Theme of Social Class Exposed in Great Expectations.
During the Christmas dinner in chapters 4 and 5 of Great Expectations, Charles Dickens uses the adults' behaviour to satirize the hypocrisy and obsession with social status in Victorian society. Here is how the social class plays out during the dinner scene. Uncle Pumblechook is a wealthy corn-chandler, who considers himself superior to Joe, a blacksmith. He treats Pip with condescension, constantly lecturing him to be grateful to those who brought him up by hand. He brings two bottles of wine to dinner, a symbol of his higher economic status, which Mrs Joe fawns over because she aspires to middle class respectability. The adults at the table --- Pumblechook, Hubbles, and Wopsle -- constantly criticize Pip, comparing him. to a criminal or swine. In Victorian class system, children of lower class families were often viewed as economic burdens. Pip is denied a voice, forced to eat in a corner, and given the worst cuts of meat, reflecting his...