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Unit 13: Great Expectations: Detailed Study of Text-II

Notes

Notes Wemmick brings Pip to watch Jaggers in court, where Pip observes him “grinding
the whole place in a mill.”

Analysis

The honesty and earnestness of Matthew Pocket is contrasted in this chapter with the logical,
though not necessarily honest, character of Jaggers. In fact, Jagger’s morality is not based on
what is actually just, it is only based on a game of words. Guilt or innocence is not decided
in Jaggers’ mind by who is actually guilty or innocent, or even who has the most evidence or
not, it is based on the talent of the lawyer to massage out of the participants the desired
verdict.
Again, Dicken’s is taking a rather direct critical shot at the judicial system and lawyers in
general.

Part II: Chapter 6

While at the Pockets, Pip comes to know the family surrounding Miss. Havisham. Camilla is
Matthew Pocket’s sister, Georgiana is a cousin. Pip also grows close to Herbert.
Pip is invited to dinner at Wemmick’s whose slogan seems to be “Office is one thing, private
life is another.” Indeed, Wemmick has a fantastical private life. Although he lives in a small
cottage, the cottage has been modified to look a bit like a castle, complete with moat, drawbridge,
and firing cannon. Pip finds Wemmick an entertaining host, far different from the Wemmick
at the office.

Analysis

Dicken’s humorously uses Wemmick to show how conforming to society, in this case Wemmick’s
job at Jaggers, can twist a person so much as to make them unidentifiable. It is almost as if
Wemmick’s private life and public life have made him a split personality. The one, a grim
clerk with a dry callousness, the other, an imaginative, caring, generous esoteric.

Literally, Wemmick’s home is his castle, and Wemmick talks in terms of defending this private
home against the encroachment of the hard city life. Pip’s meal there, complete with the
customary cannon firing, continues the thematic use of meals with a series that introduces Part
II of the novel. In this meal, Pip is brought to understand the entertaining imagination, as well
as the caring humanity, of an acquaintance whom he presumed was a dull clog in the city
machine.

Part II: Chapter 7

The next day, Jaggers himself invites Pip and friends to dinner. Pip brings Herbert as well as
the other Pocket boarders, including Startop and Drummle, a mopey depressed aristocrat. Pip
and his friends find themselves revealing their relationships quite clearly, specifically all of
their irritation at the insulting Drummle.
Pip, on Wemmick’s suggestion, looks carefully at Jagger’s servant woman — a “tigress” according
to Wemmick. She is about forty, and seems to regard Jaggers with a mix of fear and duty.

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