Social class

Great Expectations was first published in 1861 as a serial in Dickens' own literary magazine all the year round.

it's a bildungsroman that's a coming-of-age novel following a young orphan called pip from the kent marshes to the drawing-rooms of london it's a story about ambition class love guilt and what it truly means to be a good person and crucially for your exam it's a novel that rewards close reading because dickens hides meaning in every sentence let's start with the big themes because these are what your essay questions will almost always focus on theme one social class and ambition this is arguably the central theme of the novel victorian england was rigidly stratified your birth determined your destiny dickens who grew up in poverty and watched his father imprisoned for debt understood this intimately pitt begins the novel as a working-class boy the ward of his blacksmith brother-in-law joe gargery When he receives his mysterious fortune, he immediately begins to feel ashamed of his origins.

He describes Joe as a mere blacksmith and distances himself from the forge.

The key quote here is Pip's reflection.

Tip four, avoid oversimplification.

Ms. Havisham is not simply evil, she is a victim who became a perpetrator.

magwitch is not simply a criminal he is the novel's most genuinely generous character examiners reward nuanced readings that acknowledge complexity tip five prepare multi-purpose quotes the best quotes work for multiple themes i have been bent and broken but i hope into a better shape works for identity love and social class Build a bank of 10 to 15 quotes that you can deploy flexibly.

Time for the quiz.

Their own body weight basically crushes their internal organs.

So the lore makes physics the ultimate arbiter of social class.

It really does.

The people at the bottom of the gravity well on Earth have the plush environment, they have the air, and they have the power.

... well, they were able to marry up, you know-

Yeah

... pairing, uh, with women from higher social classes that would've been inaccessible before.

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