THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

&
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
• The industrialization period in Britain came with many societal
changes, such as an increased urbanisation of the newly industrial
cities and the emergence of a new social class. The British population
that lived in the countryside thought it would be more beneficial to
move into the city. The cities became a potential of better
employment and better payment than agricultural labour in the
countryside..
• Pip was tossed into the industrialised environment in British society
that brought forward a new social class, bourgeoisie. This social class
consisted of people in the upper middle-class that had more
extensive education and saw economical fortune and a higher level of
education as successes in society. After leaving the marshes in the
English countryside and then experiencing life in the city in an upper
middle class environment, Pip becomes attracted to this higher
middle-class and its way of living. He later begins to feel rejected for
his lower standard of living.
• In order to interpret Pip and his development, it is vital to understand
in which societal context Great Expectations was written. The British
countryside, or the marshes as it is referred to in Great Expectations,
during the nineteenth century relied on agriculture and manual
labour in their way of living. Pip describes the surroundings that he
was living in on the very first page of the novel:
 “Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles
of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me
to have gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such time I found
out for certain, that this bleak palace overgrown with nettles was the churchyard” (1).

Later on in the novel, another description that concerns the solitude of the
marshes: ‟I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems a
solitary country towards the river.‟ „ Most marshes is solitary‟, said Joe (71).
Death of life in countryside is what Pip describes here; that the countryside Pip
was living in represented a dead place, which was bleak and had no future for
him to live in. The agricultural way of living could no longer provide a good
standard of living.
• The migration from the countryside to larger towns and cities became
more attractive to country-dwellers. The need of laborers in
businesses grew, as well as increased possibilities to commute with
the improved infrastructure. The cities had a more varied range of
employment opportunities and had possibilities for improved wages
as well. In 1833, a textile factory worker would earn 33 shilling and 8
pence per week (Baines 433).
• The population in the rural communities still chose to work according
to a long British tradition of agriculture (Mingay 10) and other
professions that required manual labour. Despite this, agriculture had
become more “industrialised” with new technology that could
perform traditional hand-labour such as handloom weaving. From
1798 to 1831, the wages a handloom weaver dropped from 30
shillings to 5 shillings and 6 pence.
• The wages dropped to almost 1/6 in 33 years in comparison of the
wages in 1798 (Gaskell 376). As Pip wanted progress and fortune in
his life, he realized that the wages that were paid in the countryside
would not benefit him, even though the wages were not the only
reason for Pip to move to the city. Pip also wanted to be something
more than what he was pre-determined to become, he wanted to fill
an emptiness that he had inside himself.
• Veeser’s argument that “every expressive act is embedded in a
network of material practices” (14) helps to show that the
industrialization’s need for people who worked with steel, or black-
smiths as in Great Expectations, became significantly larger in the
cities. In 1851, there were 112,000 blacksmiths (Mingay 124) amongst
the rural communities, which suggests that this was a hand-craft
which had great importance amongst the inhabitants of the rural
communities.
• Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that this was a countryside
profession that Charles Dickens wanted to illuminate the importance
of for the British rural communities. In Great Expectations, blacksmith
is the only profession in the countryside that is depicted in the novel.
Blacksmiths still had an important function in society and were also
quite well-paid at this point in time, even though industrialization
and urbanisation had begun to change British society.
• The industrialization offered an alternative that presented itself for
inhabitants in the countryside; the agricultural labourers could
change their craft into becoming factory workers and maintain the
machines, but this transition was also filled with challenges. Hartwell
discusses that the industries would have made this transition without
political revolution and to the industries beneficial advantages
(Hartwell 401). This transitional period in Britain demanded
intensified industrial labour even though the new industrial
technology and its machines in the factories demanded less labour
per unit of production (Hartwell 400).
• What the factories lacked was the environmental knowledge, the
lack of which slowly killed the laborer that worked there. This issue
was made clear during parliamentary debates where the labourers’
work situation was described:
The other is the old, the often-repeated, and as often-refuted, argument
that the work is light. Light! Why, no doubt, much of it is light, if measured
by the endurance of some three or four minutes. But what say you, my
Lords, to a continuity of toil, in a standing posture, in a poisonous atmosphere,
during 13 hours, with 15 minutes of rest? (Hansard 355-356)
• In fact, the labourers in British factories risked their own well-being in
order to get paid large wages. The decision of moving to work in the
city was really challenging and demanding. In the countryside, on the
other hand, the blacksmith, Joe, decides the amount of time for his
work, not the sergeant who is in charge of watching the working
hours.
• In factories, the work hours were longer and no time to rest which
took its toll on the labourers. This notion of a personal cost in order
to succeed is something we see Pip experiencing in the city-life. Even
though labourers would risk their own life by working in factories,
British rural communities became more open to external influences,
and therefore industrialization could tie the rural areas more to the
national economy (Healey and Ilbery 13).
• As these external influences began to come to the marshes, the rural
communities began to see the light or a re-birth of the countryside
and its future which seemed dead and uncertain. The marshes of the
rural community that Pip lived in were depicted as having a constant
mist and this mist had a double meaning in Pip’s perspective. The
mist reflected not only the landscape where he was living but also his
inner emotional landscape as well. The mist becomes important
because it seems that this mist puts Pip in an almost a dream-like
state:
On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the
post directing people to our village – a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there –
was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to
my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks. (14
• Since the mists made it impossible to see on the marshes, Pip felt
lost and had no clarity of what was to become of him in the future.
He believed that he would stay on the marshes for the rest of his life.
The mist possessed an indication of a larger and oppressive force,
and that it diverted people from coming to his village also existed in
Pip’s mind at this point in time. This large oppressive force made the
countryside inhabitants, such as Pip, survive the increased
dependence on industrial technology in the villages.
• Therefore, Pip as well as the British population needed to go into
cities to provide for their family by finding work that paid larger
wages. As previously discussed, the wages began to increase for
factory workers and drop for the professions that were previously
largely based on manual labour. However, besides making increased
wages, Pip needed to fill his heart with purpose which he felt that he
could not find in the marshes but in London.
• Pip represents the inhabitants of the countryside in their uncertainty
of what the consequence of the urbanization to the cities would be.
They knew that they would earn more in the city but at what
personal cost? Therefore, Pip's “misty” state of mind raises hopes
along with uncertainty for what the consequences would be for his
continuous life on the countryside.
• How important was the labour and professions that were performed
in the countryside? Blacksmith was regarded as a respected craft. To
be a blacksmith or an apprentice to one was something people
traditionally took pride in since it was labour that required
knowledge and skills that took a life-time to master. The blacksmith
that Pip was an apprentice to was named Joe Gargery. One night, Joe
Gargery and Pip got a visit from a group of soldiers that required
amends to a pair of hand-cuffs:
You see, blacksmith, said the sergeant, who had by this time picked out Joe with his eye,
„we have had an accident with these, and I find the lock of one of ‟em goes wrong and the
coupling don’t act pretty. As they are wanted for immediate service, will you throw your
eye over them? Joe threw his eye over them and pronounced that the job would
necessitate the lightning of his forge fire, and would take nearer two hours than one... (27)

It is worth mentioning that a symbolic meaning of “hand-cuffs”

are connected to Pip’s inner landscape. He is locked up with the
hand-cuffs that symbolizes his foreshadowing future in the
countryside.
• However if he feels locked up by these symbolic hand-cuffs, would
not becoming a blacksmith be the solution then? Pip did not realize
that his future by moving to the city not only would be his solution to
his inner landscape but also his demise to it as well. Therefore one
could ask, what importance did the blacksmiths have in the rural
communities?
• Being a blacksmith and having the skills they possessed were highly
appreciated. During the time of urbanisation, this type of manual
labour did not require a higher level of education so the skills were
passed down from generation to generation. Pip was to learn Joe's
skills as a blacksmith by being a future apprentice to Joe. Pip
discussed his apprenticeship to Joe as “when I was old enough, I was
to be apprenticed to Joe, and until I could assume that dignity I was
not be what Mrs. Joe called Pompeyed‟ or (as I render it) pampered”
(39).
• It can be assumed that Pip here fears that Mrs. Joe does not consider
Pip mature or tries to make Pip realize the privilege of being an
apprentice in a craft that was considered to be important to the rural
community that they lived in. However, Pip also feels privileged to be
considered as an apprentice since the quality that needed to be paid
to the blacksmith was not available to him until Miss Havisham’s
fortune enabled Pip to pay it to Joe (Newlin 117).
• The social standing of a blacksmith is not as subordinate to the higher
social classes as it normally can be interpreted. The blacksmiths
during the nineteenth century had, as Bentley argues, a far higher
economic and social position than farm and factory workers (100).
Pip would have had a well-paid profession if he had stayed behind
and finished his apprenticeship with Joe, the blacksmith.
• A blacksmith, being the predetermined occupation for Pip, seemed to
be something he was content with until he recalled Estella's
comments about the small size of his hands and then he believes that
he is miserable with his current status in life (Newlin 114):

• As I went along, on all I had seen, and deeply revolving that I was a common labouring-
boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick; that I had fallen into a
despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks. (60)
• Pip's feelings of being humble towards an apprenticeship with Joe as
a blacksmith turned into despising the notion of being a labourer-
boy after meeting Estella and Miss Havisham at Satis House. Estella
became an important influence on him.
• Pip, after their first encounter as he heard Estella’s opinion about him,
being a laborer-boy, is introduced to the notion that he belongs to a
lower social class. Henceforth, Pip believed that the only way for
Estella to accept him and having deeper feelings for him would be by
becoming wealthier and belonging to the higher middle-class.
• Estella, however, represents the attitude of how the bourgeois class
feel about the laborers in the countryside. She represents a superior
attitude towards a boy that came from the countryside and belonged
to a lower social class. She substantiates this superiority attitude by
making Pip feel that the only he could be accepted by Estella was by
possessing a substantial financial fortune or a large amount of
property. Estella’s comments about Pip being a common labourer
shocked Pip and made him realized his inferiority.