Conscience as Purgatory: Pip in the Marshes of the Dead

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations is one of those classic works of literature which stimulates a tradition of criticism that is as creative and as thought provoking, at times, as the novel itself. However, within the current epoch, this creativity is often negated by poststructural frameworks that foreclose other readings, predeterminately, through the totalizing effects of their approach. Peter Brooks’ reading of Great Expectations, is one such example, I will argue; although this is not the essay’s primary purpose: it will offer a new reading of a work of 19th century literature which has already been extensively, investigated, from a familiar perspective, class-based guilt; nonetheless, it will illuminate the plot trajectory to a greater extent by tapping into the figurative language of the narrative, revealing the motivations of, centrally, the protagonist within the world he inhabits.