Dickens’ Attitude toward Victorian Customs of Crime and Punishment
During the novel called Great Expectations, Charles Dickens makes itobvious to us how he feels about crime and punishment in the Victorianera. This essay will examine some of the ways he expresses hisfeelings and makes his attitude clear.
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The first way that Dickens reveals part of his attitude is by thewords and phrases he uses to describe the escaped convict. To show thereaders that the man he is describing is an escaped convict, Dickensuses such words and phrases such as: “A fearful man, all in coursegrey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with brokenshoes,” (page 6) Dickens is trying to point out that he feels thetreatment of prisoners is unfair. Dickens portrays the convict asbeing almost like a tramp, very scruffy and untidy. Therefore he issaying that due to the scruffiness of the convict the treatment ofprisoners is unfair. Dickens obviously does not approve to putting aniron on a prisoners leg and therefore to exaggerate his point furtherhe says that the iron was great. This paints a picture in the readers’mind of a convict dragging a huge iron behind them and consequentlyDickens puts his point across.
On the subject of convicts and how they are treated, Dickens alsomakes his attitude clear by talking about hulks. “Hulks are prisonships, right across the marshes.” (Page 16) As Dickens says, hulks areprison ships. Dickens is telling the readers that keeping prisoners inships and, in this case, taking them to Australia is ridiculous.Another point that was mentioned to me was that one third of criminalsdied on the way. This is obviously unfair treatment towards criminalsand supports Dic…
…er sentence thanMagwitch for committing the same crime. Surely, if two people committhe same crime they should receive the same sentence. But in this casehey don’t and therefore the law has treated Magwitch unfairly.
My final point is when Magwitch comes to trial. Once again the law isunduly harsh due to the punishment not fitting the crime. In GreatExpectations Dickens makes his point clear by having 32 peoplereceiving the same punishment for different crimes. As well as this,he tells us all 32 people were told at the same time. This is againunfair to prisoners.
Overall, Dickens has made it obviously clear to us his attitudetowards crime and punishment I the Victorian era. He feels that it isvery unfair and unjust due to the above reasons. I think that ifDickens could see the treatment of prisoners today he would be muchmore satisfied.
