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Elizabeth Antrim-Cashin 3/12/12

Great Expectations: Interpretations of a Criminal

I put my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, Whats a convict? Joe put his mouth
into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate answer, that I could make out
nothing of it but the single word, Pip.
-Great Expectations, pp. 13

What makes an action criminal the intent or the execution? Criminality can be
defined either as a breach of law, or as an action deserving of condemnation (Oxford).
Oftentimes, these two are highly intertwined: robbing a grocery store because you do not
wish to pay is both illegal and condemnable. Robbing a grocery store because you are
starving and cannot afford to pay is still illegal, but is it condemnable? In Great
Expectations, Dickens purports that these two are not inherently intertwined, but two
distinct instances of shame cause Pips to develop a perverse definition of criminality,
inextricably linked both to immorality and social class; criminality remains an area of
unresolved development until a force outside of his childhood development can
invalidate Pips definition.
Although Magwitch defies the association between immoral and illegal
criminality, Pips upbringing until this point is too impactful to unlink them. In The Child
as Criminal, Ellis argues that children are comparable to both animals and criminals.
These mutual identifications may serve to make Magwitch more relatable to Pip as a
child than most adults: Pip begins to refer to Magwitch as my convict; the possessive
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description is almost pet-like. Indeed, Pip compares Magwitch to a dog, and Magwitch
himself says that he wishes to be an eel or a frog in order to be better suited for the
marshland. It would seem as though the mutual connection with criminality would
likewise strengthen the bond between Pips convict and himself; however, Magwitch and
Pip are antitheses of Ellis immoral criminal: children are cruel and inflict suffering on
animals out of curiosity, enjoying the manifestations of pain. They are thieves for the
gratification of their appetites, especially the chief, gluttony. (351) Pip identifies
Magwitch with an animal, yet takes no pleasure in his suffering. His act of thievery is
done for the gratification of someone else, not out of gluttony. Magwitch also, does not
match this description of criminality because his actions are prompted by necessity, not
pleasure: he inflicts suffering through fear in Pip, but only to ensure that he can get food.
His appetite is not gluttonous, but rather necessitated: he is starving. Ellis also claims
that children do not hesitate to put the blame on the innocent when their misdeeds are
discovered. (351) By confessing to the crime that Pip has done, and that Magwitch has
induced him to commit through fear, he separates himself from the immorality of
criminality by taking the blame. Dickens makes the distinction between felonious action
and immoral action from the very beginning, showing that there should be no implication
that having done something illegal also means to have done something immoral.
The impact of this lesson on Pip is simultaneously solidified by the connection
that he forms with Magwitch, but weakened by the singularity of the event. Magwitch sits
Pip upon a tombstone, and [a]fter each question, he tilted [Pip] over a little more, so as
to give [him] a greater sense of helplessness and danger. (5) Because Pip is used to
being beaten by his sister, a threat of violence makes him fearful. However, because
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Magwitchs threats of violence are never realized, they serve as an exercise in trust rather
than a true purveyor of fear: by seeing Magwitch at the brink of violence and choosing
not to hurt Pip, he has shown Pip mercy which his caretaker does not show. When Pip
returns with food for Magwitch, and is again not harmed despite having served his
purpose already he can trust that he is safe with Magwitch, and begins to sympathize
with him.
Pips connection to Magwitch is complicated: it arises out of a form of trust and
sympathy, but they are also inherently bonded in the secret knowledge that only they
share. This inescapable bond exists in contradiction to feelings of guilt about his theft
against Mrs. Gargery. By confessing to the crime that Pip has done, Magwitch has
exonerated Pip from blame, but Pip has been brought up to feel guilt when he does
something wrong, and his illegal act is still immoral in his mind: Magwitchs sacrifice
has not absolved him of guilt. Pip experiences a sort of moral isolation, and has no
intercourse with the world about his feelings of being too cowardly to do what [he]
knew to be right, as [he] had been too cowardly to not do what [he] knew to be wrong.
(41) The unidentifiable internal tension between his sympathy and gratitude towards
Magwitch, and his own guilt about feeling like a criminal makes the whole course of
events traumatic to Pip; the occasional resurgence of this tension arises every time the
incident is mentioned, or something in the house goes missing. In this way, the
association between criminality and immorality become inextricably intertwined, and
because Pip has been bonded to Magwitch, this permanently taints Pips sense of self.
When Pip goes to visit Miss Havisham for the first time, he feels shame that
makes him understand social inferiority, and gives him a new way to classify criminality
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as not just morally inferior, but also socially inferior. Because of his repeated experiences
with shame of social inferiority, this becomes the most defining characteristic of his
development into an adult. When leaving Miss Havishams house, Pip must walk by
Estella, who gives him a triumphant glance as if she rejoiced that my hands were so
coarse and my boots were so think I was passing out without looking at her. (65) Pip
is unable to relate to Estellas mocking gaze, and, understanding that the feedback from
Estellas glance will not be mutual, he looks away. He leaves the house deeply
revolving that [he] is in a low-lived bad way, (65) and Estella continually induces the
feeling that his social status makes him bad throughout his childhood, adolescence, and
early adulthood. In Shame, Theatricality and Queer Performativity, Sedgwick writes that
shame is now often considered the affect that most defines the space wherein a sense of
self will develop, and Pip begins to see social status as the most imperative way to
define oneself. This creates a perverse understanding of morality. If criminals are of the
lowest social status, and are defined by immorality, then high society must implicitly be
linked to high morals. This new understanding provides a means of escape for Pip: if he
can become a learned gentleman, he can weaken his association with his childhood
criminality, and with Magwitch, which have been the cause of guilt and isolation.
The contrast between Pips redefined perception of criminality and its reality is
most exemplified in his visit to prison. Pip has already become entered higher society,
and the visit to prison causes him to describe criminality as a strangestain that had
pervaded [his] fortune and advancement (264). However, the contamination that he feels
from being surrounded by crime has little relation to the events that transpired inside;
rather, we see Wemmick treating the criminals as less than animal, acting as a gardener
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might walk among his plants, (260) extracting bribes, and refusing to give attention to
the prisoners who will not bear him profit. His behavior is inarguably condemnable, but
to Pip, immorality cannot pervade class. Meanwhile, one of the criminals, who has
counterfeited money and is condemned to die, bears his sentence with an incredible
display of character. His crime has not directly harmed anyone, but his status as a
criminal makes him, and the whole place abhorrent to Pip.
Pips belief that the upper and lower class are separated not just by wealth, but
also fundamentally by character, creates a cataclysmic clash between the two worlds
upon the discovery that Magwitch is his benefactor. Pips pride in his class is built on its
success in disassociating him with his criminality, and to discover that a criminal has
been the cause of his rise in social class is unbearable: the repugnance with which I
shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast. (320)
Magwitch has been funding Pip through an honest living, but his criminal background
still debases him to the status of an animal. For Pip, the sharpest and deepest pain of all
is that it was for the convict, guilty of I knew not what crimes, and liable to be
hanged that I had deserted Joe. (323) While Pips understanding of moral hierarchy
does not put Joe into the same category of immorality, Joe had to be less ignorant and
common, that he might be worthier of [Pips] society (109). The conflict between an
emotional connection with an individual and the perverse understanding that their
social status made them less worthy is mirrored in Pips relationship to Magwitch
and to Joe. To have given up his stronger emotional connection with one of a higher
relative worthiness for a criminal is inconceivable to Pip.
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The irreconcilability of the upper and lower class is, for Pip, the irreconcilability
of morality and immorality. The definitions have been so deeply engrained in Pip, both
through experiences of trauma and of shame, that he is unable to re-evaluate his opinions
and rather, what [he] was chained to, and how heavily, became intelligible (331) to him
as something impossible for him to be rid of, except in a total removal into another form
of society. Pip thinks of the possibility of escaping to India and becoming a soldier, in
which an entirely separate sphere of social classes exist. It takes the realization of
Estellas connection to Magwitch to finally enable Pip to redefine what is moral and what
is immoral, and to see these terms as related to action and not to social status. Pip cannot
realize this independently because the confusion lies within his own connections to
criminality, but if Magwitch is a criminal, and Estella is his daughter, and Estella is the
embodiment of higher society, then the two can be at odds in terms of wealth, but they
cannot be fundamentally irreconcilable. Morality, then, does not have to be tied to social
class: Pip sees Magwitch both as a man who had felt affectionately, gratefully, and
generously, towards me I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to
Joe, (446) and also as someone who almost from his infancy had been an offender
against the laws; whohad been at length sentenced to exile for a term of years
(457). By identifying Magwitch both as a criminal and as a good man, Pip has
finally come around to the definitions which Dickens put forth in the very
beginning: criminality as illegality and unlawfulness, but not at odds with morality.
This realization allows Pip to overcome insecurities about his own inferiority as
being raised by, and sympathetic towards both Joe and Magwitch, and helps him to
again perform an act that is blatantly illegal: attempting to help Magwitch escape.
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Once this internal conflict is resolved, Pips development is no longer arrested in a
stage of childlike-morality; he emerges into a wiser and better adulthood.