charles dickens

Defining the “Gentleman” and the attack by Charles Dickens on the gentility of society, in the reading of Great Expectations.

“Biddy,” said I, after binding her to secrecy, “I want to be a gentleman”

This line in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a catalyst for a great discussion and debate, one which baffled the people of the Victorian age and still baffles critics to this day, what is a true gentleman?
Great Expectations is regarded as a masterpiece by Dickens, it moves away from the more uplifting novels such as A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield. It brings with it a pessimistic approach to the higher social class of Victorian London, Dickens tried to emphasise how the poorer classes were being treated in relation to the wealthier classes. There is an obsession with gentlemanliness and gentility in the novel, which reflects the topic of conversation during the Victorian time (1837-1901). The attainability of a high social status seemed very attractive to many people of that era, bearing in mind that this was in a society that was dominated by the land owning aristocracy. During the course of this essay I will analyse “the gentleman” in Great Expectations and how it is portrayed, I will also look at the perceived notion of the term gentleman by the Victorians of that time, and the attack on the gentility of society will be discussed, this will be done through discussing a number of critics and writers to establish an overall conclusion to the debate of what a gentleman means in the novel.

It was believed that Dickens was uncertain about what a gentleman was because he was not one, he was criticised for not distinguishing what a gentleman was in the novel. According to Anny Sadrin “the history of the word “gentleman” harks back to “a man of gentle birth” or a man of superior position in society: often, a man of money and leisure.1 The point to justify this was made by his daughter, “my father was not a gentleman, he was too mixed to be a gentleman”2. Dickens’ scathing attack on the Victorian gentleman in Great Expectations is because he felt that anyone who worked hard enough or displayed great ingenuity could become a gentleman and that the title did not have to come from birth, he may also have been relating to himself as he was not brought up a gentleman and was possibly rejected by them. The term gentleman in Great Expectations is an inadequate and negative term. A gentleman should not be determined solely on the material wealth or birth right of an individual, but on their kindness, loyalty, trust and respect for others. This is what we come to know as gentlemanly traits as in this day in age; however in the nineteenth century the term gentleman was defined as living by way of independent means and owning enough land to live off the rent so that they would not have to work for a living. It is quite obvious to the reader that Dickens rejects the concept of the gentleman throughout the novel, and he attempts to portray the destructive and unachievable nature of this misunderstood title. William Sewell had a conservative opinion on what it meant to be a gentleman, his infamous quote is astonishing in his segregation of classes, however, it was an opinion which was shared among members of the gentry, “we have I think, in England, owing to the freedom of our constitution, and the happy providential blessings which God has heaped upon us followed the division of mankind which God himself has made and struck the line between those who are gentlemen…higher and superior class and those who are not, to be ruled and governed”3. It is clear that there were those who believed that “the gentleman” was created by birth which is portrayed by Sewell who was of the aristocratic class unsurprisingly; he felt that the genteel society should be separate from the working class or lower middle class. However Thackeray and Dickens utterly rejected that birth alone was the only way that a man could become a gentleman. The Victorians themselves were not sure what a gentleman was, of what his characteristics were or how potentially long it would take to become one. Pip would have been described as “a gent” after inheriting Magwitch’s fortune, a “gent” was a name given to young men at the bottom of the respectable class. The gentility were afraid that if a high percentage of the Victorian population were allowed into the social status of “a gentleman” that they would be in line for jobs which were equal to them and therefore there would be competition for employment, this would mean that there would no longer be a gentry class, which would eradicate the exclusivity of the gentility. We get an indication of this when biddy writes to Pip about Joe coming to visit him in his quarters in London she says “I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to see him even though a gentleman”4. Biddy says that even though Pip is a gentleman he should see him, this puts a definite division between Joe and Pip and it seems as if Joe is not good enough to see Pip because he is a gentleman now and could not associate with such low society, thus the class system is enforced. Matthew Pocket and Joe Gargery are examples of the true gentleman; they are polite, deeply affectionate, hardworking and gentle. There is a difference between gentleman and gentlemanliness, a gentleman may have power, a social status and manners but with gentlemanliness comes respect for others, loyalty and kindness, all of which Pip is lacking. However Magwitch is not insulted by Pip’s less than friendly welcome, he considers “the gentleman” to be a man of wealth, knowledge and manners all of which Pip has, and he is therefore delighted that he has managed to raise a gentleman. However great fortune just fell into Pips lap without doing anything to achieve it, by all accounts Pip is quite a snobbish character throughout the course of the book and is quite oblivious to the feelings of others. There is a scene where Pip openly insults Biddy and does not notice: “Joe and I would perhaps have gone partners…I might even have grown up to keep company with you”5. It is astonishing the way he talks to her in this condescending and snobbish way, and is not aware of what he is saying to make her feel so offended. When Pip is walking down the road of his town in his new gentleman’s clothes he is both proud and ashamed of them, it seems as though Pip wants to distance his gentlemanly ways as far away from Chatham as possible and put his blacksmith days behind him, Pip wishes to keep London separate from Chatham so that he can be old Pip at home and the “the gentleman” in the city. Pip is forever haunted by his past life, he wishes to escape Kent and his way of living from the outset, however our past defines us and shapes us, there is no escape from it.
There is classic irony in Great Expectations when Pip leaves the unspoiled beautiful countryside of Kent for the dank, filthy and crime riddled city of London which Pip is astonished at on first arriving there, Dickens’ description of London is magnificent, Walter Bagehot gave a glowing admiration of Dickens’ portrayal of London “No writer has equally comprehended the artistic material given by its extent of different elements, its mouldiness and its brilliancy”6, London is a major setting in nearly all of Dickens’ novels, excluding Hard Times, which is set in the gloomy Coketown. It is clear that London had a central role In Dickens’ novels and he needed it.

We will now discuss the close relationship between the convict and the gentleman in Great Expectations. We are first acquainted with the two convicts that are fighting in the marshes in the early chapters of the book, Magwitch and Compeyson are engaged in a violent struggle, Magwitch bellows “I took him, and giv’ him up; that’s what I done … I dragged him this far on his way back. He 's a gentleman if you please, this villain.”7 We note that Magwitch follows the word gentleman with villain, which is quite contradictory and signals the gentleman’s relationship with the villain in the novel; this is due to Dickens stating that sometimes convicts were better than certain gentlemen. In this instance Magwitch is by far the better man, Compeyson is a scoundrel and a nasty human being, he has no conscience and lets other people take the blame for his own dastardly deeds. When Pip discovers that Magwitch has returned and that it is he and not Miss Havisham that is his benefactor he is repulsed and devastated. “The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast”.8 We can relate to Pip’s reaction as he firmly believed for years and was led to believe from Jaggers and Miss. Havisham that his benefactor was a person of the genteel class, when he finds out that he has been made a gentleman by a convict, his gentleman status is redundant and Pip under the illusion that has been brought up a gentleman is under false pretences. Pip’s attitude towards Magwitch is appalling, he is being very hypocritical when he insults Magwitch for having coarse ways as those coarse ways are an exact replica of Pip in Satis house, “he is repelled by his coarse ways of sitting and standing, of eating and drinking”9 it is strange that Pip would be so critical of these traits having been hurt so much by being criticised in the past. Even Herbert, who like his father portrays distinguishing qualities of the true gentleman “finds the sight of convicts a degraded and vile one and is radically put off by Pips strange visitor.”10 We also note when Estella and Pip drive past Newgate prison Estella uses one word to describe the prisoners inside, the word being “wretches”, ironically not knowing that her father was an escaped fugitive. “The discovery that sometimes convicts are still men and even better than some gentlemen is a strong message that is put out there by Dickens. We get a sense of how true this is when Magwitch bears his soul about the trial in which both he and Compeyson were tried in court; “when we was put in the dock I noticed first of all what a gentleman Compeyson looked wi’ his curly hair and his black clothes and his white pocket handkerchief”.
The working class characters in Great Expectations are often shown to possess a very solid base for self identity and are proud of their class with no aspiration to change their identity. This is shown by Joe and Mrs. Joe on a number of occasions, when Joe visits Pip in Miss Havishams he addresses Miss Havisham through Pip who finds this highly embarrassing and absurd. “It was very aggravating; but throughout the interview, Joe persisted in addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham”11 Dickens displays how out of place Joe feels during the course of the interview, he describes Joe as “looking so unlike himself.”12 Joe addresses Pip he does not look at Miss Havisham during the entirety of the conversation, as he cannot identify with someone from a different class. Dickens also paints Joe in a sympathetic way “His good, honest face all glowing and shining” we feel sorry for Joe throughout the novel as we do not feel he receives the respect he deserves the same can be said about Magwitch who has constantly been let down by society and being unfairly treated in comparison with gentlemen, we also feel enraged whenever Pumblechook belittles Joe as the fore mentioned is a pompous fool who latches onto the coat tails of the gentry. There was a class system in London during Dickens’ time and it was divided into three broad divisions, and they were divided as such: the upper middle and lower landed gentry, the second group subdivided into the upper idle class and on the border they were named as the “shabby genteel”. The shabby genteel were people who had to work for their money but live in a relative state of elegance and flamboyance. According to Donald Hawes “limited movement across the class divisions was not frequent but possible in Victorian England, successful industrialists sometimes aspired to join the higher echelons of society, and hence snobbery and gentlemanliness became topics for discussion”.13 Dickens details how Joe has a tendency to call Pip “sir”14 “whenever he relapsed into politeness he called me sir.”15 It is with amusement and sympathy when we analyse Herberts request to Joe if he would like coffee “what do you say to coffee? thankee sir returned Joe evidently dispirited by the proposal.”16 Even though coffee is clearly not appealing to him he accepts the offer regardless in order to be polite and not offend Herbert, which are significant traits of gentlemanliness. Joe is certainly uncomfortable in these new higher class surroundings and they clearly are alien to him. We note as well that Joe will not part with his hat when Pip requests it to be taken from him “taking it up carefully like a birds nest with eggs in it, wouldn’t hear of parting with that piece of property.” It is assumed that Joe felt that it was his only piece of “portable property” and that he did not want to part from it as it was the only thing that was his.

When kind and honest Joe Gargery calls Pip “sir” he is astonished. Pip should not be that surprised as to Joe calling him “sir”. “In Great Expectations, gentlemanliness and gentility remain hopelessly at variance and Joes noble figure is the perfect illustration of this discordance.”17We are first acquainted with Pip in the novel and we expect him to be the hero, however we soon realise that Great expectations is peculiar in the way that Dickens has not included a hero in the novel, we realise this as Pip (the supposed hero) he is certainly not the hero of the story, a hero is meant to possess a number of traits which Pip is clearly lacking. Pip is not a noble character for when he gains great expectations he squanders his money and lands himself in crippling debt, he forgets about his family and feels embarrassed by them. The main thing that a hero must have is the support of the readers and it is not clear if we have that therefore there is no hero. In the early stage of the novel, Estella and Miss Havisham are also important in the destruction of Pip’s moral compass and are the main factors of his aspirations of gentlemanliness. Pip’s vision of becoming a gentleman is distorted and impulsive, he strives to be worthy of Estella’s acceptance and no longer be the “common labouring boy with coarse hands and thick boots.”18. However Pip is getting the wrong idea of the higher and genteel classes by listening and taking heed of Miss Havisham and Estella, he has set himself up for heartbreak and gloom as they are both tarnished souls with little knowledge of the outside world for they are always inside the house. Throughout the course of the novel we get a number of different views of a gentleman, when Pip confides in Biddy that he would like to become a gentleman, “Oh I wouldn’t if I was you”19 is her negative response to this statement; she does not looked upon it with joy whatsoever but it seems remorse. When Joe tells Biddy that Pip is a “gentleman of fortun’” “there was a touch of sadness in their congratulations that I rather resented.”20 Pip does not realise it but he has just broken their hearts in fulfilling his own dream, Joe and biddy are devastated, as there will always be a division between them now because they know that they will never be a part of the genteel society and have no wish to be. It is interesting and ironic in this way that Joe’s traits make him the most worthy of a genteel status. Samuel Smiles argued “that painstaking labour and “steady application to work were the surest ways to success and respectability than either wealth or rank”21 and Joe and Matthew Pocket are the personification of that. This is a view that Dickens believed in himself and constantly emphasises this throughout the novel. In his book, the true gentleman is described as someone who is respected, recognized and admired by all. There is quite a turn of events when Magwitch, a convict, ends up wealthier than any gentleman and has made himself a gentleman in Pip, this signals in my view the point Dicken’s was trying to portray ,that some of the gentlemen in Victorian times were no better than criminals like Magwitch. Magwitch is desperate to make Pip a gentleman in his revenge against society which has been so cruel to him and he succeeds in doing so. “Yes Pip my dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman of you”22 when Magwitch utters this sentence Pip’s worst fears are realised and he recognises that he is a false gentleman brought up under false pretences. G.K Chesterton writes “when he sets out to describe Pip’s great expectation he does not set out as in a fairy tale, with the idea that these expectations will be fulfilled; he sets out from the first with the idea that these great expectations will be disappointing.23 I agree with the point Chesterton makes as we are never under the impression that Pip’s sudden inheritance is necessarily a good thing, when Pip first comes to London on his first stage of his expectations he is appalled that he is to stay in a dingy, rundown inn.

The attack on the gentility of society in the novel is quite powerful, the majority of the wealthy and genteel of society do not seem to have any shred of happiness whatsoever, Miss Havisham is a prisoner living in a self-inflicted confinement behind the barred windows of a blind house, the inner landscape of which, with the “wintry branches” of its candlesticks and the “reluctant smoke” of its damp fires”24 this sentence would make it seem that wealth and gentility is not everything, due to her heartbreak she has let herself become steeped in misery due to a man who left her standing at the alter. Estella has thus suffered a miserable childhood with Miss Havisham, poisoning her mind and encouraging her to resent men and inflict pain and heartbreak on every man who crosses her path. Mr. Jaggers lives a solitary existence alone in his big mansion, and Wemmick is described as having a post office for a mouth when he is in the company of Jaggers, he is not allowed to be his true self at his place of work and is only truly relaxed when he has finished work and retired to the “castle.” As a satirical approach Dickens portrays the Pocket family as being controlled by their servants; “both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in somebody else’s hands, that I wondered who really was in possession of the house and let them live there, until I found this unknown power to be the servants”25, this was undoubtedly a jibe at the gentility of London and that they were literally spoon fed by their ever loyal servants. We notice how much the servants are in control when Flopson scolds Mrs. Pocket “Here! Give me your fork, Mum and take the baby…Don’t take it that way, or you’ll get its head under the table…thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way”. Mrs. Pocket is a classic example of the gentry class in Great Expectations Dickens portrays her as being told what to do by her servants and she complies without reluctance as they ought to know what to do, she is portrayed as being dependant on everyone else and not being able to do anything for herself. Pip notices that she is highly engrossed in a book when he first visits the Pocket household, when Pip learns that she is of an “aristocratic a disposition” 26he discovers that the book that she had been reading so intently “was all about titles, and that she knew the exact date at which her grandpapa would have come into the book”27 Mrs, pocket was pitied because she had not married a title. She is looked upon as not having achieved what was destined for her by her “grandpapa”28 which was to marry a title and become a woman of leisure.

There are many aspects to being a gentleman and to the genteel class that I have alluded to in this essay, the difficult thing about distinguishing what a gentleman was in the Victorian era is that they were quite unsure of what a gentleman meant themselves. We get a number of differing views on what signifies a gentleman, as I have stated earlier Dickens and Thackeray were of the opinion that with hard work and a good work ethic, you could establish yourself as a gentleman. However there were many in the aristocratic class who believed that this was not possible as God had chosen those who would rule and those who would follow the rules. There is also a clear-cut attack on the gentility of Victorian London in the text, we see constantly throughout the text that wealth is not a good thing and it is portrayed as being cold and deathly. We hark back to Jaggers’ bare office with high shelves and “two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose.”29 In the novel gentlemen are portrayed in a number of ways, Pip is only a gentleman in manner due to his generous benefactor Abel Mawitch, he was not born a gentleman and is therefore not Sewell’s appropriate gentleman, nevertheless he is one. In many of Dickens’ novels he includes the main character in the title, however Great Expectations is a novel that does not just relate to Pip but can be applied to any of the characters. Great expectations is society’s quest for gentility as portrayed through the life of Pip. To be respected seemed to be an essential part of being recognised as a gentleman, we have to ask the question was Pip respected? Did he show respect? The answer to these questions is no. Pip was not shown respect until he came into money, which may have influenced his attitude to not show others respect. Joe Gargery is perhaps the most complete gentleman in the novel he displays the true characteristics of what it means to be a gentleman, his respect for others, his kindness and most of all his compassion and forgiveness. Joe has been wronged by Pip in a number of ways, he has been embarrassed by him and humiliated but he stays by his side in his time of need for this reason Joe is the true definition of a gentleman.

Bibliography
Sadrin, Anny great expectations (Unwin hyman ltd. 1988) P.90
Dickens,Kate, Perugino, The Dickensian; 1980
Sewell, William Gentlemanly Manners (1854) great expectations, peterborough, ont: Broadview, 1998 p.563

Dickens, Charles Great Expectations (university of London press ltd 1964)
Hawes , Donald Charles Dickens. London. Continuum, 2007
URLof theissue: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22362/22362-h/22362-h.htm#EXPECTATIONS

Bibliography: Sadrin, Anny great expectations (Unwin hyman ltd. 1988) P.90 Dickens,Kate, Perugino, The Dickensian; 1980 Sewell, William Gentlemanly Manners (1854) great expectations, peterborough, ont: Broadview, 1998 p.563 Dickens, Charles Great Expectations (university of London press ltd 1964) Hawes , Donald Charles Dickens. London. Continuum, 2007 URLof theissue: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22362/22362-h/22362-h.htm#EXPECTATIONS