ultimate moral theme of the book—Pip’s
realization that wealth and class are less important than affection, loyalty, and inner worth.
 Drummle, for instance, is an upper-class lout, while Magwitch, a persecuted convict, has a deep
inner worth. Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the novel’s treatment of social
class is that the class system it portrays is based on the post-Industrial Revolution model of
Victorian England. Dickens generally ignores the nobility and the hereditary aristocracy in favor
of characters whose fortunes have been earned through commerce. Even Miss Havisham’s
family fortune was made through the brewery that is still connected to her manor.
 From the earliest scenes of the novel to the last, nearly every element of Great Expectations is
mirrored or doubled at some other point in the book. There are two convicts on the marsh
(Magwitch and Compeyson), two invalids (Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham), two young women
 who interest Pip (Biddy and Estella), and so on. There are two secret benefactors: Magwitch,
who gives Pip his fortune, and Pip, who mirrors Magwitch’s action by secretly buying Herbert’s
way into the mercantile business. Finally, there are two adults who seek to mold children after
their own purposes: Magwitch, who wishes to “own” a gentleman and decides to make Pip one,
and Miss Havisham, who raises Estella to break men’s hearts in revenge for her own broken
heart.
 In Satis House, Dickens creates a magnificent Gothic setting whose various elements
symbolize Pip’s romantic perception of the upper class and many other themes of the book. On
her decaying body, Miss Havisham’s wedding dress becomes an ironic symbol of death and
degeneration. The wedding dress and the wedding feast symbolize Miss Havisham’s past, and
the stopped clocks throughout the house symbolize her determined attempt to freeze time by
refusing to change anything from the way it was when she was jilted on her wedding day. The
brewery next to the house symbolizes the connection between commerce and wealth: Miss
Havisham’s fortune is not the product of an aristocratic birth but of a recent success in industrial
capitalism. Finally, the crumbling, dilapidated stones of the house, as well as the darkness and
dust that pervade it, symbolize the general decadence of the lives of its inhabitants and of the
upper class as a whole.
 Part of the plot of Great Expectations concerns Magwitch’s transport to a penal colony in New
South Wales, Australia. In 1787, a fleet of ships sailed from England to Australia to establish a
penal colony settlement. The settlement was a response to overcrowding in English prisons. The
transportation of convicts continued until 1868, although it became less common over time. Most
of the prisoners sentenced to transport were convicted of petty crimes such as theft, so
Magwitch’s own transportation indicates he is less sinister than Pip believes him to be. The
existence of transportation as a punishment enabled a sense of public security, with the
comforting fantasy that criminals were being taken away. Transportation of criminals also
created a public fascination with the criminals’ stories and experiences.
 In terms of his initial hopes and expectations, Pip seems to end the novel as a failure. His two
great hopes have been to rise to the status of a gentleman and win Estella’s heart, and he does not
achieve either of these goals. His career ends up being modest, since “I must not leave it be
supposed to that we were ever a great House, or that we made mints of money.” Pip’s lack of
financial success is not only the blow to his social aspirations: he also has to face the shame and
trauma of realizing that everything he has comes from a convicted criminal. While he has always
nursed hopes of somehow winning Estella’s love, when he confesses his feelings to her, she
responds by explaining that “You address nothing in my breast, you touch nothing there. I don’t
care for what you say at all.”
 On the other hand, Pip succeeds at developing a sense of empathy. He becomes able to
appreciate and respect people based on their characters, rather than on shallow indications of
class and status. As Magwitch lays dying, Pip comforts him by confiding that his lost child
“lived and found powerful friends.” When he learns that Joe and Biddy have married, Pip bursts
out in praise of both of them: “you, dear Joe, have the best wife in the whole world and she will
make you happy even as you deserve to be.” Although he previously thought he was better than
both characters, Pip now sees that their kindness and reliability matter more than their income or
education. What Estella says about herself, that she has “been bent and broken, but, I hope, into
better shape” applies equally to Pip. He ends the novel a failure according to the standards he
initially holds, but a success because he has learned what better and truer standards of a good life
actually are.
 The first published edition of Great Expectations ends with Pip running into Estella in the
garden of Satis House after many years of separation. Estella has been widowed after an unhappy
marriage in which her husband “used her with great cruelty.” In the final lines of the novel, Pip
comments ambiguously that he “saw the shadow of no parting from her.” After decades of
longing for her, it seems possible that Pip will finally get to be with Estella, especially since they
have both matured due to the suffering they have experienced. However, the novel has also
revealed Pip’s notorious tendency to misread situations and make false assumptions. By ending
the novel with Pip revealing another wishful fantasy, or “expectation,” Dickens might be subtly
undermining just how much his main character has actually matured or evolved.
 Readers should note that this ending is not the one Dickens originally conceived. In the original
manuscript version of the novel, Pip runs into Estella through a chance coincidence, not at Satis
House but on a London street. She has lost her first husband but has also remarried, which
diminishes the possibility that the reunion will trigger a new relationship between Estella and
Pip. In fact, Pip recounts the scene as a one-time incident, recalling that “I was afterwards very
glad to have had the interview.” Seeing Estella again and gleaning the impression that time has
softened her and made her kinder gives Pip a sense of peace, but this original ending makes it
clear that Estella and Pip do not end up together.

Children and 19th-Century England

 For thousands of years, families put their children to work on their farms or in whatever labor
was necessary for survival — only children of the wealthy and powerful escaped this fate. Until
the last one hundred years or so, children were considered by most societies to be the property of
their parents. They had little protection from governments who viewed children as having no
human or civil rights outside of their parents' wishes, and Great Expectations brings some of
these conditions to light.
 The industrial revolution in early nineteenth-century England (the industrial revolution started
about one hundred years later in the United States) made things worse. Laborers were in greater
demand than ever. Mines, factories, and shops needed help, and not enough men or women could
fill their needs. Children were cheap, plentiful, and easy to control. Orphanages — and even
parents — would give their children to the owners of cotton mills and other operations in
exchange for the cost of maintaining them.
 At that time, the government didn't establish a minimum age, wage, or working hours. Children
as young as five or six were forced to work thirteen to sixteen hours a day for slave wages and
barely any food. The Sadler Committee, investigating textile factory conditions for Parliament in
1832, discovered children working from six in the morning to nine at night with no breakfast,
one hour for lunch, and a two-mile walk home. Children late for work were often beaten, and if
they worked too slowly or fell asleep at the machines, they were hit with a strap, sometimes
severely. There was no family time and some of them did not get supper because they were too
tired to wait for it. Children who were "bound" to companies often tried to run away. If they
were caught, they were whipped. Aside from being underfed, exhausted, sick, or injured,
children spending so many hours a day over factory machines often had bowed legs and poorly
developed limbs and muscles.
 As the century progressed, laws were passed that outlawed infant abandonment and failure to
provide shelter, clothing, food, and medical care. In 1884, national laws in Britain protected
children in their own homes. In addition, Parliament regulated working conditions, minimum age
for working, and the length of the workday for children. Laws for mandatory schooling,
however, did not come until the twentieth century.