I n t e r p r e t a t i o n1 6 7literary modes (realism, fable, fantasy, romance and so on) that are
to be found in the text. Some discrepancies and ambiguities in the
novel are investigated.
I also raise questions about the book’s moral vision, but a reader
might always want to ask how valid that vision is. Is it really true
that civilisation has its roots in crime and wretchedness, or is this
too jaundiced a view of it? Questions like this are perfectly legiti-
mate. We do not have to sign on for a literary work’s way of seeing.
We may always complain that Great Expectations is too sweeping in
its judgement on middle- class society, too ready to see the law as
nothing but harsh and oppressive, too morbidly obsessed with
death and violence, and too cosily sentimental in its handling of
Joe. The fact that there is scarcely a single positive female figure in
the work apart from Biddy might also claim our attention.
* * *Both Pip and Oliver have mislaid their parents. As such, they
belong to a distinguished line of orphans, semi- orphans, wards,
foundlings, bastards, suspected changelings and down- in- the-
mouth stepchildren who throng the pages of English literature
from Tom Jones to Harry Potter. There are several reasons why
orphans prove so irresistible to authors. For one thing, as deprived,
often despised figures, they have to make their way in the world
alone, which evokes both our sympathy and our approval. We feel
for their solitude and anxiety, while admiring their efforts to haul
themselves up by their bootstraps. Orphans are likely to feel
vulnerable and hard done by, which can then serve as a symbolic
comment on society as a whole. In Dickens’s later fiction, it is as
though we have all been orphaned by a social order which has
abandoned its responsibilities to its citizens. Society itself is a false