Victorian literature has a high proportion of orphans. Trollope George Elliot Thackeray Gaskell Gaskell Bronte all had orphans at the forefront of their novels. Frances Hodgson Burnett, who created Colin, Mary, & Sara, continued this trend well into the Edwardian Era.
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations all have a large number or orphans. Bleak House, Little Dorrit and Oliver Twist are all filled with orphans. Dickens, however, treats each character in a different way. For instance, although both protagonists are missing parents in Great Expectations and David Copperfield’s life, they have markedly different paths.
Pip’s life is not as free-spirited and independent as David Copperfield. David remains untainted by criminality despite the “undisciplined spirit,” youth, and inexperience of David. Great Expectations & David Copperfield’s two distinct approaches are in line with Victorian attitudes towards orphaned and abandoned children, as well as the mixture of fascination & fear that they exhibited.
Auerbach goes into great detail about Victorian attitudes towards orphans. She notes that orphans “are born by themselves and create their own social shadow” (Auerbach, 395). Victorians saw orphans free from the burdens of family history and other social expectations. The orphan can write his own story, whereas “normal” children cannot, because of their burdened social and parental expectations. It is misleading to think that the literary orphan has a “appearance” of fragility, because this masks a “power of survivance” (Auerbach 395), which is necessary to create a place in the world.
This is in line with Dickens’ portrayal of David. In the first chapters, Dickens emphasizes David’s “winsome fragility”. David appears as a newborn, and later as a toddler who chatters about crocodiles. Dickens’s portrayal of young David and little Em’ly playing together on the sand creates a touching image. David himself comments about the fragility of that time. He notes “as far as any feelings of inequality, youthfulness, other difficulties, we did not experience them because there was no future”. We did not plan for the future, nor for the present.
This fragile sense is highlighted by the way Mrs. Gummidge treats the children. The winsomeness of the hero only intensifies the brutality of the Murdstones. Hablot Knight-Browne’s illustrations emphasize David’s diminutive size, so that there is no doubt about David’s strength and size. He sits in the pew of a large church, all alone among adults. In the following illustrations, David appears in an adult-dominated world and is dwarfed by his chair. Victorians believed that while all children were winsomely fragile, orphans displayed this characteristic in great abundance.
David, the fragile infant, soon shows surprising strength once he starts to respond to his circumstances. David takes on adult roles after his mother’s death. He knows that other children act differently than him. He wonders if Mrs. Macawber was confused by his “precocious independent spirit” (GE 140). In the same way, he wonders if “the waiter was surprised to see such an odd little apparition come in all alone”(DC 142).
He displays an unexpected maturity and does not get entangled in Macawber’s financial ruin. After Macawber’s arrest, David notes that he has lived the “same secretly unhappy, yet self-reliant life” (DC 148). David is able to have adult conversations with adults because of his “otherness”. He is an adult, not a child. His secret joy is fuel to further his own development.
It is at this point that David’s transformation from a child who was dependent on adults, to one who has become a uniquely self-reliant Londoner, reaches its highest level. He decides to flee Murdstones and Grinbys with the hope of finding a more suitable situation from his Aunt Clara. David may be seen as regressing to his parents’ situation but it is more likely that he has identified what he requires and has created a strategy to meet them. David’s “resolution,” as he executes it, illustrates Auerbach’s powerful message about survival.
David struggles to make it from London, to Dover. His money is stolen, he has to pawn his clothing to buy food, he gets blisters, ruffians attack him, a long 23-mile journey to Aunt Betsy’s. Pip’s dependence on others is forever changed by his trip. He will no longer be dependent upon the Murdstones, or anyone else who took over his childhood. The Victorians were fascinated by the orphan and invested them with incredible personal strength. David is free to pursue his dreams without being bound by the ties of his mother and father, his work at Murdstones and Grinbys, or even the Murdstones. David’s immaturity, gullibility, and lack of discipline may make him appear unruly, but he will never be at the mercy others. This is why it’s not surprising that the name of David has changed to Trotwood.
Victorians believed in the Protestant ethic of work, which explains their fascination with orphans. Victorians believed that an orphan could be successful by pulling himself up with his own bootstraps, as they abhorred idleness. David’s journey from a bottle shop in which he says “the whole world is yours” (DC 136), to becoming a successful novelist makes him an English Horatio. Algers’ writing was happening in America at about the same times. David is not an exception.
Great Expectations hardly reflects Victorian beliefs about the strength of an orphan, such as those in David Copperfield. Instead, other, darker ideas are introduced. Orphans were viewed as “faintly unreliable,” “uncertain parents,” and as always threatening to lose their focus and definition by Victorians. Orphans, who were free from social ties which bound them together, could violate the contract of society in many other ways. Great Expectations is darker because of the Victorian fear of crime and filth. It is a bildungsroman but the story of Pip’s orphaned life takes a completely different path. As he becomes more and more enmeshed in criminality and conflicted emotion, his story begins to take a darker turn.
Victorians feared crime, and the violation of social contract by the orphan played right into that fear. Orphans’ criminality was a concern for Victorians, even though they admired their freedom. This belief wasn’t entirely unfounded. Aid to orphans drastically decreased after the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. After 1834, the poor law amendment act cut back on orphan aid. Workhouses were the only source of public assistance. They were designed as harshly as possible to deter freeloaders. These changes, taken together, drove the poor to the cities where crime was rampant. The London Metropolitan Police’s inception was inevitable. However, it is possible to argue that the Poor Law Amendment Act of1834 was the cause of the crime wave which led to the creation of the police force in 1868. The citizens were preyed on by roving child criminal tribes, similar to Fagan’s Gang. Orphans were considered to be criminals because they had no way of supporting themselves.
Victorians acknowledged this contradictory approach to orphans. Laura Peters tells how the Inspector at the Parochial Union Schools could not reconcile that so many orphans received the highest grades on teaching exams but that they also made up 60% of the criminals. (Peters 7) In January 1854, orphans were 50-60% among those in pauper prisons and schools. Peters then describes “the penitential narrative,” which is, according to her, a product of “the middle class’s sense of failure…caused by the existence” of orphans. These penal narratives usually revolve around the criminal plot involving orphans.
David Copperfield has very little to do with Victorian apprehension of crime. Uriah heep, an orphan who commits fraud and forgery, is only a small part of the story. Macawber’s experience in the debtor’s jail is also not criminal. Great Expectations has a lot of crime. Peters uses Oliver Twist to illustrate a criminal narrative. However, Great Expectations is a similar example.
Pip steals a brandy bottle, a pie, and an important document as the novel opens, after a convict threatens him on the marshes. Modern readers may be impatient at Pip’s fear of being revealed, but Victorian readers would understand this feeling as they associate orphans with criminal activities and expect further developments in the criminal scheme. Victorian readers, who have been informed that Pip can commit crimes and has a history of association with escaped prisoners, would watch for more developments. Pip has this same feeling. Despite his efforts to move above his current station, his criminal past is always in his mind.
The second convict’s appearance in Three Jolly Bargemen confirms orphans as having a dubious social standing. The second convict reappear after it is established Pip was sent by his sister to the prison bar. The Victorians’ suspicion that criminality is linked to orphans, despite the logic of their minds, is confirmed by his surprise appearance. The second convict, although “a mysterious-looking man that I had never before seen” (GE 292) is undoubtedly related to those convicts Pip encountered on the marsh. The convict discovers Joe, Pip’s identities, and gets Joe to tell him about Pip. By doing so, he establishes that Pip really is an orphan. The convict places Joe’s home near the “lonely church” in the marshes surrounded by graves. Pip and Joe talk about turnips after the convict proves his identity with a secret flash of Joe’s file. This seemingly harmless subject, however, is only a front, as it turns out that Magwitch’s earliest memory of the Magwitch was stealing turnedips. Mrs. Joe describes the stranger accurately when she returns home. “A badun, I’ll get bound” (GE55). Pip finds the entire episode unsettling. He has a hard time sleeping because he thinks about “the strange person taking aim at him with his invisible weapon, and how it’s a common thing to be secretly conspiring with criminals – a part of my career that i had previously forgotten”(GE 55). Pip has a good idea of where he comes from and is understandably concerned that a random encounter with convicted criminals will develop into a more serious crime.
After establishing Pip’s criminal past, it is no surprise that the convict returns and reveals an even darker past. Magwitch tells you I’m going to keep my life a secret. For you to have it quick and convenient, I’ll translate it into English. In and out, in and out, in and out. You’ve got the answer. This is my life, except for the times I was shipped away… I have done pretty well, but I’ve never been hanged. I have been in prison as long as a tea kettle. I’ve moved from town to town and been evicted. You may not know more about my birthplace than I do. I first realized who I was in Essex when I started stealing turnips (GE 236).
Pip and the Victorians were afraid of this association. This association is even more horrifying in Great Expectations after Pip learns Magwitch had been his anonymous donor. Magwitch dispels Pip’s hopes of social advancement by telling him, “I have made you a gentleman.” I did it. You should get the guinea I earn every time. I swore that if I ever speculated and became rich, I would make you rich. I lived hard, so you could live comfortably. I worked hard for you to be above the work”(GE 220). Pip’s reaction is predictable. He says that he was “absolutely horrified” and that he would have been even more so if he were a monster. Pip feels horror at both the convict and himself, although it’s not stated. The convict’s act of providing Pip with his fortune has affected Pip in the most fundamental way. The blacksmith’s shop is a place of mediocrity, and his flight was a waste. David will never enjoy the domestic bliss and success that he worked so hard to achieve because Pip based his expectations on a criminal plan. Pip is now unable to enjoy the success and domestic bliss he had hoped for because he has based his “expectations” on a criminal scheme. Pip is now ruined by a long-ago crime in the marshes.
The Victorian attitude towards orphans is revealed by other criminal characters. Uriah Sheep’s and Orlick’s similarities can help reveal these insights. Both characters seem to share many similarities. Dickens’ most unqualifiedly repulsive creations, they also both commit criminal crimes with no regret. Dickens makes both characters doubles of the main protagonists. These superficial similarities are not true. Heep and Orlick are not identical.
Orlick is a perfect example of the criminal contamination that cannot be avoided. Orlick is beyond Pip’s control. Orlick always appears where Pip does. He appears as a Satis House gatekeeper after he was a fellow forge worker. He hides in darkness inside Pip’s London home and ambushes Pip at the marsh. Orlick always appears, no matter what Pip does. Orlick’s inescapability is a reflection of Pip’s inability to rid himself of his criminal past, which comes with being an orphan.
Uriah and David are often close to each other. Uriah, his mother and Mr. Wickfield fix their gazes on David to stop him from talking freely with Agnes. Even the object of Uriah’s mother’s knitting which “looked like a net; and as she worked away with those Chinese chopsticks of knitting-needlles…getting ready for a cast of her net by-and-by” is seen as an snare for David as she stubbornly refuses to leave the room (DC 482). Uriah is more closely associated with David than Orlick, but the relationship between them is less intense. Uriah doesn’t appear in many of the subplots. For example, David’s relationship with Dora and the Peggottys. His friendship with Steerforth. Uriah has a slimy exterior, which makes him more escapable than Orlick. David has escaped the taint that comes with being an orphan. Pip, on the other hand, has internalized this taint.
An examination of David’s and Pip’s individual culpability will confirm the difference. Uriah is responsible for his crimes, and David has no involvement. David’s role was to “assist in an explosion”(DC 623) where Uriah, Mr. Macawber Traddles Agnes and aunt Betsy confront Uriah. Uriah says that David is to blame for Uriah revealing his crimes. “You’ve never been anything but an upstart. Uriah is adamant about his responsibility, as he tells his accusers: “Miss Trotwood…you better stop it or I won’t stop your husband for you any longer than would be nice…Miss Wickfield…if you love your dad, you should not join the gang. If you ruin him…I’ve got you all under the harrow. Think twice before the arrow flies over your head” (DC 629)
Orlick is guilty of more crimes than Uriah. Orlick relies on English common-law, while Pip explains the mens’ rea. Pip “was in Old Orlicks path”; he was the one who “lost him that position”, and came “between me and an attractive young woman”. Orlick tries killing Mrs. Joe to punish Pip for “being favored” while “Old Orlick[was] bullied [and] beaten”(GE 292). To make his point, he adds “but Old Orlick did not do it. It was you” (GE292). Victorians were able to accept the wholesale transference to Pip of the blame. Orlick may be a bit far-fetched but his assertions have enough validity to make Victorians suspect Pip. Orlick’s guilt cannot be wiped out by the reversal in roles or shifting of blame, but Pip is undoubtedly contaminated. Orlick has not been charged despite Uriah being punished. Uriah’s crimes are his sole responsibility. Orlick is punished because he shared the guilt, but only for attacking Mr. Pumblechook. Orlick is not punished for the uncharged crime, but it remains in the shadow of Pip’s tainted past.
Comparing Great Expectations to David Copperfield, it is clear that Dickens did not have a singular view of orphans like some Victorian writers. Dickens is a contradiction himself (Reed 251). Dickens believes that orphans are proof of the breach in the social contract. This view argues that the orphan is untrustworthy and a “bad seed” who contributes to the crime in London. The orphan is viewed as suspicious no matter what his position. He will never be able to redeem himself because of his tainted past. John Reed writes in his article on Jude the Obscure: “These orphans, symbols of the isolated, disinherited state of man, have no way to harmonize themselves with a greater authority” (251). Pip is no exception to this view. This isn’t the only opinion. Victorians would not have been able to confine themselves to this narrow view without attacking their throne. Albert and Queen Victoria were both motherless. This view was also distorted by the sheer volume of orphaned and abandoned children (some estimates indicate that as many as 10% of all kids were left without a parent, while 13% were motherless).
Dickens also uses the orphan as a way to show that although “partial and true orphans…may be ruined by lack of guidance…they might also make use of their isolation condition for solid development” (Reed, 252). David, who is orphaned, can be viewed in this light. David’s ascent to success confirms the Protestant ethic of hard work, as was noted earlier. He has risen above his humble beginnings through hard work and perseverance. Orphans are viewed in a contradictory way because of the Victorians’ view on the poor. Victorians looked down on the poor adults as if they had a moral defect, but were reluctant in extending this to the orphaned poor children. Orphans are viewed as tabula rasa if they have been properly raised. David does not suffer from poverty, unlike Pip. This allows him to avoid the complex intrigues which prevent Pip achieving his goals.
Works Cited
Auerbach, Nina. Incarnations Of The Orphan. In ELH Journal Volume 42, Issue 4 (1975), an article was published which examined 395-419 and its implications.
Byrd, Max. Reading Great Expectations In PMLA 92.2 (1976), an article was published discussing the implications of a certain type of literary criticism. It argued that this type of criticism has the potential to be beneficial but also to be detrimental in certain situations. The article examined both the positive and negative aspects of the form of criticism and sought to provide guidance on how to use it responsibly.
Lawrence Jay Dessner has contributed a great deal to the field. Great Expectations – “The ghost of a man’s own father”. In a 1976 article published in PMLA, the author analyzes the impact of the structure of the novel on the characters and themes in the work. The article explores how the form of the novel shapes the story, and how it can be used to deliver a particular message. It discusses the implications of the novel’s structure and how it affects the development of the characters and themes in the work.
Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. W.W. Norton & Company released a publication in New York in 1990.
Dickens, Charles. Dickens, Charles. Random House published “New York” in 1982.
Engel, Monroe. The Politics of Dickens’ novels PMLA published an article in the 71.5 issue in 1956 that was devoted to a discussion of the 945-974 page range.
Robert J. Finkel Another boy brought up “by hand”. In the 1966 edition of Nineteenth Century Fiction, the article “389-390” discussed a variety of topics related to the genre.
Hara, Eiichi. Stories present and absent in Great Expectations. In ELH 53.3 (1986), an article was published that discussed the effects of various factors on the evolution of literature. It examined the influence of elements such as culture, language, and society on the development of literature, and argued that these elements all played a role in the changing nature of literature over time.
Needham, Gwendolyn B. The Undisciplined heart of David Copperfield Nineteenth-Century Fiction magazine published an article in 1954 exploring the topic of fiction from the 1800s. The piece was a lengthy one, spanning 81 to 107 pages.
Peters, Laura. Orphan texts: Victorian orphans, culture and empire. Manchester University Press published a book on the subject in New York in the year 2000.
Reed, John. Victorian Conventions. Ohio University Press published New York in 1975.