Victorian literature is overpopulated with orphans. The Bronte sisters, Trollope, George Elliot, Thackeray and Gaskell all positioned orphans as major characters in their novels. This trend continued into the Edwardian period, when Frances Hodgson Burnett created the orphan protagonists Colin, Mary and Sara. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay While it can be argued that the use of orphans reflects the huge number of orphaned children and a different definition of "orphan" than is commonly used today (a Victorian "orphan" might have one parent), the number of orphans in nineteenth-century English literature remains disproportionately high – and nowhere is it higher than in the works of Charles Dickens. Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and David Copperfield all include a plethora of orphans. Dickens's treatment of these individual characters, however, varies widely. For example, while the protagonists of Great Expectations and David Copperfield lack their mother and father, their life paths differ greatly. While David Copperfield is portrayed as the stereotypical plucky orphan carving his own path in the world, Pip becomes trapped in situations where he has little agency. Despite his “undisciplined heart,” youth and gullibility, David remains free from the taint of criminality that so stubbornly follows Pip in Great Expectations. The two different approaches illustrated in Great Expectations and David Copperfield are consistent with the contradictory Victorian attitudes towards orphaned children and the curious mixture of fascination and fear with which they approached this social problem. Auerbach discusses Victorian attitudes towards orphans at length. She notes that “the orphan is born for himself and establishes his own social penumbra” (Auerbach 395). The Victorians viewed orphans as free from family histories or other social expectations that constrain them as much as sustain them. Thus, the orphan is a free agent, potentially capable of writing his or her own life story in ways that "normal" children, burdened as they are by parental and social expectations, are not free to attempt. The literary orphan's “appearance of attractive fragility” is deceptive because it masks an enormous “survival power” (Auerbach 395) necessary to create a position in the world. This view is consistent with how Dickens portrays David. David's “endearing fragility” is repeatedly emphasized in the novel's early chapters. David is first seen as an infant and then as a child chattering about crocodiles. Dickens creates a captivating image as the reader sees young David having fun on the beach with little Em'ly. David himself comments on the fragility of this time, noting “as far as any sense of inequality, or youth, or other difficulties in our way, little Em'ly and I had no such problems because we had no future. We have not taken steps to grow older any more than we have taken steps to become younger” (DC 39). This sense of charming fragility is underlined by the pleasure with which Mrs. Gummidge, Peggotty, and Mr. Peggoty welcome the children, “as if they might have in a fair city, or a pocket model of the Colosseum” (39-40). The hero's endearing nature only makes the Murdstones' cruelty all the more devastating. To leave no doubt about David's size and strength, Hablôt Knight Browne's illustrations emphasize David's smallness. We first see him sitting in a church pew, very alone among theadults towering above him. His small size is emphasized in later illustrations, in which David is seen in a largely adult world, completely dwarfed by the chair he is sitting in. Although it can be argued that all children are extraordinarily fragile, the Victorians believed that orphans possessed this trait in abundance, given their uncertain status in the world. Newborn David's attractive fragility soon gives way to surprising strength as David begins to fight back against his lot in life. After his mother's death, David begins to take on the roles associated with independent adults. He is aware that other children behave differently from him. He wonders whether his “early independence” has confused Mrs. Macawber about his age (GE 140). Likewise, he wonders “what the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition arriving all alone” (DC 142). He demonstrates surprising maturity and avoids becoming entangled in the Macawbers' financial ruin. Since his arrest, Mr. Macawber notes that he has lived “the same secretly unhappy life; but I conducted it in the same solitary and self-confident way” (DC 148). This unique “otherness” allows David to interact with adults as an adult without the reduced expectations of intelligent speech that are often placed on children. Unlike other children, as an adult you create your own place in the world. His secret happiness simply serves as fuel for further personal development. This transformation from being dependent on adults to becoming a singularly self-sufficient child in London reaches a new level when he decides to run away from Murdstone and Grinby in the hope that his Aunt Clara can provide him with a better situation. While it can be argued that David is regressing to the parental situation, the better view is that he has realized what he needs and has formulated a plan to meet those needs. David's execution of his "resolution" illustrates the enormous power of survival that Auerbach speaks of. The reader sees David dealing with the logistics of getting from London to Dover, having his money stolen, pawning clothes for food, cooling his blistered feet, dealing with pimps, and persevering through the twenty-three mile journey to Aunt Betsy. This journey transforms Pip; we will never again see him as dependent on others as he was on the Murdstones and others who hijacked his childhood. This transformation went to the heart of the Victorian fascination with orphans, who invested them with enormous personal strength and fortitude. No longer bound by ties to his father and mother, by his work in Murdstone and Grinby, or by the cruel Murdstones, David can make his own way in the world. While David may seem immature, naive, or undisciplined, he is never again completely at the mercy of others. Not surprisingly, this transformation coincides with a name change: from David to Trotwood. The Victorian fascination with the orphan as a free agent also integrates with their belief in the Protestant work ethic. The horror of idleness and the belief in the redemptive power of work allowed the Victorians to believe that it was conceivable for an orphan to raise himself – and perhaps be far more successful than one who is burdened by family and other obligations. David's rise from the bottle shop where he begins “the world on your own” (DC 136) to successful writer makes him very much an English Horatio Algers. Curiously, Algers was writing around the same time in the United States. Literary orphans were routinely used as examples of the Protestant work ethic – and in this respect David is no exception. The Victorian belief in the singular strengths of the orphan that is operative in David Copperfield is justfeatured in Great Expectations. In its place are other, much darker notions. As much as the Victorians were fascinated by the orphan's ability to negotiate his or her place in the world, they also viewed orphans as "slightly disreputable," of "uncertain parentage," and "always threatening to lose focus and definition" (Auerbach 395). The same freedom from constraining social ties that allowed orphans to succeed also allowed them to violate the social contract in other, more harmful ways. Because of this belief, Great Expectations is a much darker novel that plays with Victorian fears of crime and impurity. While also a Bildungsroman, the life story of its orphaned protagonist follows a very different trajectory as Pip becomes increasingly mired in conflicting emotions and criminality. The orphan's violation of the social contract feeds directly into the Victorian fear of crime. As fascinated as the Victorians were with the idea of ​​the orphan as a free agent, they were also wary of the orphan's aura of criminality. This belief was not entirely fanciful. After the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, aid to orphans was drastically reduced. Relief (such as it was) was no longer provided by the local parish, but rather by a union of parishes. The only public relief was the workhouse, which was intentionally redesigned to be as harsh as possible to prevent freeloaders. Taken together, these changes have had the effect of pushing the poor into cities where crime has become rampant. While the birth of London's Metropolitan Police was undoubtedly inevitable, a strong case can be made that the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was responsible for the crime wave that necessitated the birth of the police in 1868. Citizens were preyed upon by nomadic tribes . of child criminals very similar to Fagan's gang. Since the orphans had no means of support, they were suspected of hiding enormous untapped criminal potential. This contradictory attitude towards orphans was recognized by the Victorians themselves. Laura Peters reports that the parish union inspector of schools had difficulty reconciling the fact that many orphans "gained top marks in their teaching exams, but at the same time orphans made up 60% of the criminal population" (Peters 7 ). By January 1854, 50-60% of those attending poor schools or housed in reformatory prisons were orphans. Peters goes on to describe what she calls “the penal narrative,” which she says arises from the “sense of social failure…within the middle-class psyche” caused by the existence of criminal orphans (Peters 38). Such penal narratives typically involve the arc of a criminal plan implemented by or on orphans. Very little of this Victorian fear of crime is seen in David Copperfield. Although the forgery and fraud committed by the orphan Uriah Heep provide a subplot, these acts do not subsume the entire novel. Likewise, Macawber's brush with debtors' prison isn't criminal at all. By comparison, Great Expectations is saturated with crime. Although Peters proposes Oliver Twist as a crime narrative, Great Expectations would be an equally applicable example. At the beginning of the novel, Pip steals brandy, a cake and a file after being threatened by a convict in the marshes. While a modern reader may become impatient with Pip's fear of being exposed, such feelings would make much more sense to the Victorian reader who associates the orphans with criminal enterprises and anticipates the further development of the criminal scheme. Having learned that Pip is capable of committing crimes and that he has relationships with inmatesescaped, the Victorian reader will keep a watchful eye for further such developments. Pip shares this sentiment, and no matter how much he tries to rise above his station in life, he is continually reminded of his criminal taint. The appearance of the second inmate in Three Jolly Bargemen reaffirms the dubious social legitimacy of orphans. After ascertaining that Pip was sent to prison by his sister (and therefore is not there by choice), the second prisoner reappears. His surprise appearance confirms the Victorian suspicion of the inexplicable link between crime and orphans that transcends the rational mind. Although the second convict is “a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before” (GE 292), there is no doubt that he is related to the convicts Pip met in the swamp. The inmate establishes Joe and Pip's identity and brings up his relationship with Pip to Joe, thus establishing for himself that Pip is an orphan. The images of the gravestones with which the novel opens also reappear, as the convict stares at Joe's residence near "the lonely church, right in the swamps, with the graves around it!" (292). After the convict establishes his identity by surreptitiously showing Joe's file to Pip, the men discuss turnips. However, even this innocuous topic is a mere cover, as the reader later learns that the Magwitch's earliest memories involve stealing turnips. Upon returning home, Mrs. Joe is quick to correctly characterize the stranger by saying, “One bad blow, I'll be bound” (GE 55). The whole incident makes Pip, who sleeps badly, uneasy, thinking "of the strange man who aimed at me with his invisible gun, and how guiltily gross and common a thing it was, to be in secret terms of conspiracy with the convicts - a feature in my low career that I had previously forgotten” (GE 55). Pip is aware of his origins and is understandably uncomfortable that his one-time casual association will uncontrollably develop into further criminal inclinations Pip is tainted by crime, it's no surprise when the convict reappears and reveals a past that matches Pip's darkest fears. I'm not going to tell you my life story of English. In prison and out of prison, in prison and out of prison, in prison and out of prison That's more or less my life, up until the moment I was sent away... I did all quite well – except being hanged. I've been locked up, as much as a silver tea kettle. I've been taken here and taken there, and taken out of this city and taken out of that other city. I have no more idea where I was born than you do, even if so much. I first became aware of myself down in Essex, a turnip thief for a living (GE 236). This association between crime and orphanage is exactly what the Victorians – and Pip – feared. In Great Expectations, this association becomes more tortured when Pip discovers that Magwitch was his anonymous benefactor. Magwitch destroys Pip's fantasies of social advancement when he tells Pip, “I have made you a gentleman. I'm the one who did it. I swore that time, sure as ever that I had earned a guinea, that that guinea should go to you. I swore later, of course that like every time I speculated and got rich, you should get rich too. I lived hard, so that you could live peacefully. I have worked hard for you to be above work” (GE 220). Predictably, Pip is absolutely horrified; he reports that «the horror I felt for that man, the fear I had of him, the repugnance with which I shied away from him, would not havecould have been overcome if it had been a terrible beast" (GE 220). Although unstated, Pip's sense of horror is directed as much at himself as at the inmate. By providing Pip's fortune, the convict has defiled Pip's fundamental being. His escape from the banality of the blacksmith shop was in vain. The success and domestic happiness that David has invested so much time and work into will never be Pip's because he based his "expectations" on what turned out to be a criminal plan. Even the dubious object of his dreams, the orphan Estella, is tainted when Pip discovers that she is Magwitch's daughter. The ancient crime syndicate in the marshes has grown so bad over the years that it undermines everything that is important in Pip's life. Other criminal characters reveal further insights into contradictory Victorian attitudes towards orphans. Such insights can be gleaned by comparing Uriah Heep and Orlick. On the surface, these characters have a lot in common. In addition to being Dicken's most unconditionally revolting creations, both engage in criminal acts for which they have no remorse. Dickens uses them both as stand-ins for the protagonists. However, these superficial similarities fail. The differences between Heep and Orlick reveal as much about their respective doubles as they do about Victorian notions of what it meant to be an orphan.The inevitability of criminal contamination is illustrated by Orlick. Pip has absolutely no control over Orlick, as Orlick inevitably appears wherever Pip is. Initially a fellow worker at the forge, he later appears as the guardian of Satis House. He crouches in the darkness in Pip's London lodgings and eventually ambushes Pip in the swamp. No matter where Pip goes, Orlick eventually appears. Orlick's very inevitability corresponds to Pip's inability to shed the criminal stain that is part and parcel of being an orphan. Like Orlick, Uriah is often very close to David. For example, Uriah and his mother attach themselves to David in an attempt to prevent him from speaking freely to Agnes or Mr. Wickfield. Even the object knitted by Uriah's mother that “looked like a net; and as she worked with those Chinese knitting needle sticks…preparing for a cast of her net bit by bit” is seen as a trap for David as she stubbornly refuses to leave the room (DC 482). However, despite this closeness, the association between Uriah and David is not as incessant as the association between Orlick and Pip. There are numerous subplots in which Uriah does not figure at all, such as David's marriage to Dora, his relationship with the Peggotty family, his friendship with Steerforth, and his educational and professional achievements. Unlike Orlick, Uriah is ultimately escapeable because his sliminess is external to David. David has overcome the orphan's contamination, while Pip has internalized it. This difference is further established by an examination of the individual culpability of David and Pip. Uriah's crimes are entirely independent of David. David's role is simply to “witness an explosion” (DC 623) in which Uriah is confronted by Mr. Macawber, Traddles, Agnes, and Aunt Betsy. While Uriah blames David for the revelation of his crimes, saying “”You were always an upstart, you were always against me” (DC 638), this is markedly different from placing the blame on David. Indeed, Uriah takes full responsibility as he threatens his opponents by saying, "Miss Trotwood, you had better stop all this or I will stop your husband sooner than you would like...Miss Wickfield, if you have any love for your father, you had better not join that gang. I'll ruin it if you do... I put some of you under the harrow. Think twice first., 1975.