Читать реферат по английскому: "Great Expectations The World Of Laws Crime" Страница 3

назад (Назад)скачать (Cкачать работу)

Функция "чтения" служит для ознакомления с работой. Разметка, таблицы и картинки документа могут отображаться неверно или не в полном объёме!

model of upright living, sees nothing sinister about wearing pieces of jewellery which have been given to him as bribes by people who have now been executed for their crimes. The acquiring of portable property by dubious means is regarded as a normal part of legal life? (Barnes).

Contrary to him, Mr. Jaggers lived in a gloomy apartment, near to Little Britain, filled with books related to his profession.

The Lord Chief of Justice (the judge) and the prison authorities are also treated in the novel. Not only are they presented as people who made business by charging the entry for the judicial spectacle, but also stealing clothes after executing prisoners:

?(?) the more so as the Lord Chief Justice?s proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes, which had evidently not belonged to him originally, and which, I took it into my head, he had bought cheap of the executioner? (164).

Moreover, there was a law whereby the money of an emancipated convict who dared to return Great Britain was confiscated by the government. Dickens exemplifies this in the novel when Magwitch is caught in the river and all the money given to Pip is seized by the government. Apart from this, prison authorities made business just inviting people to enter there by some money, which is shown through Pip?s eyes:

?While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially drunk minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and hear the trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front place for half-a-crown, whence I should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice in his wig and robes-mentioning that awful personage like waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced price of eighteenpence? (164).

Through the novel, Dickens tries to demonstrate that convicts were victims of the cruel laws that sentenced people to death or transportation, just only for being poor. By doing this, he explores the criminal psychology to difference the good-hearted criminal punished for his/her social status and that greedy criminal who uses people to get profit. As Leavis and Lewis point out, ?Dickens is always asking questions such as ?Why do people in similar circumstances and under the same pressure behave differently?? ?.

Abel Magwitch is one of the two criminals portrayed in the novel who represents the honest man punished for his social status. He was a vagrant who survived due to little theft. He spent all his youth ?in jail and out of jail? (342) and all his adulthood in Australia. He was imprisoned for putting forged banknotes into circulation, a common activity that increased during the first half of the 19th C. He received a harder sentence because of his harsh manners when defending himself and his wretch appearance, but mostly for his antecedents (346). Then, he was punished with transportation and was sent to New South Wales, Australia. There, he was assigned to a private landowner and worked as a shepherd until his master?s death (also an emancipated convict), when he was left all his money and emancipated himself. As an honest man he earned the money by working several years instead of stealing it. Australia meant a new life for the convicted poor because it was rich in primary resources and there were lots of opportunities to get rich.

Magwitch understands that despite being wealthy, he will never ascend the social ladder in a heartless society that rejects convicted and ex-convicted people. Magwitch once heard a colonist saying: ?He was a convict, a few year ago, and is an ignorant common fellow now, for he?s lucky? (317). So He became a benefactor of the little child who helped him on the marshes of Kent and decided to make him a gentleman as a symbol of gratitude towards Pip. When he returned England to see the boy he helped, he was sentenced to death, without pardon. As Leavis and Lewis claim, ?Charles Dickens was very sensitive to the physical and psychological effects that punishment had on the individuals? . The psychological effect that transportation left in Magwitch is the fact that he sleeps with a pistol on the pillow (320).

Another theme in this novel regarding Magwitch is the idea of fatherhood. He was not allowed to take care of his daughter, Estella, and he was said that she was dead. So the protection for his daughter and his feelings of parenthood are shown in his relationship towards Pip considering himself as Pip?s second father. However, Pip, being a respectable gentleman, feels repugnance towards the convict. His snobbish attitude cannot support the idea of being a gentleman because of the gratitude of a convict.

Compeyson is the other criminal portrayed by Dickens who represents meanness, greed and disloyalty. He was a gentleman as he was educated in a boarding school. He forged the banknotes so that his associate Magwitch could put them into circulation. He used Magwitch, like he used Miss. Havisham to get her money, to get profit of him in case they were caught. In the trial he got a lesser sentence due to his education and rich appearance, which Magwitch had not. Here Dickens demonstrates that laws were unfair for those on the bottom of the ladder, but not for the gentlemen.

The theme of prisons as punishment is also treated in the novel. As I mentioned before, the first time Pip meets Newgate prison, he goes out of the tour round the prison with horror. This feeling is widened when Magwitch is sentenced to death and sent to this prison. Despite being ill, he is jailed in the common prison with sane and insane prisoners. There, some sick prisoners acted as nurses for the prisoners who were worse (453).

It is said that Dickens Newgate prison not only is part of the history of England, but also a part of Dickens life. The experience Dickens obtained in his childhood and the visits he made to


Интересная статья: Основы написания курсовой работы