This page was last updated on 11 June 2002
Carey’s Jack Maggs is an example of the post-colonial concept of ‘writing back’. That is, the novel although written over a century apart from Dicken’s Great Expectations, is in fact indirectly interacting with this original text. The principal protagonist of Carey’s novel the eponymous Jack Maggs is undoubtedly indebted to the original Magwitch of the Dicken’s novel. Although Carey does not call Maggs, Magwitch, the shared sound of the name immediately prepares us for other similarites. The two characters are both convicts, who for their crimes were deported at an early age to Austrailia, and more particularly both characters settled in New South Wales. While the manner in which Magwitch makes his fortune is a little ambiguous, Maggs’ wealth is a result of brick-making. They also share a common bond in their sponsor of a young man in their homeland, for Maggs, Henry Phipps, and for Magwitch, Phillip Pirrip.
The novel assumes a greater interest if one has some knowledge of the personal life of Dickens, and in the young Tobias Oates there are comparisons to be drawn with the writer of Great Expectations. The events which take place in the novel, occur primarily in 1837, the year in which Dicken’s was beginning to write Oliver Twist, and had just published The Pickwick Papers in 1836 which earned him a small degree of fame. Tobias Oates has also achieved a similar level of stature with his novel Captain Crumley in Jack Maggs, though it is the details of a more private matter which are touched upon in Jack Maggs. Tobias Oates has an illicit relationship with his wife’s sister, which in its consumation results in her disastrous pregnancy. Here Carey is myth-making the life of Dickens himself, who was reportedly in love with the sister of his wife as well. Although this relationship with Mary Hogarth was not anything more than friendship, Dickens was attracted to her nonetheless. For more biography on Dickens see: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/dickens.htm
Carey says of the Magwitch character in Great Expectations that: ‘this man is my ancestor…this is unfair.’ And any doubt that Maggs is not Magwitch (or at least almost exactly him) is quashed. The colonised subject is given much more of a voice by Carey than in Dickens’ novel and is at pains to have him not the ‘other’ subject of Great Expectations but a much more sympathetic creation. The novel Jack Maggs is perhaps of more interest to the reader studying post-colonialism, due to its addressing of issues such as an interest in the way in which Maggs acquires his wealth. He is unable to function as an individual in the Metropolitan occident of London, it is only following his expulsion from his country that he becomes a respectable member of society. For details on life in Australia at this time visit http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/australia/convicts.html
Carey’s latest novel True History of The Kelly Gang also deals with the nineteenth century and in particular the convict in Australia. The novels’ epigram taken from a William Faulkner novel that: ‘The past is not dead. It is not even past.’ appears an interesting quotation when viewing much of Carey’s oeuvre(of which an extensive biography can be found at http://www.qub.ac.uk/english/imperial/austral/careybib.htm). There appears to be a constant ‘rite of reply’ as Helen Tiffin puts it in the work of Carey. That is, in the Carey novel, the accepted historical view of things is re-written to examine other issues which interest Carey. Much of his work is concerned with the colonised Australia, and also the relationship between the coloniser and colonised binary, evidenced in the Tobias/Maggs relationship in Jack Maggs.
Carey’s Jack Maggs dependency on Dickens, like Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Seas dependence on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre appears as a post-modern concept. That is, a feature of some post-modern writing, is in its intertextuality, although stylistically Jack Maggs has little that could deem it as a post-modern novel. Although it does not consciously seek to imitate Dicken’s in style there are undoubted similarities in certain descriptions. In particular, the London of Carey’s novel is identifiable with that of the Dicken’s canon. The opening page of Bleak House is invoked at various times by Carey in his portrayal of London and its squalor and fog. Although names and autobiographical accounts of Dicken’s life are used by Carey, the world he creates is very much one of his own imagination. As the judges of the booker prize described Jack Maggs: The themes of colonial self denial and the search for the recovery of the original self are here… in a narrative that forces us to reflect on the meaning of history.’ This statement gets to the crux of Carey’s novel that while it is interpretable for its postcolonial interests, it also provides a more personal journey as both Maggs and Tobias are forced to make during the novel. A review of Carey’s Jack Maggs can be found at: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,6121,96461,00.html and a further fascinating Carey interview in which he discusses Jack Maggs and Great Expectations at: http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0399/carey/interview.html
This project was completed under the direction of Dr Leon Litvack as a requirement for the MA degree in Modern Literary Studies in the School of English at the Queen's University of Belfast. The site is evolving and will include contributions from future generations of MA students on other writers and themes.
This page was written by Jason Colhoun.
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