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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
The theme of education pervades nineteenth-century novels, often particularized in the theme of learning to read and write. Great Expectations reveals the complex metaphorical nature of the terms “reading” and “reader,” deepening our sense of how Pip's moral perceptions are related to his literal education. The novel begins with several scenes in which Pip learns to read and then goes on to show a wide range of characters reading rightly or wrongly, dramatically or narrowly, with self-deception or with charity. Dickens' own reader comes to see that the stages of Pip's expectations correspond to the growth in his powers of interpretation.
1 I quote throughout from the New Oxford Illustrated Dickens (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1948-58). I am grateful to my colleagues J. Hillis Miller and James C. Nohrnberg for their criticism and encouragement.
2 See his introd. to Man and His Fictions, ed. Alvin B. Kernan, Peter Brooks, and Michael Holquist (New York: Harcourt, 1973), and “The Idea of Literature,” New Literary History, 5 (1973-74), 31–40.
3 Peacock Markham L. Jr., ed., The Critical Opinions of William Wordsworth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1950), p. 435.
4 Cf. the exchange in Ch. ii of Hard Times:
“Girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger. “I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?”
“Sissy Jupe, sir,” explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.
“Sissy is not a name,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “Don't call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.”
It might also be noted that the first question Magwitch asks (and repeats) is Pip's name.
5 This sentence in its impersonal, assaulting verbs echoes the sentence in Ch. i describing Magwitch as “A man who had been soaked in water and smothered in mud,” etc.
6 Bleak House, Ch. xiv.
7 The theme of handwriting here crosses in a suggestive way the frequently noted imagery of hands in the novel.
8 Wemmick's reading the newspaper aloud to his Aged Parent both mirrors and corrects Pip's reading aloud to Magwitch: despite the old man's deafness, despite the absence of an intelligible language between them, Wemmick communicates with a father.
