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Magwitch – The Man Who Could Never Be a Gentleman
Last updated 17 June 2007
Although Great Expectations has long been one of the most widely studied Victorian novels (by the 1980s George J. Worth was able to amass sufficient commentary on the novel to justify the publication of an annotated bibliography devoted solely to Great Expectations (Carlisle 454), recent developments in postcolonial theory have allowed readers to perceive aspects of the novel which have hitherto been overlooked.
Great Expectations is, of course, a novel which examines the idea of what it means to be a gentleman. Magwitch attempts to make Pip a gentleman because he knows that he can never attain that position himself. Convicts, as Robert Hughes points out, “could succeed, but they could hardly, in the real sense, return. They could expiate their crimes in a technical, legal sense, but what they suffered there [i.e. Australia] warped them into permanent outsiders” (quoted in Murfin 596).
Magwitch was obviously quite successful in Australia as he is able to fund Pip’s comfortable lifestyle. Although Dickens never makes the source of Magwitch’s wealth clear the convict does inform us that he became “a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, and other trades besides” (296). Dickens’s Australia, therefore, appears to be a place of opportunity for the hardworking convict .
A modern reader will probably ask if it was possible for someone who was exported to build up a fortune. The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is an unequivocal yes. The most famous example was that of Samuel Terry (1776-1838) who was able to acquire a farm of some 19,000 acres and went on to have a successful career in politics where he campaigned for emancipists’ rights (Litvack part II 104).
This was due to the policies of Lachlan Macquarie who was Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821. He was prepared to give convicts a chance if they displayed good conduct during the first three years of their sentence (Litvack part II 103). As A. G. Shaw puts it:
In New South Wales the men could make a fresh start, the errors of their past lives would be overlooked, and rewards and punishments would be based solely on current behaviour (Litvack part II 104).
While we do not get a detailed account of how Magwitch acquired his wealth, regular readers of Dickens’s Household Words would already have been familiar with stories of ex-convicts building a successful life for themselves out in Australia.
The 6th April 1850 edition of the magazine contained a story by Samuel Sidney about a convict named Carden who tells the narrator:
I began to have some hope when I found that with good luck, I might have my “ticket”, that would give liberty in the colony, in seven years, and when I saw so many who had been prisoners riding about in their carriages, or driving teams of their own, as good as the `Squire’s [back in England] (quoted in Litvack part I 40).
The ticket-of-leave which Carden describes here was the most common way in which convicts could be released from their sentences. The ticket freed the individual from the obligation of working as a forced labourer. By the time the narrator leaves Carden and his wife are prospering and, like Magwitch, seeking to contribute to the welfare of others:
They are grown rich, as all such industrious people do in Australia, but they have not forgotten that they were once poor. If you need a subscription for a church, a school, or a sick emigrant, you can go to Mr. Carden, safe of a generous answer (quoted in Litvack part I 40).
However, this did not mean that convicts such as Magwitch were totally accepted in Australia never mind England. In a letter which appeared in the 16th November 1850 edition of Household Words a newly arrived emigrant tells of how a banker described the Australian class system:
We are divided into at least three sets, but you only have to do with two, the Free Colonists, and the Emancipists. Many of the latter are wealthy, educated, and personally respectable, but if you mean to associate with the other party, you must avoid the Emancipists (freed convicts), except in mere transactions, in the same way as you would avoid a black bear in New York (quoted in Litvack part I 38, italics mine).
Magwitch will always be an outsider even in Australia. He may be able to acquire financial wealth but will never be accepted in polite society. Even those “Free Colonists” who associated with former convicts risk alienating themselves from those around them. This surely helps to explain why Magwitch expresses such a sense of achievement when he meets the protagonist of Great Expectations: “Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done it!” (297). The convict has managed to cheat the system. While he knows that he will never be accepted himself he has “made” a gentleman who is and this gives him a great sense of “triumph” (298).
Pip’s reaction to Magwitch’s revelations is one of disgust. As the convict tells him how his lavish lifestyle has been funded Pip feels not gratitude but “abhorrence” and “repugnance” (298). He realises that he cannot retain social respectability if it becomes known that his money came from a convict.
Works Cited
Carlisle, Janice. “A Critical History of Great Expectations”. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Great Expectations. Ed. Janice Carlisle. New York: Bedford Books, 1996. 445-461.
Dickens, Charles. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Great Expectations. New York: Bedford Books, 1996.
Litvack, Leon. “Dickens, Australia and Magwitch Part I: The Colonial Context.” The Dickensian 95 Part 1 (1999): 24-50.
Litvack, Leon. “Dickens, Australia and Magwitch Part I: The Colonial Context.” The Dickensian 95 Part 2 (1999): 101-127.
Murfin, Ross C. “Cultural Criticism and Great Expectations”. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Great Expectations. Ed. Janice Carlisle. New York: Bedford Books, 1996. 592-601.
Said, Edward W. “Dickens and Australia”. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Great Expectations. Ed. Janice Carlisle. New York: Bedford Books, 1996. 524-526.
Smith, Grahame. “Suppressing Narratives: Childhood and Empire in The Uncommercial Traveller and Great Expectations. Dickens and the Children of Empire. Ed. Wendy S. Jacobson. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000.
This page was written by Samuel Morrison
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.
Email Dr Litvack with your comments: L.Litvack at qub.ac.uk
Pip looks a lot happier in the illustration
than he seems to have been from
the text of the novel.
