Origins, species, and Great Expectations

Great Expectations is a text obsessed with the idea of origins: the origin of wealth, the identification of parenthood. In Great Expectations, Dickens takes up the idea of unbreakable patterns of cause and effect working to determine present existence. The tenuous nature of the division between animal and human - even vegetable - life in Great Expectations is notable on a broader scale than the half-comic, half-queasy gastronomic one. Wemmick's choice of language shows that he has no worries about speaking of a human being as though she is an animal to whom motiveless violence comes naturally. The relegation of the importance of biological origins is of crucial importance to Great Expectations. Extremely conservative in class terms, Great Expectations is a novel which refuses to admit the desirability of any kind of reorganisation of society.