Visions of punishment: The Romanticism of individual autonomy and the reality of social control in Great Expectations

Lecture 4Romance and RealismACL2007Semester 2 - 2008

Summary

Introducing Dickens and Great Expectations The Social Background The Literary Background

Dickens: Romance and Realism debates

The failures of romanceThe society as prisonThe individual success storySubverting the Romantic subplot

Moving toward modernism

The Social Background 1 GE was published in 1860 when Dickens was a highly popular and

famous author. Victorian England was a society of

high industrialisation and colonial expansion unregulated urban development and massive migration from

countryside to city social experimentation in

Education Factory regulations Prison system Policing Management of poverty Sanitation reform

The Social Background 2

The idea of society as an interconnecting system emerged: the beginnings of ‘sociology’

Similarly, the idea of money and its organisation as a system developed: economics.

Systems for understanding, managing and possibly improving society began to develop.

Utilitarianism

In the first half of the 19th century a combined economic and social philosophy derived new systems for social regulation.

A central precept of Utilitarianism was ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’: this often translated, for critics, into a disregard of individual human needs in the interest of the ‘social good’: a problem was who decided the ‘public good’?

The ‘panopticon’ (‘all-seeing’) a prison design feature for watching prisoners, became, for the 20th century social theorist Foucault, a metaphor for the society’s increasing desire for surveillance ( See Discipline and Punish)

The Social Background: Social Mobility? Increased transport/communication systems and the development of new

industries and occupations opened up more opportunities for some men to acquire wealth and/or social mobility. To a far lesser extent, this also applied to some women.

New jobs for men (for example, journalism) developed that relied more on intelligence and personality than traditional education and inherited privileges.

Part of the discourse of the mid to late-19th century was that of the ‘self-made man’ and ‘self-help’: the promise that the pauper could become an industrialist through the virtue of hard work.

It’s common feminine-gendered version was that of the new Cinderella: factory girl marries mill-owner. The poor girl can find security through sexual virtue and a good man.

A different story about capitalism was being written by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.

Dickens and Social Reform

Dickens was, in some ways, the living example of the individual success story.

He had little formal education, was a child labourer, experienced poverty first-hand and used his street knowledge and individual talents to become a court-reporter and then a popular novelist, publisher, editor and public speaker.

From the first, his writing includes portraits and descriptions of the underclass of society and the urban lower and middle classes.

Many of these descriptions are framed by a clearly indignant narrative voice and the plots of many of his stories and novels are centrally concerned with issues of social reform.

As an editor he also favoured socially-conscious contributors and promoted various social reform agendas.

Among his favourite causes were: education and children’s issues generally; legal and prison reform.

The Literary Background 1: childhood GE, like a number of Dickens’ fictions, begins in an

earlier period: the narrator’s and author’s childhood. Dickens wrote extensively about the importance of his

childhood, for the development of his imagination. His nurse’s fairy stories, often featuring monsters and

horror, had lasting impact. Lacking a sustained formal education, he read widely

and without much guidance in a range of earlier authors including Shakespeare, rather than in contemporary writers.

He also sustained a lasting fascination with the theatre.

The Literary Background 2: The Romantic Movement Dickens’ interest in childhood links him closely to

Romanticism Romanticism valued the supposed innocence of

childhood as close to Nature and in opposition to the damaging effects of constraining education and social norms.

Poets and social reformers, strongly influenced by Romanticism, used the image of the child as the central victim of urbanised industrial society.

Blake and childhood

William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience contrast the unlimited potential of the newborn baby with the social ‘chains’ imposed .

In London Blake epitomises urban corruption and degradation as an endemic child abuse : child labourers such as chimney sweepers and child prostitutes at the extreme end of a society that is routinely cruel and callous to all children.

Dickens’ literary models: picaresque Dickens read extensively in the 18th century adventure,

‘picaresque’ novels following a young male hero on his travels.

Many of Dickens’ novels, particularly his early ones, also use this structure.

This also fitted the customary publication mode : episodes of a serial in monthly or weekly editions.

It also suited Dickens’ interest in the theatre: the use of highly dramatic and colourful scenes with a lot of dialogue.

Dickens’ literary models: bildungsroman ‘Bildungsroman’ developed in the 18th century as part of the rise of

Romanticism. In its purest form, it tracks the character formation of the central (and only

important) character who usually tells his story in his own words. There is usually a strong moral emphasis whereby the protagonist gains

insight into his own nature and the nature of society. A sub-category of this form tracks the development of the artist/writer

(‘kunstroman’) Its central difference from the hero-quest or picaresque story is its focus on

the inner life rather than the actions of the protagonist. On the whole, the protagonist does not have to be exceptional or ‘great’. There is clearly a connection between the development of this form and that

of autobiography: the sense that the individual life and its development can have interest for others.

GE and the literary background: 1

GE is often described as a bildungsroman becauseThe plot structure follows the ‘moral education’ of

the protagonist, PipThe protagonist tells the story in his own words:

first-person narration It takes the story of an ordinary man’s

development as interesting without excusing or exaggerating his failings (or virtues)

GE and the literary background: 2

However, some critics argue that GE does not fit neatly into the genre of bildungsroman because: The social context and its inhabitants are at least as

important/interesting as the narrator There is no clear conclusive development in Pip’s

moral understanding Although there are moments when Pip reflects on

himself, they are not the continuing focus of the narrative

GE and the Romance/Realism debates 1. Critical reception of Dickens has tended to emphasise

either the Realist or the Romantic aspects. This largely depends on the political interests of the critic

and how she or he is positioned regarding the contemporary reception of Dickens.

For example, Tambling (this week’s reading) comments: ‘ This Romantic criticism became a way of attacking commentators who emphasised the reformist Dickens’ (p.18). Tambling himself is quite dismissive of the earlier critic Collins, while acknowledging that Collins did some important historical research on Dickens’ society.

GE as Romantic?

The underlying structure of GE draws on Romantic themes of individuality including the idea that an ‘ordinary’ individual’s thoughts and concerns can be interesting and of value.

The pursuit of Estella (the ‘star’) echoes romance quest narratives: the woman as elusive object of the hero’s desire.

There are examples of Pip’s psyche having a life of its own, particularly in the use of dreams: everything is not presented as it seems on the surface.

A further development of this is in the use of imaginative descriptions and extended metaphors to heighten or explore different dimensions of the characters and their settings: Extended use of the grotesque (see next week) The interest in the child’s perspective, the value of imagination, and the

perception that children are different from mini adults are a direct legacy of the Romantic Movement.

GE as Realist?

While there are numerous fairytale and grotesque allusions, and much use of figurative language, the events and characters have a basis in the everyday although an everyday that is already historical for Dickens’ own readers.

They have, in Pam Morris’s terms (Reading, Week 1), an historical particularity that allows us to place the the novel in a time earlier than 1860 (roughly between 1814 and 1840). Transportation to Australia and the use of the hulks was phased out by

the 1850s as a British prison system was developed. The characters are clearly positioned within a social system in terms of

class: they are individually portrayed, but they also are sociological types produced by a particular society.

Occupations are central to characterisation.

Or something else?

GE is a later novel of Dickens in which he is blending a range of different literary genres and styles as well as experimenting.

Tambling (this week’s reading) suggests that GE can be seen as foreshadowing some modernist concerns with the possibilities of language and form.

Some ways in which GE offers some new ways of writing: The less than happy ending: originally, the ending more clearly

prevented any reconciliation between Pip and Estella, but was rewritten. The absence of any clear-cut moral or social solutions The absence of a completely sympathetic protagonist (or any totally

sympathetic idealised characters) The movement towards an uneasy lack of clear distinction between the

‘real’ observed world and the imagination. The questioning of the possibilities of romance of any kind in the

‘modern’ society.

The failures of romance: The prison Great Expectations in common with much of Dickens’

fiction is interested in the idea of prison. In the classic romance, and in much Romantic literature,

‘prison’ is a specific enclosed place from which the hero must escape or rescue another prisoner. It is a distinct situation apart from society.

The Romantic prisoner is the victim of mistake or evil intent to limit his freedom and capacity to act. He uses his ingenuity, courage, strength to break out.

In the 18th century, this heroic notion of the wrongly imprisoned was also transferred to revolutionary movements against oppressive regimes.

19th century prison: real and imagined The mid 19th century saw a completely new social approach to the

penal system: as an organised punishment for the convicted rather than a holding device for those on trial. For some reformers it also included the idea of rehabilitation as well as deterrence.

Rather than being a metaphor for an heroic and wrongful solitary confinement with the possibility of escape, it became synonymous with the oppressiveness of an organised and alienating society.

A modern perception, which Dickens sometimes seems to anticipate, suggests that people within such a society collude by creating their own psychological prisons and act as their own jailers: they internalise oppression.

Such a prison is particularly antagonistic to Romantic individualism because it is predicated on an idea of normality and conformity and it cannot be overcome by individual heroic effort.

GE characters and prison

Most, if not all, of the GE characters inhabit some form of prison: Miss Havisham tries futilely to stop time by refusing to live beyond the

space and moment of her abandonment as a bride and in turn imprisons Estella in her image of heart-breaker

Mrs Joe becomes a prisoner to her former victim, Orlick, totally at his mercy

Matthew Pocket is a prisoner to the social snobbery and other failings of his wife

Herbert Pocket and his fiancee are prisoners to her father’s selfishness Wemmick’s answer to the imprisonment of the drudgery of his employment

is to create an alternative prison: his domestic sanctuary. Even characters who appear to have a more positive representation are

still limited in their possibilities: the apparently idyllic life of Joe and Biddy is only idyllic as seen through Pip’s regretful vision: there is an implied reading that reminds the reader of the limits and deprivation of their life and, also, reminds us that their rural life is one on the verge of disappearing as the city advances.

Discipline and violence

A key term for Foucault in describing the development of 19th century modern society was ‘discipline’: a form of control usually through the threat of punishment that creates the ‘docile body’

GE characters are very concerned with issues of control and creating of docility in others through the use of actual or implied violence.

Pip himself is an extremely docile character: he is invented by others and rarely makes decisions.

Pip is controlled through his sense of omnipresent observation, by uncanny figures whose reality is often in doubt and who only reluctantly become present to him. From Magwitch’s threat to the young Pip of his imagined co-convict who tears out the hearts of boys, through to the uncertainty over the identity of the unknown benefactor who intervenes unseen in his life, and the ghostly Compeyson who follows Pip around London.

The ‘undisciplined’ side of Pip is represented by other characters who act out violence for him: notably, Orlick one of the least ‘realistic’ characters.

Punishment

The punishment for not being docile is literal imprisonment: the child Pip is threatened with growing up as a convict if he doesn’t behave

Jaggers literally and metaphorically represents the punishing side of the law, viewing everyone as a potential criminal and life in general as something that needs to be carefully washed off in case it contaminates him.

Underlying the theme of ‘real’ imprisonment is the theme that there is no escape from the larger imprisonment of society: there is nowhere to go.

This has relevance to the time sequence: in the early chapters, prisoners are seen as distinct from everyone else (but as humans by the more sympathetic characters) by the end, the division between ‘them’ and ‘us’ is narrowing as it approaches the more ‘modern society’ of Dickens’ contemporary readers.

The reader, like Pip himself, is taken on a journey to reassess how far (s)he is/is not different from Magwitch.

Individual success

The title of the novel echoes the rags-to-riches stories that were popular in the period often based, allegedly, on real life.

It is, of course, ironic in that all the things that the protagonist, Pip, and the reader expect prove to be illusory: like the rags-to-riches story itself?

At key moments in the novel, Pip learns (usually after the reader has already guessed) that his ‘fairy godmother’ is not Miss Havisham, and that the convict is not a monstrous ogre.

One ‘romance’ element then is the hero quest for success: but rather than battling dragons or being recognised for his unique wonderful talents, Pip gets his questionable ‘reward’ for a small act of kindness that was performed out of fear.

The ‘real story’

For a boy like Pip, in ‘reality’, the best he could hope for was apprenticeship to Joe and, possibly, marriage to Biddy.

His aspirations are based on mistaken values that see social status based on wealth as creating a ‘gentleman’.

However, the novel’s development indicates that once he has started on the quest to achieve his illusory goal he cannot, however much he wants, go back: Biddy is not available; he hasn’t the talents, the temperament or the training to be a blacksmith; having once seen Joe’s social inadequacies he can’t magically not see them; he has seen the potential as well as the horrors of the city and can’t go back to the country.

This ambivalence, which is echoed in the novel’s ending, is another link of GE to modernist writing: there is no return to the easy happy endings of conventional romance either for Pip or the reader.

The minor subplot of Mr Wopsle’s attempts to become an actor offer a comic version of the futility of Romantic escape: he tries to change his life and enter the larger world through the fantasy of the theatre but lacks ‘star quality’

The romantic (sub)plot

Conventional novels feature a love interest which provides the momentum for events and the development towards a happy ending.

Estella is presented as almost a parody or logical extreme of the romantic heroine in that she is totally programmed towards marriage: not however for romantic fulfilment but as a weapon of revenge.

Breaking from the conventions of romance, Dickens does not attempt to make readers share Pip’s desire: Estella is, as she herself acknowledges, cruel and (self)destructive.

Interestingly, from a feminist perspective, this break with the convention could be read as indicating the essential masochistic qualities of romance fiction: Estella marries Drummle in the full knowledge that he will violently abuse her.

However, this can be offset by a certain degree of misogyny in the portrayal of the major female characters and the clear focus throughout on the male perspectives.

Self-conscious narrative

The idea of the ‘self-conscious’ narrative achieves its fullest development from the 20th century. It is is associated with the rise of ‘modernism’. It suggests a move away from the illusion of mimesis (the mimicry of ‘reality’ through a transparent text) towards a focus on the literary/textual .

There are ways in which Great Expectations, as Tambling suggests, anticipates this self-consciousness. Amongst them is the undercutting of conventional romance and, with it, a degree of alienation of the reader.