Crime & Punishment Flashcards
1
Q
Briefly outline Victorian ideas of crime and punishment. (3)
A
- The law during this time was corrupt and widely influenced by wealth, gender and appearance.
- Punishments were unnecessarily harsh - petty theft could be punishable by “the extreme penalty of the law”, theft.
- Increase in population in cities led to an increase in crimes which put put stress on prisons; ended up sending them to Australia.
2
Q
How is the theme of crime and punishment shown generally throughout the novel? (4)
A
- Novel starts when he is first made aware of convicts at the churchyard.
- When arriving in London, one of the first things Pip notices is Newgate Prison, where he sees condemned men and women on their way to be executed.
- Pip frequently meets with Jaggers and Wemmick who work as a part of the justice system.
- During his tour of Newgate, Pip sees the place “where people were publicly whipped”
- Not only humiliates them and deters other but also can be said to be interpreted as serving as some perverse and depraved form of entertainment for onlookers.
3
Q
How is the theme of crime and punishment shown through Magwitch? (2)
A
- “glared and growled”
- recurring use of zoomorphism depicts Magwitch as something akin to an animal, which shows how Victorians not only thought of criminals as to be in an entirely different class but weren’t even human. - “I noticed…what a gentleman Compeyson looked…and what a common sort of wreath I looked”
- again, appearances matter; shows the corruption of the justice system that values appearance and status rather than evidence and fairness.
4
Q
How is the theme of crime and punishment shown through Jaggers?
A
“washing his hands”
- his tendency to compulsively wash his hands suggests that he tries to rid himself of “the stain of the prison” which shows that he believes that his hands should remain clean in order to not be tarnished by the lingering scent of crime. Remember that the motif of hands is used to show one’s identity.
5
Q
What does Dickens believe about Victorian crime?
A
He is critical of a social system that punishes, dehumanizes and villainises the criminals that are a product of the society that made them.
