Reading Assignment #6: Chapters 26-34

Jaggers and his house share a constant gloominess. He has a habit of perpetually washing his hands, which means he tries to "wash" away the guilt of shame from the past. He has a very odd taste in men and is selfish.

Pip is very fond of Estella and is starting to give in to Miss Havisham's "trap". Even though Estella warns him that she can never love him, he continues to settle his plan to abandon Joe because he thinks it will please Estella. Being the narrator, Pip is able to step outside his life events for a moment, and wonder how it was he could make a choice without regretting it.

Reading Assignment #5, What does Pip think of London whe he walks through Smithfield?

Pip arrives in London. While waiting for Jaggers he takes a turn around the streets, by way of Smithfield and Newgate. He witnesses some of Jaggers' legal dealings, is told briefly of the accommodation and allowance that have been provided for him.

The streets are not paved with gold, but with straw and filth. The lawyer's office, Smithfield meat market and Newgate prison, felons, convicts and all, are the background to Pip's introduction to the Capital. Everywhere are shady customers and shadier dealings. Money rules - a shilling to be conveyed in a coach, a shilling to be rid of a rogue's company and an undisclosed fee to bear false witness. However, Jaggers rules even more powerfully: 'Oh Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth, give me Jaggerth

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the son of John and Elizabeth Dickens. John Dickens was a clerk in the Naval Pay Office. He had a poor head for finances, and in 1824 found himself imprisoned for debt. His wife and children, with the exception of Charles, who was put to work at Warren's Blacking Factory, joined him in the Marshalsea Prison. When the family finances were put at least partly to rights and his father was released, the twelve-year-old Dickens, already scarred psychologically by the experience, was further wounded by his mother's insistence that he continue to work at the factory. His father, however, rescued him from that fate, and between 1824 and 1827 Dickens was a day pupil at a school in London. At fifteen, he found employment as an office boy at an attorney's, while he studied shorthand at night. His brief stint at the Blacking Factory haunted him all of his life — he spoke of it only to his wife and to his closest friend, John Forster — but the dark secret became a source both of creative energy and of the preoccupation with the themes of alienation and betrayal which would emerge, most notably, in David Copperfield and in Great Expectations.