Birch rods and straws: Reading Great Expectations in modern times.

In chapter 10 of Great Expectations Pip describes the scene of pupils eating apples and putting straws up one another's back. Straw is a familiar word associated with a drinking straw.  But Wopsle's great aunt's pupils were living in an entirely different situation.  The word has not changed its meaning; its everyday associations have changed. In Dickens's rural England straw was a familiar agricultural material that came from dried stalks of grains such as wheat, oats, or barley. Children could encounter loose pieces of them in ordinary surroundings.  Children do this as a joke probably to trickle or irritate each other.  Wopsle's great aunt threatens her unruly pupils with birch-rod. She tries to bring order among her pupils who are playing tricks on one another.  Birch-rod refers to a bundle of birch twigs bound together. It could deliver a broad stinging punishment.  Dickens frequently uses such everyday images to make the material life of his characters vivid to the reader. The details also tell us something about the school run by Wopsle's great aunt. The pupils were not necessarily engaged in orderly lessons; they had time for childish mischiefs, while the eldey woman struggled to maintain discipline. Dickens humour lies in the contrast between the great aunt's feeble authority and the children's lively disorder.  The great aunt being elderly and physically weak, moves unsteadily towards the pupils with her birch-rod, apparently trying to chastise them without targeting any particular child.

Dickens presents a school in which learning seems secondary. There is also a subtle comic contrast:  The great-aunt must first "collect her energies" before she can even totter towards the children.  Her authority is limited by her physical capacity.

Dickens published Great Expectations in 1860-61.  The passage is historically plausible for that period.

A modern reader who associates the word straw primarily with a drinking straw may imagine an entirely different object from the one Dickens intended.  The word has not necessarily changed its meaning; its everyday associations have changed. 

In Dickens's rural England, straw was a familiar agricultural material.  Students could encounter loose dried pieces of cereal stalks in ordinary surroundings.  Dickens's contemporary readers could recognise the scene without explanation.  A reader unfamiliar with the material culture may miss the scene entirely.  Only a close reading of the novel helps one to have a grasp of Dickens world. It is a mirror held to Victorian England.

Reading a novel like Great Expectations requires more than understanding the words on the page.  Reading is not a passive reception; it is a dialogue between the the text and the reader's experience and historical understanding.